PVR's Head-to-Head: MythTV vs. Microsoft MCE 327
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.'"
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.
TiVo anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The barbarians have won (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: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?
Re:Myth install (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
But I still have to say: just what I expect of home entertainment systems; easy to use, looks good, useful features and good vendor support.
This is exactly why my private laptop is a Macintosh. Yeah, sometimes I truly love playing with Linux. But at home, most of the time I want that things just work. Given the MS's reputation I truly hate to say this, but if this is what MCE 2004 really is, then I'm a potential customer -- supposing it has the features that somehow satisfy my needs.
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: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...
Proof? (Score:2, Insightful)
So their review, which is nothing more than an opinion about these products, constitutes a proof? Their analysis didn't prove jack, except for the fact that Anandtech thinks a little highly of itself.
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
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...
And there's also... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, really... have you looked [mythtv.org] at the documentation? And that's just about the PRE-REQUISITES!
Geeze!
I looked at that about a year ago.. balked, and looked for an easier option... which I found in MyHTPC... which was a free product (still is), but has been supersceded by the pay-for product called Meedio [meedio.com]. Although you can still get your hands on MyHTPC here [meedio.com].
Let's see... what do you have to do there?
* Boot Windows X (I haven't checked how far back it works, but 2000 and XP are fine)
* Run Setup
* Use the point and click configure
Um... you're done.
Gee, that was tough.
Again I say: It's all well and good for there to be these great things out there for Linux, and they're free and wonderfully Open Sourced etc... gotta love that... but as long as the instructions for just getting the thing running are many, many pages long, and expect you to have to run off and do all sorts of other dependancy installs etc... I'm sticking with Windows and free products that have a 'setup.exe' thanks.