Slashdot Log In
MythTV Allows Multiple Front-Ends On Wide Range of Platforms
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Aug 15, 2008 03:19 PM
from the how-long-till-the-big-guys-realize-drm-isn't-the-answer dept.
from the how-long-till-the-big-guys-realize-drm-isn't-the-answer dept.
As the DVR becomes a much more pervasive performer in home theater setups, the level of excellence demanded by the general consumer seems to continue to rise. The open source project MythTV has been in this arena for quite a while, and now offers the ability to have multiple front-ends on your MythTV install on a wide range of different platforms. Able to run on Windows XP, Vista, Xbox, and even an Apple iPod, the new flexibility is sure to interest many consumers (and many competitors).
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
DRM'd Base? No Thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone familiar with MythTV knows that it can use multiple front ends. A port to Windows or Mac sounds good because the monopoly makes some hardware difficult to use. It's not such a great idea if you want control of your media [slashdot.org].
MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HDTV) (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, with no capability to use a cablecard (much less switched digital video), MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant in the DVR world. Sure, you could set up a complicated system using additional cable boxes from you cable company with some sort of IR channel switching, but the expense and hassle of that will keep MythTV on the far, far fringe. And if HDMI becomes the standard, MythTV is really screwed (it's able to record off of component outputs, but not HDMI).
I truly wish MythTV were practica
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:3, Informative)
except your an idiot...
cable company is REQUIRED by fcc to give customers cable boxes with firewire out.
myth tv can control almost all firewire boxes just fine.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
s/your/you're/
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true. I just set up a Mac running the 0.21 backend/frontend via FireWire on a Comcast 6200 box.
It works very well, except that I have to use the PPC backend for the time being (on Intel).
I can't tune the 5c channels, but there are only a few that matter that are encumbered.
I am testing out Plex (osxbmc) with the Myth Frontend extension currently.
The stability of this setup leaves some things to be desired (especially, coming from a TiVo background), but it is great fun to play with.
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's stop the namecalling.
The firewire boxes are a special order item in my market with a significant lead time (I guess to comply with the FCC). They don't even stock them at the local office, so 99.99999% of customers don't have them. --AND-- from what i've read, the firewire output only works for unencrypted channels in my market (so you can't record any of the premium digital cable channels).
Parent
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the only extra thing you need to be able to use your home-rolled HD DVR is an HD DVR from your cable company. Gotcha.
Parent
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:5, Funny)
Fail.
Parent
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Please reconsider (Score:4, Insightful)
MythTV is growing increasingly irrelevant
You would be wrong about that. The same jail the media conglomerates would like to keep you in confounds all DVR dev's. That's why an IR Blaster is important. It takes care of all that for you. Yeah, there's some compromises to piping in the video from the back of the cable box, but I just want to watch it at a convenient time so a little down-scaling doesn't bother me one bit.
And if HDMI becomes the standard
Most of you have only yourselves to blame for this because the vast majority are gladly buying into HDMI. VGA works good, digital-out works best. And guess what? No drm!!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling MythTV impractical and irrelevant is overly pessimistic. In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left. Just like VHS isn't dead as it is being slowly phased out over the next decade. Maybe there will be some progress made in the next few years.
As for me, I don't plan on getting digital cable anytime soon because I don't plan on getting an HD TV soon. Yeah HD is great but I'm waiting until they settle on a few things. First it was 720p, then 1080i, then 1080p for the sets. The resolutions that are recorded vary between the three and some broadcasts are just upconverted and not recorded in HD at all. For port connections, there was component, then DVI, then HDMI. I'm pretty sure that some people like my parents and grandparents have not plans on getting with the HD revolution either.
Parent
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:4, Insightful)
MythTV also works fine in the non-US parts of the world where DVB-T is pretty much standard for digital terrestrial broadcasts.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
MythTV also works fine in the non-US parts of the world where DVB-T is pretty much standard for digital terrestrial broadcasts.
Mine worked fine with my sky box too -- RS232 cable to receive what channel the ox is on, and an IR-blaster like box to change it down the second RF input.
I then tried upgrading the hard drive, and accidentally short-circuited my PSU. Doesn't work now... Mythtv will never win until it's immune from dropping a screwdriver between 12V and 0 rails while the machine's on.
Re: (Score:2)
Calling MythTV impractical and irrelevant is overly pessimistic. In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left.
Well I guess the majority of Americans must be increasingly irrelevant... :-)
Personally I've been using digital cable for six years...
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:4, Insightful)
In the digital cable, MythTV isn't very useful; however for those of us who use analog cable (which will be the majority of Americans for a while), MythTV does have some life left.
So basically you pay the cable company to get the channels you can get over the air? In my area, there's just over two dozen channels left on analog cable - the local networks, a few pbs channels, and a handful channels that nobody cares about (QVC, HSN, a couple of Spanish channels - not the big two of Univision and Telemundo, the local gov't channels, etc.). If I went OTA, I could actually get a few channels I couldn't get from cable (granted, most of those are networks from a different city, but still).
Just like VHS isn't dead as it is being slowly phased out over the next decade.
Have you been living in a cave for the last couple of years? New releases are not put out on VHS anymore. Most studios stopped completely in 2006 after a phase-out and almost all the rest have stopped since. The only thing left for VHS is home recording and films that are now completely out of print (no new VHS being produced and not released on DVD).
Personally, I'm not getting into the HD craze for the foreseeable future, either, but I'm also not stuck in the 90s.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
First it was 720p, then 1080i, then 1080p for the sets.
And given that the highest broadcast resolution is 1080i, and has been specified as such for at least a decade, do you expect this trend to continue?
For port connections, there was component, then DVI, then HDMI.
It's not as if they took away the older ones when they added the new ones.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're right. It's not as if there was some kind of mystical "High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection" system added which would screw up the picture quality if it detected that you hadn't paid enough money for your HDTV. That would be ridiculous.
Broadcast TV (Score:3, Interesting)
Why pay for TV? With the switch to digital, over-the-air TV is now probably higher quality than cable. Combine MythTV with one or two of these [pchdtv.com] and you're all set.
Digital TV (Score:4, Informative)
Digital TV doesn't need encoding. It can just write the bits that fly in from the antenna to the hard drive. It can recompress into another format if you like, but that needn't be done in real time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can use DVB-C capture cards to capture the digital encoding strait from a cable line, if the channel is not encrypted. Where I live, all of the over the air channels are broadcast digitally unencrypted over the cable line. Everything else is encrypted. I could still record the analog channels using a regular analog capture card.
MythTV has always supported live streaming over the network. Wireless might not be able to keep up, but a 100Mbps connection is way more than enough. If you want to capture
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure for the states it might be becoming irrelevant, but over here in the UK, DRM is not a problem. Freeview/freesat has everything I'd ever want to watch, and by definition, it's free to use on whatever platform you wish!
I have a few TV cards in our home server, streaming to a silent little Apple TV running mythfrontend. It works a treat!
Parent
Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score:5, Informative)
MythTV supports firewire access to cable boxes. MythTV can do both capture and channel changing via firewire. I currently have a MythTV box hooked up to a Motorola DCT-6200, and this allows me to record HD (as well as SD) channels. Having said that, some Cable companies will encrypt "premium" channels making this solution useless for those channels. However, for my needs at least, MythTV+firewire+DCT-6200 works fine. Throw in OTA HD channels (which in my location look significantly better than their cable versions due to compression in the latter) and life is good for my simple needs.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I suspect the issues and devices (cablecard etc.) you're describing are US-specific. It's not becoming irrelevant in the rest of the world (at least not for any of the reasons you mention).
I'm using MythTV with 2 DVB-C cards and decoding pay channels without trouble. I'm currently using a softcam setup with a pay card (Irdeto 2 encrypted signal), but have used official Irdeto 2 and Viaccess CAM modules with success.
I've been using MythTV for the past 4-5 years, and am generally very happy with the product a
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Now you're just being ridiculous and making up numbers. My cable bill is well under $215... not even $205. Idiot.
Re:DRM'd Base? No Thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
MythTV doesn't enforce any DRM of any kind like the broadcast flag. Anybody familiar with MythTV knows that....
Parent
It ain't news. (Score:5, Interesting)
As a proud MythTV user, this has been pretty common knowledge. Nothing in the article is new.
What make me really excited is if I could use my XBox360 as a generic frontend with it. If it could function as MythTV frontend + netflix player, it'd be perfect. It's doubtful since Microsoft has already spent so much time just getting it to play well(read not requiring WMV encoding) with an PC or SMBFS network share, which is still doable but no recorded programs or other goodies MythTV does so well.
If any MythTV Dev's are reading this, thank you so much for the hard work!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tru' dat.
I'm fine with chirping about my favorite distro, but this is not news and maybe vaguely stuff that matters. Seeing this release made me think they were getting ready to push a awesome browser player. Not simply repeating what any mythTV user already knows.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know you can do it via a XP machine not running MCE. I remember mounting file shares last fall with it, only to be annoyed at the need for WMV conversion, which meant turning to the Media Center edition running on a virtual machine with Xbox360 converter running. The fall update removed the need for the WMV conversion, but I had moved onto MythTV by then.
Correct me if I am wrong though, which is very possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the article announces an application named something like 'Mythtvplayer' that you can install and it will save you those minutes you would have spent configuring an actual mythtv frontend. Not a good trade off I think, since the player app won't let you manage your recordings.
I think it takes maybe 5 minutes to set up a second myth frontend, so I'm not sure why someone took the time to write this.
Thank you for the product (Score:3, Insightful)
XBMC + MythTV (Score:5, Interesting)
You can get a used XBox for $100. Put in a cheap hard drive. Purchase a mod chip on the cheap, or do a soft mod. Install XBMC and MythTV, and then suddenly you've got a pretty sweet setup on the cheap. I love it.
Re: (Score:2)
What does a MythTV front end get you that XBMC doesn't already do?
Re: (Score:2)
Control over DVR recordings. You basically use XBMC as your media player, app launcher, etc. XBMC can tie into MythTV as well.
As a former MythTV User (Score:4, Informative)
My recommendation? Tivo. Hands down! It doesn't have all the features and flexibility as the other units, but it's fast and responsive - from a usability perspective. And I can even download my shows to my PC.
Windows MCE was pretty nice - but after about a month, my filesystem got corruped, and I lost everything - including the 300 CDs I had ripped (manually) to the unit! The UI was a little slow.
Then came Myth. A royal pain to get running. The features and flexibility were very nice. The worst thing about it however was the music portion of it. (MythMusic). That was horible beyond believe - especialy in-contrast to the Windows MCE, which was very very nice. MythTV's UI was kind of slow and klunky as well. I do not miss it.
Then came the Comcast HD PVR. That was too great - limited functionality and channel guides were a pain. No music, no download capability. We only went through 2 or 3 of these boxes (due to dying) during our month we owned them - when we found out Tivo firmware was available.
The Comcast HD-DVR with Tivo firmware was the worst. We went through about 3 trips to the Comcast office, dead units, 3 or 4 technician house-calls. Lost show, etc. They eventually came out with a version of firmware which at least stablized the box. It's not too bad now - but a bit clunky - not as fast and responsive. The firmware is still kind of screwed-up - gives you the wrong sounds when clicking through things - shows disappear sometimes - a few unit freezes, etc. No music - at least not our - just the crappy Comcast music channels. Oh yea, and whatever you do - don't hit the "on-demand" button - 'cause that'll just ruin your whole evening.
So for the few things we watch in HD, we use the Comcast HD-PVR with Tivo - reluctantly.
For everything else - all the reruns, and bulk of stuff we record - and music - It's all still the Tivo Series-2. It works. It's fast. It's reliable. It's responsive. It does what I want it to when I hit a button. We've never lost a show. We're on our original unit after many many years. It's simple and streightforward. I don't want to do "development" at night - I just want to press a button and watch TV. Tivo does that, and well.
The only realy upside to MythTV was that it was free...but not anymore!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:As a former MythTV User (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:As a former MythTV User (Score:4, Informative)
I rip on Microsoft as much as the next person, but the people who made Windows Media Center did a really stand-up job and deserve credit for getting right the things Tivo fucks up (and continues to fuck up, years later).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But by the same token - I don't decide when my grass gets cut - or how low - my landscapers do.
I don't decide what cleanser my toilet gets cleaned with, my cleaning people do
When any of these become unsatisfactory, I'll get rid of them for something else.
MythTV may be good for some people - but I was tired of sitting down on the couch in front of the TV after a long day of work, to debug why something wasn't working r
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I get a call about if from my Wife, and have to SSH in from work to re-launch the Myth front-end? It was really cool that I could do this - but quite unfortunate that I had to.
I hooked into the ACPI power button routines to kill/restart the X server when mythtv hung up. The backend was it's own process outside of X, so it continued to run fine when this was done.
So, all non-technical wife-types had to do when mythTV hung was to press the power button and it would take care of itself. But to be fair, by the
small format pc for myth? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to put together a small format PC for this sort of thing. Alas, I can't use a cheap tower, it needs to be one of those small form factors that can fit in an entertainment center. I'd like to spend as little as possible but it seems like I could easily price myself into the $500 range putting one of these together. Any good guides out there?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Any good guides out there?
Good HTPC guides usually aren't updated as often as the "general" system guides (bugdet, midrange, high end) and they usually aren't "cheap," but they can have useful info about what hardware to consider.
Since the HTPC guides aren't very cheap or up-to-date, I also recommend Tech Report's and Ar
Windows Media Extender? (Score:2, Interesting)
So in other words, this works as a Windows Media Extender app, just with a different name because we all hate Windows. XBox and PS3 could care less what is actually serving the media. I use TVersity [tversity.com] myself. The concept of reencoding your videos using FlashVideo or some other video format to allow viewing from a webbrowser (on the iPhone, Wii, etc), is also nothing new.
However, I have no clue who was first, TVersity, MythTV, Nero, or Microsoft, but they all do pretty much the same thing. I just had a bit bet
I like my Direct TV HD DVR (Score:4, Informative)
a guide that fills the screen unlike the comcrap guild that looks stuck in SD with ads on each page.
Free HDMI cable
OPTICAL and COAXIAL audio
E-sata
RF and IR remote
E-net
DIRECTV on Demand
usb for the OTA tuner add on.
on line Recording with out having to run a sever.
and the GUI looks a lot like the TIVO comcast gui that comcast shows off on there web page.
I have the box in a cabinet under the TV and the remote works fine.
Level of effort / cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
How well does myth now deal with HD on cable providers, like comcast?
Rather than fight the system, and spend the money on tuners, backend hardware, etc, I just got comcast's HDDVR. It works well enough (the only way I can even attempt to watch the few shows I'm interested in viewing on my schedule .. otherwise the cost of cable isn't worth it).
I have my house wired with audio/video/cat5 jacks in each room. So, I really don't need to spend the money on front end systems in each of those rooms. IR receiver to IR transmitter over cat 5 to control the DVR. S-video out on the DVR downsamples to a regular TV (I'm not about to buy a bunch of flat panels while my old sets work just fine in the basement, bedroom, etc), so I can watch DVR stuff anywhere in the house, even stuff recorded on high-def channels.
The disadvantage with my setup is every room in the house can only watch one thing at a time (from the dvr...cable is fine, of course). Which is fine for me. But...if I wanted to I could connect video or cat5 to any number of sources in the future via the patch panels in the basement.
Cost was wiring (which I wanted to do for whole house audio for my soundbridge anyway), and a $50 distribution amp from radio shack. And I got to use all of my old equipment and not have to buy or build anything for a media server or multiple front ends (which have the requirement of being *silent*).
It'd be nice to have a system where I could save and organize things indefinitely, but really, I have other ways of doing some of that and it just doesn't seem like the effort to me, when the scientific atlanta box is "good enough" IOW, the consumer appliances have somewhat caught up, with the advantage of supporting HDTV and Digital channels with no effort and no tricks with IR and stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have *any* links to back that up? I did the requisite googling and found *nothing*.
Re:Slashvertisement? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent