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.

Well, is it a modified MythTV

[DarkkOne]

I mean admittadly, it's a problem that they don't clearly mention and link to MythTV's webpage or whatever, but if it's an unmodified binary built from source readily available, wouldn't they just need to point to it?

A$1,1799 - Ouch

[deniable]

Call me cheap, but this better do a lot for that much.

Atomic

[haRDon]

Atomic Magazine [atomicmpc.com.au] this month had a cover CD featuring a modified Knoppix distro for MythTV. Haven't checked it out yet, but looks quite interesting.

I find SageTV to be even better

[buddydawgofdavis]

I no longer use my old Series 1 tivo. The hacks are nice, but with something based on a PC, the sky's the limit.

Currently, I'm using SageTV [www.sage.tv] It's a PC based DVR software package. With it, I can currently;

- Record two standard def stations, and a high def station at the same time while watching a fourth video of any type. (Obviously, this requires having two tuners and an HDTV tuner.)
- Record standard TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-1, or just about any other format. This makes it easier to make VCDs, DVDs, or just play the program back on a standard PC.
- Playback using Dscalar to deinterlace the video.
- Play DVDs
- Play DivX
- Record shows as favorites (just like season passes) or let SageTV record things based on my past viewing habits (much like tivo's suggestions only I don't have to bother with thumbs up and down buttons)
- Do all of the above with an integrated schedule, which is free. No need to pay a monthly fee.
- Play and manage my MP3 library (I think you can do ogg, ape, etc. with some tweaks to the config)
- Stream video and audio to another PC over my LAN.

I'm sure I'm missing much more. This thing does way more than any tivo, even a hacked tivo, and it's constantly being expanded. It surpasses TiVo and ReplyTV in every way. I've even found it to be more flexible than MythTV and Showstopper (though they do have a few benefits in some areas.)

Re:For God's sake

[TheTray]

In response to a) they are being very shady about mentioning that it is mythtv. As for b) again I see shades of gray. I have been following this for a while now as I am on the mythtv users mailing list. They may or may not be contributing at all thus no OSS programmer getting paid. They may be in the legal clear with a one liner at the end of the manual but to me they should be more upfront and if possible(ie not if their chapter 11) donate to mythtv for the betterment of the project.

Re:After seeing the prices they are asking,

[pair-a-noyd]

Still.
That's freaking HIGH for a PC with Linux on it...

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

[PerryMason]

OK, so they are planning to be GPL compliant.

Next question. Where are they scraping the tv guide data from? Currently the only tvgrab_au that I know of is scraping from yahoo without any permission to do so. What happens when yahoo realise this and do something about preventing it?

Suddenly you've got a PVR box that cost AU$2,000 with no guide data to program from. I presume that the market for these things is someone who can't setup their own MythTV box and so couldn't hookup a new tvgrab_au. Do they send out a whole new distro, do they setup the box to give themselves remote access so they can go and fix the things? Either way, its going to be a nightmare supporting them, especially if you sell a bunch of the boxes. (Not to mention the fun of defending yourself against consumers who don't having a working PVR (they were sold a PVR, not a computer) and against the Australian content providers who are on the verge of bringing out their own PVR hardware and who really aren't too keen on copyright breaches (well thats the grounds by which they'll crush the company by keeping them in litigation for the next 10 years)

I was honestly considering building and selling home-brew MythTV boxes like these (here in Australia) but MythTV is just too unstable/changing to put it in the hands of the complete novice. I envisage one or more of the following things happening;
1) They sell a few of them and the spend countless hours (and dollars) supporting them and then go bankrupt slowly.
2) Sell a stack of them and go bankrupt quickly when they can't support their userbase.
3) Get tied up in litigation and go bankrupt slowly.

Re:Christ people

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people that are whining about a company selling the GPLed MythTV code (and complying with the GPL, which D1 appears to be doing) are forum/mailing list monkeys that don't understand why someone would give the result of their hard work away for free. One guy even called D1 sleazy for not giving money to the MythTV project.

The actual MythTV developers, of course, have absolutely no problem with D1's actions and are only saying that they would gladly accept donations from the company.

Re:Atomic

[squaretorus]

This seems like an idea that the UK publishing industry is missing a trick with.

Publish a rather mediocre low cost of production Linux / OS / general computer magazine but put high quality recent Knoppix etc... on the cover disk to save people downloads / ordering a 3 CD (which you never get round to doing).

Get a reputation for bundling nice things and I'd subscribe for 30-40 a year with no troubles. GIve me a few well written articles, throw a few quid at some OSS dev teams from time to time and the fluffiness gets even better.

How many people continued to buy Computer Shopper and the like for the 3 or 4 pages which were actually an interesting read long after the rest of the magazine went to shit??

Emap - if you steal this idea I'll be quite pleased!

Re:1800 austalian dollars

[NailedSaviour]

"That's 1,300 US dollars. Lets just say that it isn't ever going to be a competitor to Tivo."

Which, unfortunately, doesn't really address the issue as TiVo (or any other DVR) is not available in Australia. Even Microsofts' WME is not available here yet. Personally I reckon there is a market for this device and as soon as I manage to collect enough lunch money to order one I am going to.

Considering....

[the_argent]

That the creator of Myth TV is currently out of work, [mythtv.org] I would like to see some type of money go to him from this.

I'd buy this *if*...

[slim]

I keep starting speccing up a mini-itx based PVR, but I always give up because the cost racks up, and that combined with the configuration effort makes sticking with TiVo seem very attractive.

Before I bought one of these I would need:

1. Some assurance that the system will be whisper quiet (a friend recently put a new drive in his TiVo, and even the noise from that is now irritating)
   
2. A case the same width as my other A/V gear
   
3. A case-mounted alphanumeric display, so I can navigate MP3s without turning on the TV
   
4. The option of at least 2 DVB receivers
   

1 and 3 are the ones I'm not confident I'd be able to cheaply and easily do on a homebrew box.

How will they update it?

[drewhearle]

Since MythTV is still in heavy development (currently version 0.14), how are they planning to keep users up to date? I use MythTV on a dedicated box at home, and while it's reasonably solid, every now and then Myth segfaults dropping me to a console or KDE desktop. The average PVR user isn't going to like that.

Maybe there's a "watchdog" on the Myth system that reboots the system if Myth dies. The user won't want to wait for the system to reboot every time that they fast forward too quickly (happens on mine) or 'activate' some other bug.

Take the MediaMVP [hauppauge.com] by Hauppauge. It's a Linux-based device designed for use by the "average user". How do they keep it up to date? Well, very little OS or software is on the unit itself. It netboots off a server you run on one of your PCs. The server (Windows app) checks for updates from Hauppauge's site, and when it gets one, it just loads it to the MediaMVP the next time it boots.

Obviously, you wouldn't want to require every user to have a LAN connection to an always-on home computer for net booting (or would you?). Besides, the whole Linux/Myth suite (remember, we need X too) would be a pretty hefty network transfer. With a "closed" device like this one, it'll be hard for users to install bugfixes, patch security holes, etc. etc. without being experienced in Linux (think power user instead of grandma).
I think the Home Media Center/re is going to need some sort of update method for both Myth and Linux. One little annoying bug would drive me crazy if there was nothing I could do about it.

Re:Speaking of MythTV...

[FireFury03]

Many MythTV users have asked the listings providers to provide a pay service to get the listings in a sensible format instead of site scraping - the listings providers just don't want to know about it.

XMLTV is also a rapidly developing project - as the listings providers change the format of their websites, xmltv changes to scrape them.

You seem to have forgotten that there is noone for the listings providers to complain to - they can't complain to the Myth or XMLTV developers (they haven't done anything wrong). Admittedly they could complain to the end users, but that seems unfeasable since the end users aren't republishing the copyrighted data, they're just using it for themselves.

Personally, I would pay for decent quality listings in a sane format if there was the option. The other possibility is to embed banner adverts in the XML - I for one wouldn't complain about a banner advert being displayed on the top of my EPG to help pay for the listings I'm using.

Re:Atomic

[linuxpoweredtrekkie]

Before I had adsl i would regularly buy linux format

http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/ [linuxformat.co.uk]

which regularly had linux distros bundled, and also all latest versions of kde, gnome, gimp etc.

Articles were very good as well, they did charge about 6 though.

I think that PCplus also bundle linux distros like mandrake and knoppix, however the magazine itself tends to be aimed more at novices

Re:For God's sake

[mdielmann]

This is also my beef with the GNU/Linux vs. Linux debate. Nothing in the GPL (that I've heard of) requires that I mention any name, let alone GNU. If I want to make a dstro of Linux and call it AssHat OS, there's nothing in the license to stop me.

Ths result? I call the distro whatever the creator calls it. It's their choice, after all.

Re:I find SageTV to be even better

[Jagasian]

Actually SageTV costs more than $60, because it runs on Windows... which costs about $140... so SageTV costs $200 while MythTV costs $0.

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

[zenyu]

The way that XMLTV "scrapes" the US TV listing data is horrifyingly inefficient. I know, as a friend is associated with the web site that they scrape. So each MythTV user generates hundreds of web page hits a day keeping updated. They're working to implement an XML (ICE) based listing delivery service that could give each user their data in a single transaction, with no worries of breaking the feed if the web site changes it's layout.

There was a first patch sent to the MythTV-dev mailing list to use the zap2it XML interface a couple days ago. Using it also means you must register with zap2it so they can collect a little bit of demographic data. This doesn't bother me as I've already registered to make the HDTV listings available and make the current scraping process more efficient. And this data doesn't include what you've watched, just tells them who is interested in the service.

If I were developing a commercial MythTV based system I would negotiate with zap2it and other such providers for the data to be hosted on my own server. Which is what this australian company has done.

Missing the point?!

[sandbenders]

I think a lot of people are missing the point with this..... For Linux fans, even part-timers like myself, EVERY PRODUCT like this is a victory. This is a cool product, a cool idea, and a nice tip-o-the hat to the MythTV team- someone thinks their product is ready for prime time.

I know licensing is important, but it seems to me that we need to support first and ask questions later. Every company that publishes a viable linux-based app or hardware device pushes us closer to true choice in the OS market. I'm not suggesting that we be blind about it, but when I read the comments for this article, the first dozen are arguments about licensing, which is kinda sad. Not one well-moderated comment in support of the product. Are we all on the same team here, or what? I think we need to get better at sticking together.