A Ready-Made MythTV Set-Top Box in Australia

Anonymous Coward writes "Australian Personal Computer magazine published a review of a new all-in-one set-top-box based on linux. A quick analysis of the device yields some cheats/hacks that not only allow you to enable the advertisment skipping feature they disabled, but could allow system compromise. The system also runs a GPL version of MythTV - anyone else see any licensing issues?" Only if they don't follow the GPL.

Re:looking

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the GPL state "upon request"?

Christ people

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get your panties in a twist every time someone is making money with a method that involves the GPL. Instead of asking the dumbass question "anyone else see any licensing issues?", do some research yourself for fuck's sake.

Why the lousy shape?

[justMichael]

When are they going to realize that if I am going to buy something meant to go into my home theater, it needs to fit in. That means is should be ~19" x 2-5" not some silly ass cube, it looks like a bookshelf unit.

So many drinking haterade !

[oddbudman]

Its amusing how many of your cry about how Linux is still lacking desktop penetration, yet you are quick to run anybody down using it to make a product for PROFIT (Perish the thought!). Lay down your purism, pour your haterade down the drain and sit back and enjoy the fact that hardly anybody will buy that overpriced box.. Would you all rather it was running windows? I would! I wish it was running on window ME with 32 megs of ram for the power Tivo user. Yeh baby. Some nice pointed out specs on the site crediting those who have paved their way (ie Redhat etc) might be good though.

Re:First

[gabebear]

Any GPLed software can be taken and totally rebraded, as long as you are re-brading it with something you own the copyrights to and then re-releasing it under the GPL

The GPL doesn't give any protection from getting ripped off(while still re-releases are under the GPL), and forbids authors from adding stipulations to the licence that would let you stop people from ripping you off.

How do you think people fork under a different name?

Re:GPL Compliance

[Jameth]

Not only is it compliance, it's a damn good way around it. Even if they go under, if you have a right to the source, you DO have the source. If not, it's your own damn fault.

Re:A$1,1799 - Ouch

[darxpryte]

You're missing a very important part of the equation. I'm not sure if you've ever gone out and set up mythtv on your own but depending on your skillset it's not a walk in the park.

In other words they're saving most users a hell of a lot of time and stress by providing this all prepackaged and set up.This skips the pain of setting up linux, xwindows, alsa, xine, vid card drivers, dealing with kernel compiles (depending on your distro), lirc config files, xine config files, xine lirc config files, mysql database setup, and a lot of other things I'm probably forgetting. Not to mention the hours spent to figure out how to do it all and what goes where. If I wasn't such a geek and enjoyed this kind of torture I'd definately think an extra few hundred dollars was worth it.

Re:And The First Show Broadcast Will Be...

[Anonymous Coward]

How come EVERY SECOND POST on /. now is about some boring Australian shit? It wouldn't be so bad if any of the stories were relevant or vaguely interesting, but they aren't...they always seem like a desperately-biased editor's barrel-scrapings.

Slashdot is a global news site.

If you are going to whinge, then complain about the fact that a large proportion of stories are US-biased "barrel-scrapings" as well. Since when was this slashdot.org.us?

.org is an international TLD.

Re:looking

[mcbridematt]

That whoever decided to submit this story hasn't done enough research re GPL compliance.

Speaking of MythTV...

[spectecjr]

Given that Grid-layouts of TV times are patented, and the TV scheduling data which xmltv (the MythTV backend screen scraper) obtains for MythTV are copyrighted by Tribune, and it's therefore most likely illegal to use that data in this manner... ... well, just how long is MythTV going to last?

There's a reason you have to buy a subscription for a TiVo or a ReplayTV - because that guide data costs money, and the guide display patent royalties need to be paid.

I can't see MythTV surviving too long if Tribune start complaining - or TiVo or ReplayTV decide to push Tribune to complain about the use of the guide data for free.

Just a thought...

Re:After seeing the prices they are asking,

[spronk]

You're making the assumption that most folks are computer/Linux literate. Myth is easy to use and stable (given the right hardware) once you get it up and running. Lots of people who wouldn't even know where to begin to install Linux can easily use MythTV. Those that try installing Linux for the first time, or setting up Myth for the first time end up missing some of the finer points as well. The amount of time it takes to install Linux + MythTV + *properly* configure X for TV out + tweak the OS/Myth for optimal performance + yadda yadda yadda adds up REALLY fast. I know for a fact that I've spent FAR more than $500 worth of my time (based on my hourly rate) getting my Myth machine just right.

Re:They posted to the Myth list today...

[Dausha]

Currently the only tvgrab_au that I know of is scraping from yahoo without any permission to do so. What happens when yahoo (sic) realise this and do something about preventing it?

We call that a partnership. The company should proactively seek Yahoo! permission for the scrape. They would tell Yahoo! that the TV guide derived from a Yahoo! scrape would also have the Yahoo! logo in the lower-right corner. This gives Yahoo! free advertising which should assuage their anger in the 'unauthorized' scrape.

The only thing I see

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a pattern of posting on ./:
"The system also runs a GPL version of MythTV - anyone else see any licensing issues?"

These are BIASED reporting tactics.

Re:I've been waiting for this...

[laird]

"MythTV gives the source code away for free (GPL) - why should anybody who uses it any way automatically be obliged to contribute back to it?"

I didn't say that they _had_ to contribute to the project. Clearly, as long as they abide by the terms of the license they aren't compelled to do more. I said that I hoped that they had the integrity and brains to do more than they're absolutely required to do.

i say "integrity" because the core of their product is MythTV, so you'd think that they'd want to do more than simply ship MythTV -- you'd think they'd want to work to make it better as a way of "paying back" for all of the work that MythTV developers have done.

And I say "brains" because participating actively in the project would earn them credibility in the community that would be cheap PR and sales compared to a traditional marketing campaign.

I agree that they're likely a very small company with limited resources -- that's what I meant by "on the low end of the food chain".

"Some of you open source zealots come across as totally paranoid whiny control freaks. There's absolutely no pleasing you."

That seems a bit extreme, given that you don't know me, or what I advocate (aside from misreading my post). In fact, I actually said that what this company is doing was good ("saves some time configuring hardware and software") but that I hoped that other vendors would step in that would add a bit more value (custom hardware more suitale for the A/V component market, improve the software).

I should know better than to respond to an AC...

Branding

[Alan Cox]

Absolutely - look at "Java Desktop" (aka 'Linux', 'Gnome') for an example. Many projects go as far as to ask that you rename any forks to avoid confusion.

At the end of the day these guys are not selling MythTV. They are selling an appliance. It happens to run MythTV and come with an ISO including the sources (now..), but to most users its a box that records tv programs.

Re:A$1,1799 - Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

> You're missing a very important part of the
> equation. I'm not sure if you've ever gone out and
> set up mythtv on your own but depending on your
> skillset it's not a walk in the park.

I've never understood why VIA just doesn't release a live-cd distro for their mini-itx Eden line of boards. I mean, once you've settled on a widely available card and have a reasonably priced motherboard/processor that doesn't required a fan to cool, the on choice left is what type of case and how much memory/hd you want.

Users/geeks would flock to it and VIA would make a mint. They're subsidizing the mini-itx.com site; why not take it a step further... and if they didn't like the linux route, they could always license that BIOS that has the DVR functionality built in.

BTW, we're having a hard time getting mini-itx boards in Japan at the moment.... happened after a couple of school districts placed *large* orders for sub $350 shoe-box systems for their students.

Re:Christ people

[JWW]

On the Myth tv users mailing list there are some people who researched this. Their conclusions were that the code is indeed on the box and on the iso disks. Most of the source files still had myth somewhere in the name.

An interesting note from the mailing list is the realization that if these people make any interesting modifications, it can be rolled back into the main myth project.

earning money sounds evil

[Teddy Caddy]

Nailer, you make a great point. There is a general attitude from a lot of people that anything you do to make a profit is evil. And we should be ashamed for anything we do for profitability. Once anything "goes corporate", it is no good. Yeah, I will be the first to admit that there are some evil people working in corporations. Money makes people do bad things. I think we all know that. But most of us live in a capitalistic, free market economy. Well, we all gotta live and support oursevles/families. Would you rather everyone be lazy and not try to work? There is nothing wrong with earning an honest buck. This company is not going to become the next M$ by selling MythTV boxes. Working hard and adding value are good things. Customers reward this by buying your product. Making the PVR installation easier is a value-added benefit. And aren't we all supposed to make sure we like our careers? I mean, you must like what you do to be happy at work. Well, I think the only reason we read slashdot is because we like to. And we use OSS because we like to. Therefore, wouldn't all of us be happy with careers related to OSS? So maybe the Australian PVR company isn't perfect, but don't they deserve a little recognition and awe?

Re:Hack Away Folks

[Chris Burke]

If anyone is dumb enough to conenct one of these to the net and run a telnet/ssh daemon that allows logging in as root, then yeah, they're pretty hosed.

Aside from that, how does having the root password help? Someone would have to gain access to the system as a normal user in the first place, which would still let them run a spam relay.

There was a "hack the OpenBSD box"-type contest some time ago, and the webserver on port 80 displayed the root password for all to see. As people quickly found out, that didn't really do any potential hacker a lot of good.

Granted, it'd be better for security if they didn't publish it, but in general you don't want unauthorized people gaining any access to the system in the first place.