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PVR's Head-to-Head: MythTV vs. Microsoft MCE
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Sep 16, 2004 04:04 PM
from the two-enter-one-leaves dept.
from the two-enter-one-leaves dept.
asciimonster writes "AnandTech has completed its second review of set-top box Personal Video Recorders. After checking out the Linux-based MythTV, previously covered here on slashdot, they compared it to Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004.
'Our analysis has proved that though Media Center Edition 2004 is a boxed package that is easy to set up and configure, it looks amazingly beautiful, has great features such as On-Demand content, and is fully supported by Microsoft. However, for the enthusiast, MythTV takes the gold for its greater support for a variety of hardware and software codecs.'"
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MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux... (Score:5, Interesting)
How well would the transcoding to XViD work when they have sacrificed the CPU to the encoding gods? Wouldn't the machine take a serious hit trying to record and transcode at the same time when they aren't using a hardware encoder?
In this analysis, we are taking video capture from analog cable. We are able to capture digital cable from a digital cable feed as well, but it requires the MCE machine to use a special IR module that actually controls the digital cable box. This can be done with MythTV under LIRC as well.
I have a Tivo and attempted to use the IR modules to control it before caving in and getting the serial control. From what I read the IR control is a pain in the ass and switches channels extremely slowly giving you a lag feel which for some is rather annoying. They don't mention that in this review though.
Of course, on the MythTV machine, we are actually able to skip the commercials entirely. MythTV surpasses MCE completely in this respect. During our tests, 9 out of 10 commercial breaks were skipped flawlessly. ReplayTV's accuracy may be slightly higher than this, but for a free solution, Myth does an excellent job.
This is a minor annoyance for me being a Tivo user. I really wish I could easily do this. FF'ing the commercials is easy and the Tivo does do a good job once you get the hang of it but I would LOVE to see them just gone completely.
From what I can see MCE is really beautiful. You get what you pay for though. I'd love to have the time to play with MythTV (and buy all the hardware) but it seems like you can get the package complete with your DRM'd OS from MS with little pain.
Honestly I am glad that I went w/even less painful option of Tivo but that's me.
Re:MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux... (Score:3, Informative)
Transcoding happens after the program is finished recording. For best results though, use something with a hardware MPEG encoder to avoid said sacrifices. A Hauppauge PVR-250 does the job nicely. Two do it even better.
I love my MythTV HTPC... I thought about acquiring a Tivo sev
Re:MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I was commenting on.
MythTV will transcode a recording after it is recorded into a different format.
So they are encoding a stream that was already captured in the background (I assume while other encoding could be going on) which would make for a SERIOUS CPU hit because they chose to save a couple extra bucks by not using the hardware MPEG encoder.
The PVR-250 (most commonly used hardware encoder in conjunction with MythTV) encodes into MPEG2 which is the codec they were taking issue with. There are MPEG4 encoders, but they mostly deal with DVB signals rather than standard analog cable.
Compressing to DivX/MPEG4 from MPEG2 can yield tremendous savings. I personally dont do it, but I understand those that do. I would rather spend the extra $$$ from the cpu on a (much) larger hard drive to host the recordings.
To be honest though... there's not much else to do with your CPU. If you have a hardware encoder on your tv capture, and a hardware decoder in your video playback.... what else are you going to do with your CPU?
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Come over to the Dark Side (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not too late to renounce your youthful indiscretion and come over to the dark side. ReplayTV, no commercials [replayfaqs.com], no DRM, internet show sharing...
Re:Come over to the Dark Side (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the commercials...the stock fast-forward command on the Tivo has three speeds; if I click to the second speed, it takes about 1-2 seconds on average to get through a block of commercials. Moreover, when you hit play after noticing that your show began again, it understands that you react a split second after seeing the show, so it actually rewinds a bit (and it may be looking for a black screen, I'm not sure). As such, its had a rate of well of 99% correctly jumping RIGHT to after the commercial break. I have a hard time believing the ReplayTV option is much better...
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Content, Uninterrupted (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the thing... the ReplayTV commercial skip really is that much better. The fact that it's so much better than Tivo is one major reason the TV companies spent so much time suing the various RTV owners but left Tivo untouched.
As it records the RTV monitors the record stream and analyzes for commercial break cues such as fade-outs, fade-ins, sudden increases in volume normalization, stuff like that.
Along with the MPGs it writes, it also writes associated XML info files with chunk sequence information. So during playback, if you decide to "Skip Commercials", then the RTV just jumps right past those ad blocks. You don't even get a notification that they were there. No fiddling with remote buttons. It Just Works.
Well, around 95% of the time it works. For those other times, you can of course hit a manual 30-second skip on the remote, or customize a button for longer skips, or punch in the number of minutes you want to jump ahead. I'd imagine the Tivo is similar.
The fact that the RTV tags the content chunks has some cool applications. The first is that when and if you decide to move the MPGs over the LAN to your PC/Mac/Linux for editing or conversion to DVD or XVid, then with the excellent RTVTools and ReVue you can choose to transcode the entire stream, or just output the commercial-stripped stream. It's a time saver.
The second cool feature is a consequence of tagging the commercials: inverting playbvack to skip all content and play only commercials. I use this for the Superbowl - just play it back on "Content Skip" and you don't have to fast-forward through several hours of tedious homo-eroticism and tight bums but can just sit back and watch all the adverts uninterruped.
And as for hacking your Tivo to add extra disks and network connectivity, then Bravo! But you know all those things come standard with ReplayTV, right, and the network sharing is unencumbered by HMO's clunky DRM?
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Re:MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux... (Score:5, Informative)
If you're channel-surfing the traditional way (up, up, up, up, up, up, up), then yeah, the IR transmitter sucks. There's a good 2 or 3 second delay before the new channel comes up.
However, if you use Tivo the way it's supposed to be used, via the on-screen program guide, or even better -- time shifting -- it's not as much of an issue.
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Re:MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be ashamed of taking the easy route. After having experienced each of these solutions, a simple PVR like a $70 DSR704 by Phillips is superior to any PC based solution. Here's what you get for $70:
- 30 hours (40 gig drive)
- auto recording using your "thumbs up/down" buttons based on genre, actors, category, etc.
- the ability to record two different shows at once while watching one of them, or to watch one channel while recording on another
- tuner integration
- no loss in quality since the raw digital signal is recorded
- search based recording, seasons passes, and other means to record upcoming shows. You can even do an "On Demand" type thing by just recording your PPV programs Thursday, then your movies will be waiting Friday night.
Upon modding a DSR704 you can: toss in extra hard drives, use the USB ports as network adapters, rip/edit/encode any shows on the HDD via FTP, etc..
The people who say MythTV or Media Edition are "better" solutions likely do not use their setups in a living room with a wife and kids around; or they are not taking into account the household's ability to manage the system. With a Tivo, all you need is a remote and if there is a problem you press one button to nuke and pave the system to start over from scratch.
The only dislike I have for the Tivo is the flat list of programs it displays. I miss the old Microsoft Ultimate TV system, which categorized by titles. This helped reduce clutter when the drive starts to fill up.
On the issue of DRM, I can only say that DRM is there to protect the people who make the shows you so want to record. If you want every episode of The Family Guy without commercials and in perfect quality, I would suggest purchasing it on DVD and not cry about DRM on a recording device. If you are going to steal things, then go ahead, but again, circumvent the DRM using information obtained on Google and don't come crying to
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Re:MCE is really nice but I am partial to Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at your Program Guide on Tivo. You can now change the settings on it to show the recorded programs by title. I'm not at home right now to remember the settings..but, go look at tivo.com and I'm sure you can find how to do it.
"On the issue of DRM, I can only say that DRM is there to protect the people who make the shows you so want to record. If you want every episode of The Family Guy without commercials and in perfect quality, I would suggest purchasing it on DVD and not cry about DRM on a recording device. If you are going to steal things, then go ahead, but again, circumvent the DRM using information obtained on Google and don't come crying to /. about it. "
I do believe that recording TV shows off to tape, DVD, or whatever for private use is covered by fair use, and the old Betamax case that is so oft debated around here on /.
Nothing wrong with this, perfectly legal...
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Myth install (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Myth install (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I understand you still have to install from the CD to the HD in order to get it all setup. It's not exactly like you can pop a KnoppMyth CD into a machine w/a WinTV card and start timeshifting.
You get what you pay for though. If you spend the money on the software you are locked in to what MSFT wants to do (DRM, on demand, etc) but you don't have to spend the time tinkering to get it working.
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Re:Myth install (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Myth install (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the logic is that you could then have pre-defined partitions set up to be the hosts for the database, and the video capture files. Optionally the entire hard disk could be used for program information and recorded video.
With sufficient system memory, you could do what some ISO distributions do, and load everthing to memory, and you would even ha
cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has anyone 'rolled their own' and have a price/features overview? Is it worth it yet?
CBSDFEW@#$%^&*))(
Re:cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
MythTV will never be the "cheaper" alternative, but it will always be the superior alternative in my opinion. The extra features (MythMusic, MythWeb (!!!), MythDVD etc) are determining factors that keep me with Myth instead of buying a Tivo.
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Re:cost? (Score:5, Informative)
1) I got the (dual 633mhz PIII) PC with TV-out for free. It isn't *quite* fast enough sometimes. Most (95%) of the time it's fine.
2) I got the TV Tuner cards with hardware MPEG encoders for $50 each... 1/3 the normal price.
3) I traded a laptop hard drive for an ultra quiet Seagate Barracuda V 120GB
4) The other $50 was for an I/R keyboard.
My machine is definitely is not quiet, but it can be done (for more money).
Case wise, a lot of people are happy with the ASUS pundit. A lot just use something painted gloss black.
A few people have reported 802.11g to have enough bandwidth to handle video playback. 802.11b will definitely not cut the mustard. I got rid of my wireless gear after getting MythTV and wired my house up. It is (much) cheaper than getting wireless gear, and now I can copy the 2GB video files off at a decent speed. Wireless (802.11g) was SO slow. And the microwave next door or a cordless phone would kill it.
But yes, MythTV is pretty mature these days... In fact, my hardware let me down before the software did. (old 10GB os drive died).
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Re:cost? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, since I can't get Tivo service at any price (Canada), Myth works better for me. It's cost me well over $1500 so far, but that's for a 3-tuner backend and two frontends. Not too bad for 3 complete computers.
It sure as heck didn't save me any time, but I learned waaay more than I ever wanted to know about video on Linux. You probably won't ever same money on a roll-your-own, but for me and others, money isn't en
Re:cost? (Score:3, Interesting)
The downside is now I can hear the siren song of the HD DirecTiVo calling to me... Man I need a price drop!!!
MythTV (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:MythTV (Score:5, Insightful)
MythTV does support IR or Serial changing of the channel, but if you have DirecTV you'd be foolish not to use DirecTivo - at prices anywhere from free to $100 and direct recording of MPEG stream from the satelite (I.e. no transcoding, same exact quality as original) plus support for 2 tuners in each Tivo unit.
Of course DirecTivo does not offer anything other than recording and playback of TV, so you will still need something to play MP3s, video files, etc.
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The barbarians have won (Score:4, Funny)
It's official. I'm the last surviving human who knows how to use an apostrophe properly.
Re:The barbarians have won (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The barbarians have won (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The barbarians have won (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The barbarians have won (Score:3, Informative)
US usage: "It's official,"
UK usage: 'It's official',
Stylistically, the proper punctuation would probably be "It's official:", or "It's official!" for emphasis. Many of us like the em dash, though: "It's official - ".
semicolon (Score:4, Interesting)
"Its official; I'm the
But if I were to use something other than a semicolon, I would choose a comma rather than a full stop.
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Tv guide like CDDB? (Score:4, Interesting)
That would have the 'wow' factor that would make me start to build one of these MythTV beasts.
PCBVS&D*
Re:Tv guide like CDDB? (Score:3, Informative)
All XMLTV did anyways for North America was query Zap2It, and the DataDirect service of Zap2It that Myth uses now is much less errorprone and much faster, although you have to take a survey every 3 months if you want a free account there.
TiVo anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a happy MythTV user... (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, they try and compare software encoding offof any old bttv card to hardware encoding on a card like the PVR-250 (which Myth is more than capable of handling adequately). Apples and oranges.
They make almost no mention of the many plugins Myth has available, such as the web browser, RSS syndication, weather, music, every kind of video ever (through mPlayer and/or Xine)...
Almost complete non-mention of the way MythWeb (web-based MythTV control and viewing system) seamlessly integrates with the system, and allows you to do funky things with your Mythbox from work
And they also ignore MythTV's *real* strength in that you can cluster as many computers and TV cards as you want into a single cohesive entertainment system spanning your entire house, thanks to it's funky client/server architecture.
Very little objective/subjective comment on the relative merits of the interfaces
Frankly, I find it rather difficult that they could put an entire Myth system together in little under 4 hours, especially since they seem to know little about Linux (for instance, it is practically impossible to compile MythTV in 20 minutes - it takes aaaaaggggggeeeeessss. Methinks they meant download and install rather than compile).
Most of the review (and screenshots) seems to be spent on drooling over MCE's blue buttons. In short, not a very worthwhile or in-depth comparison IMHO.
Re:As a happy MythTV user... (Score:3, Informative)
i generally agree with your comment
Unfortunately, MythTV took its first real stumble at DVD playback. Using the machine that we installed from scratch in Part I of the analysis, we had zero issues playing DVDs. Under KnoppMyth, the DVD completely refused to play. We would hear the DVD start up, spin and then just hang. Part of this may have to do with copy-protection, part of it may have to do with poorly constructed code. In either case, we can't watch "Nip Tuck" on the KnoppMyth machine without some ser
Where does freevo fit in? (Score:3, Interesting)
Admittedly I only looked at MythTV for about a day on and off. Does anybody here with more experience with MythTV have an opinion of how MythTV and Freevo compare?
Re:Where does freevo fit in? (Score:4, Interesting)
When you say "Freevo doenst have nearly the options or hardware support of Myth," what do you mean? I found exactly the opposite, so I may have missed a lot of stuff. If so, I'd like to know what.
Parent
Error in the article... (Score:3, Informative)
the feature that puts MCE on top in this screen is the live display on the bottom left.
they must not have used mythtv much, if you enter the programming guide while watching tv, you get a miniature tv display in the corner as well.
Buy a TiVo! (Score:3, Informative)
I speak as someone who put together a Myth box. Used a Via Nehamiah chipset, 120GB HDD, CD ROM, Hauppauge 350 PVR card, all in a box the size of one of my programming texts. And running Gentoo (found some really nice Gentoo specific kernel patches and ebuilds).
Total cost was over $700. Biggest problem I had was that the Hauppage 350 drivers were literally months old. Yes, my Myth box kicks much arse. The web interface is slick, there's plug ins to do MP3 and video (and soon DVD IIRC), but for the amount of $$$ and time invested, a TiVo would have been so much easier.
Macintosh PVR? (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe they ignored their own observations... (Score:4, Insightful)
Pardon my cynicism, but this isn't totally unlike saying:
Re:I believe they ignored their own observations.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it seems to be more like saying:
Of course neither one is really accurate; analogies never are. It depends on what's important to you, in the end. MythTV supports a large set of plugins you'll never
obligatory mention of ReplayTV (Score:5, Informative)
Not to beat a not-dead-yet horse, but ReplayTV [replaytv.com] recently dumped a lot of their 5040 units for $50 each, or $30 with a special coupon code (the latter seems to have been a mistake that they cancelled quickly). These are previous-generation models that can transfer shows to other Replay units of the same 50xx model line, something Tivo has not been able to do natively, before, and which is unfortunately dropped in the 55xx line. The 50xx line also has the controversial commercial advance feature, which was dropped on the 55xx line for legal reasons(it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but is nice when it works). With lifetime activation at $299 (or monthly fees that now vary depending on number of units), that means RTV is still a platform worth comparing against. Especially when you consider third-party tools like DVArchive [dvarchive.org] (java-based!) that exploit the XML interface of the units to copy programs off for safekeeping and later streaming, without any hacking of the box or transcoding of the native
Oh, one more thing: people outside the US have managed to set up their legitimately-subscribed ReplayTVs with another tool called WIRNS (which you can find in AVSForum [avsforum.com], to scrape local show listings. I mention this because, even if ReplayTV as a company dies, owners will still have alternatives to keep their schedules from going dark. And a lot of owners are also joining Poopli [poopli.com], a website with the objective of making transfers between Replays easier.
(No, I don't work for anybody making or selling these, nor do I own any of these websites. I'm just an owner of a 50xx that I've bumped up to 200GB with a simple patch-and-swap [sourceforge.net], very much like a Tivo owner would do. Before I bought my box, I had almost given up on tv entirely. Now, I'm looking forward to my next hard drive upgrade. And I really regret not buying another unit on sale).
Myth does most things they say it didn't (Score:3, Interesting)
I will admit that Knoppmyth using mplayer for DVD's is sub par, I never had any problems playing after install (I use Xine so I can actually get DVD menus)
"The ability to make changes to KnoppMyth after it has already been installed is one quality that it severely lacks" This one has me completely stumped, I but Microsoft doesn't let you change the program that plays DVDs. CDs, Videos, etc.
I have to admit that the lack of radio support is frustrating, it would be cool if you could pause record, and playback radio just like TV. Although I've only seen FM cards, what about sports and talks radio????
Yeah and the complete lack of mention of mythnews, mythweather, mythgame, burns me too.
What about the rest? (Score:4, Interesting)
The reviewer also seemed to imply that the only way to get an MPEG4 is to record it in the default codec and then transcode it in the background to MPEG4. You can record directly from the card to Mpeg4 (if you have a software based card).
How Loud is that System? (Score:3, Interesting)
You could go water cooling or go with an architecture that doesn't need cooling but that will either drive the price up or the CPU power of the system down. Or both.
I'm just curious if the systems they built at the quoted prices would be something you'd want running in the living room 24x7...
Aaargh (Score:3, Informative)
Just off the top of my head you need to set up:
- XMLTV grabbing and channel numbering. In the UK this is murderous... I ended up writing a scraper for the NTL EPG called tv_grab_uk_ntl, I'll prolly post it to the xmltv mailing list or summat.
- Dual head X. nVidia makes this easyish if you're happy with XF86Config but running GNOME alongside is absolutely infuriating. It insists on drawing those damn bars on the TV display as well, and Myth needs to be focused to work properly. I still haven't found a solution to this. Not being able to use a desktop alongside is kind of a no-no. This is unforgivable because marking a window Always On Top makes it go above the bars. Why doesn't Myth do this.
- Infra-red is a nightmare. You have to muck about with settings.pro to make it link against lirc (ever heard of autoconf?), and there's no graphical toolkit for it so you have to edit lircrc and restart and try it and edit and restart and... Oh yeah did I mention the keyboard interface is REALLY damn hard to usefully map to a remote control? It doesn't even have an explicit PLAY button ffs!
- Infra red part 2. This isn't so much a problem with MythTV but setting up an infra red blaster to work with a cable box is also a pain. I subscribe to NTL so I bought something called RedEye (google for Pace Redeye) and modified the software that came with it a bit to run as a daemon that listens of a FIFO to avoid the startup delay on the device every time the channel needs to be switched. I shall release that patched version back to the owner too once I've got some time spare.
I think this is more to do with LIRC, but LIRC as it is now really feels like some sort of hobbyist kit (complete with the circuit diagrams for rolling your own IR hardware... I just went with an Irman and Redeye to save the hassle). Some GUI setup tools would really not go amiss.
- PAGES AND PAGES AND PAGES of settings, the defaults for which don't make much sense usually. Here's a suggestion, when in doubt do what TiVo does. The default ffwd/rewind behaviour is unusable, it doesn't remember where you left off watching a programme unless you tell it to (why not?). To name just two problems.
- Weird menu system. The setup menus are split almost arbitrarily between mythfrontend and mythsetup, using the system from a remote is very strange (menu navigation and channel switching seems to collide). There is no warning about scheduling collisions so you always have to check the recording schedule. There's no at-a-glance "season pass" editor, so if you want to cancel a season pass you have to find the next instance of the show. Many many minor niggles like this.
- Inexplicable encoding weirnesses everywhere. It either skips and stutters or records in awful quality (on a 2GHz hyperthreading Xeon with half a GB of memory, which the site claims should be able to record TWO streams in MPEG4 at once AND play one back at the same time). Or you spend ages messing about with the recording profiles to get it just right (would it really be so hard to add a 'PAL/NTSC/VGA/Custom' resolution option instead of having to guess that the encoder will only be happy with 740x578 or whatever the hell it is?). I got frustrated with this and got a Hauppage MPEG2 hardware encoder. After getting IVTV up and running on Linux 2.6 with some oddball patched version it then encoded great... except the A/V then began to drift. Back to another round of messing with the settings then recording another programme to test it then messing with them again. Yes I have messed with all the AV sync settings. Should this REALLY require user intervention?
- NUV format with opaque filenames. WHY? Okay if you have it set up to use RTJPEG/NuppelVideo for realtime encoding then yes I can understand this but why use the container after transcoding when the data is in MPEG4/MP3? I know about mythtranscod
Re:Subscriptionless (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:MythTV and HDTV? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm based in the UK so don't know much about HDTV, but IIRC the only HDTV card that'll work under Linux (and Linux only) is available from PCHDTV http://pchdtv.com/ [pchdtv.com]
Re:DirecTV compatable? (Score:4, Informative)
There are instructions on how to get your Mythbox to change channels on your cable/sat box in numerous tutorials all over the web.
KnoppMyth is a good way of getting Myth up and running quickly, although most seasoned Myth users seem to prefer to use a full fledge distro in order to give easier configuration of all those peripheral devices. Gentoo, Debian unstable and FC1/2 are very popular choices.
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Re:It's great except... (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't done it... but couldn't you use the gatos project drivers [sourceforge.net] with Myth, or no?
just a thought...
e.
Re:Uh-huh... (Score:5, Interesting)
With Myth, you can automagically transcode to DivX in the background, and have the ability to store far more video files in the same amount of space. Thus, Myth lets your ass-groove flourish because you're not getting up nearly as much to go to Fry's to buy a new hard drive to store recordings.
It should also be noted that the latest MythTV also has direct DVD ripping, and has the live TV in the on-screen guide. KnoppMyth should be incorporating this in the future.
Parent
Re:the ultimate linux pvr wouild... (Score:3, Informative)
If you install KnoppMyth, 2 is taken care of (using the ATI Remote) by executing the command 'install_ati_remote' see http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/index.php?page = ATIRemote [homelinux.org]
I already use MythTV to record on a computer sitting in one room, and play video content through a much quieter computer in my entertainment center that I have set up as a front end. If you want to use a Windows box rather than a Linux box as your front end, have a look at http://knoppmythwi [homelinux.org]
Re:Question on Myth TV (Score:3, Informative)
KnoppMyth can run a front end from the CD, so you don't need to touch the hard drive for watching what has been recorded, but it does not include a back end, so your recordings will have to be on a seprate system.
You can set up a back end system stand alone sitting in the basement, or wherever it is convienent to grab your video feed. Basic specs for a 2 card capture system would be a 1 gig or faster