MythTV Links Up with Program Guide Provider 277
Neil Campbell writes "As a long-time MythTV user, I found this announcement to be quite a surprise. A company by the name of TechnoVera has partnered with the founders of MythTV on an interesting project: A pay service for electronic program guide information rivaling that of Microsoft's Media Center. No more Zap2It surveys to continue using their free albeit basic service. The most important part of this is the fact that revenues from the service will be used to fund Open Source development; most notably MythTV. Registered Users will even have the opportunity to vote on feature enhancements that they would like to be incorporated into MythTV. I'm sure there will be some initial trepidation from the Linux community, but overall I think this should be considered progress. More attention and money for MythTV will result in a better product."
US only I am afraid (Score:5, Informative)
Damn, I would be willing to pay for a decent service in the UK. Oh well, time will tell...
What is wrong with the UK Radio Times grabber (Score:2, Informative)
I'm using this quite happily (it was a pain to set up I must admit, but now its working, I have no gripes).
Personally, even if a UK pay service became available, I'd stick with the free RT service, as it's fine for what I need.
Re:What is wrong with the UK Radio Times grabber (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd pay for a reasonably-priced UK service, just for the semi-guarantee that it's there to stay if nothing
Radio Times (Score:5, Informative)
Do you HAVE to use the pay service? (Score:2)
I don't want to pay a monthly fee....I hated that with Tivo...did the lifetime thing on that. One of the main things that was appealing about Myth...was the 'free' guide service...
I didn't see anything in the article or on the MythTV website saying if you'd have a choice where you got your guide information.
Re:US only I am afraid (Score:2)
It's very rough around the edges (as I got tied up with work, and couldn't continue to work on it :( ), but it works decently enough, although the provided listings are occasionally wrong. Here's a screenie [etotheipiplusone.com].
Re:US only I am afraid (Score:2)
Re:US only I am afraid (Score:2, Funny)
Re:US only I am afraid (Score:3, Funny)
I hope you had the decency to not bill her for those five minutes...
--
It' called incest Arlene, and it's against the law.
Re:US only I am afraid (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you really read the FAQ?
Is LxMSuite available outside the USA?
TV listing information is currently limited to the USA. If there is enough demand for listing information outside of North America, we can make DataDirect::TV data available to European users.
If you brush it off and don't contact them how would they know there is Demand?
Re:US only I am afraid (Score:3, Funny)
Of course not. This is slashdot. You can assume I haven't even read the article. You'd be pushing your luck if you think I even read the summary. In fact, you shouldn't even assume I have completely read and understood the title, which of course is "MythTV links up with p0rn provider" isn't it?
Definitely a good idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Old (but very decent) PC hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper... (save for older ram.. but ddr is getting old too) So, for the enthusiast, MythTV just became a lot better..
If the price is right, this could definitely work out.
Nice but Myth needed improvement in other places (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta disagree. Myth is nice but is still FAR lacking in many ways - UI and ease of development in particular (speaking from some experience).
The UI alone is a mess; examples: menus for eg setup descend and descend with zero context; similar settings stored all over the palce (see commercial flagging and transcoding); recordings organized by show but then loop endlessly; general ugliness (skins can only do so much).
Fix it yourself? See my second gripe.
I like Myth, but it has many warts, and missing program guide data is not one of them. ymmv.
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:5, Informative)
I find Myth pretty feature-rich, and it certainly seems to screw up and forget to record stuff less frequently than the Sky+ boxes some of my friends have.
You might be right about the UI to some extant - it's mostly ok for the techie but probably not so suitable for the general public (but then are the general public going to build their own Myth box or just buy one of the commercial PVRs?).
I think the main problem with the UI from my point of view is the recording priorities stuff - I don't like having to juggle integer priorities for all my programs and would prefer to just see a list of shows ordered by priority and be able to move a show up and down the list.
There is also some inconsistency with key bindings too - most of the UI looks in the key bindings database to find out which key is "select", whcih is "play", etc. However, some parts of the UI make assumptions instead - i.e. expecting Enter to be "select". But that's reasonably minor and probably doesn't affect most people.
I've not really done any UI development for Myth (just added a few controls to some of the setup screens...), although I did write some of the back end code (A/V synchronisation routines, etc) and can't say it was that hard to implement, despite not really being a C++ coder - I usually just use C so there was a slight learning curve there.
I like Myth, but it has many warts, and missing program guide data is not one of them.
I use the RadioTimes listings and I have to say that everything has got a *lot* better since RT started providing machine readable listings - the site scraper used to take hours and every so often they'd change something that broke it. There is still the occasional problem that programmes which are rerun several times during the 2 week period you get listings for sometimes don't have matching descriptions or subtitles so you get 2 recordings but for the most part it's not bad. Of course I'd like radio listings too (used to get them from the scraper but they don't provide machine readable radio listings).
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:3, Informative)
There are no CAMs available for decoding Sky channels, so you have to use a normal Sky box to decode to analogue and then reencode to MPEG4 instead of just using a DVB-S card to suck the MPEG2 data straight off the satellite dish. This sucks but I don't think Ofcom (or whoever) is likely to force Sky to sell a CAM, which gives Sky+ a bit of an advantage.
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:2)
This is my biggest gripe with MythTV, and I disagree that it's reasonably minor: UI inconsistency is really bad. Having up-arrow mean something on one page and a different thing on a
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think this is down to a choice my Isaac but simply down to the ad-hoc nature with which FOSS projects such as Myth are developed. Different bits come from different people and so consistency can be limited. What they actually need is a "UI guru" or a organised team of UI people to sanitise the UI and new elements as they are implemented, however that involves
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:2)
No excuse at all. (Score:2)
You have the source code so change it! Really this is what drives me nuts is some ne will write about how a FOSS program does this little thing or that little thing wrong but will do nothing to change it.
Re:No excuse at all. (Score:3, Funny)
It's great that OSS lets people fix things like this, but it should also let people slap bad programmers in the face. "You put in this menu and didn't use the right key binding, slap! No co
Re:No excuse at all. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey you get what you pay for. He wrote it for himself so he must like it.
If you do not like it.
1. Help him make it better.
2. Don't use it.
3. PAY him to make the change.
That is what gets me. You never gave him a cookie you are a free loader. If you do not like you have no right to do anything.
I had a problem with
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:2)
Cheers
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:2)
That said, the reason the latest Myth release was so close to the last one is so Isaac could 'get it out the door'. The plan, so far as I understand it, is to revamp the entire UI for the next release.
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:2)
And getting it ALL working at once is a bitch!!
I've been struggling for about 5 months now, to get my PVR250, Audigy card...to work with Myth, and produce SOUND with video.
I can play .flac files off the harddrive through myth..sound card is just great. But, when I record video through the PVR card...get good picture...but, no sound at all....and even with the
Re:Nice but Myth needed improvement in other place (Score:3, Insightful)
(For those unfamiliar with Edje, it is the UI library used in E17 and EFL-based applications like Entrance.)
Perhaps Myth could use some alternative frontends (Score:3, Informative)
You bring up an interesting point. Here and elsewhere, I haven't really seen anyone defend Myth's UI. Based on replies it looks like improving some of the UI is a priority for the next release. But as we can see, users (and developers willing to spend time) have different preferences.
The real interesting thing is that a while back Myth split the 'front end' and 'back end' into distinct components. I believe the driving motivatio
Re:Definitely a good idea. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Definitely a good idea. (Score:2)
Then you didn't read hard enough. The LxM Suite support is not a fork. It is an accepted patch in the main CVS head. This release is a point release of the release trunk + patches from cvs, not a fork from it.
Based on the announcement, I'm not certain why everyone's waving flags and saying that Zap2It labs is going away.
Me either. It's not.
if one of the major developers says that they're not involved in it much and: "If it's busted, blame him (Jarod Wilson), not me. =)", I
Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Doomed to fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
2. It is a subscription.
3. Only MythTV users will use this.
As far as I know, there are no retail systems based on MthyTV that would provide this service in some kind of nice package like Tivo or something. So there is no market presence (yet). So they have to rely on GNU/Linux nerds for income. This is a big problem. GNU/Linux nerds are notoriously cheap. And they hate subscriptions. Failure is immenent, I'm afraid.
Re:Doomed to fail. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doomed to fail. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doomed to fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More attention and money for MythTV will result (Score:2)
No problem with service but $5 a month is too high (Score:3, Interesting)
considering Yahoo music service is at $5 / month.
I think $12 per year would be more reasonable,
also considering free alternatives exists (although
they might not work as well).
Re:No problem with service but $5 a month is too h (Score:3, Insightful)
although they might not work as well
Exactly the reson why $5 a month sounds very reasonable.
Re:No problem with service but $5 a month is too h (Score:2)
Re:six or half-dozen ? (Score:2)
guide 60 == 60 = csv file with words in it
That looks more like the point I think he was trying to make.
Re:$5/month adds up. Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Media Center Program Guide (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Media Center Program Guide (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Media Center Program Guide (Score:2)
I had always wondered how Media Center pays for their program guide data.
Are you kidding? I bought my PVR setup including free programming guides for about the same cost as MS Windows Media Center Edition. They should be able to pay for the programming a dozen times over just with the huge margins they are collecting on media center.
Re:Media Center Program Guide (Score:2)
I ran mythTV for about 8 months and there were things that I really liked about it (powerful integrated ripping tools, no DRM to be found, completely extensible) and things I really hated about it (inconsistant UI, occasional crashes, having to tweak the hell out of vid drivers to get decent PQ).
In the end I got fed up after being called into the living room to "fix the TV" one too many times by my gf after X crashed out on my myth box.
I'm now on MCE 2005 an
Re:Media Center Program Guide (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is pretty much why I use MythTV. Oh and the fact that I can do what I want with my media, and I can watch HDTV using a Celeron 2.5ghz instead of a P4 3ghz with HT, and I don't have to pay $1200 for a Myth machine the list goes on and on...
That said, I think it's really cool that MythTV will be getting a more fully featured program guide.
Yeah I'd say you're astroturfing. Myth has had the exact same data data as MCE for free for quite some time no
OT: Monopolist (Score:2)
Still an option? (Score:2)
Does anyone know if, in adding support for this program service, they have *removed* support for the free zap2it service? Because I dont *want* to give anyone my credit card to automatically bill me monthly, Id be much happier with whatever hoops zap2it wants for the no-money-involved option, and I would only be interested in a basic data source, I dont need whatever extras the paid service has.
Re:Still an option? (Score:5, Informative)
You should be aware... (Score:5, Informative)
If you pay for what is already being sent into your house for free, what does that say about you?
"I can't code?"
Look at http://www.atsc.org/ [atsc.org] for free specs.
Re:You should be aware... (Score:2, Informative)
If you pay for what is already being sent into your house for free, what does that say about you?
That guide information you speak of doesn't even come close to providing enough info to reliable schedule recordings let alone provide all of the other usefull information for bells and whistles like new eiposde only recording, or looking up shows to watch by genre etc.
Oh and even if the crappy data was enough for y
Re:You should be aware... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you pay for what is already being sent into your house for free, what does that say about you?
"I can't code?"
How about "I have a life"?
Excellent news (Score:4, Interesting)
I've just got my first mythtv system working 2 days ago and I'm happy as larry. The advert detection is working very well. Being able to pause a live show is great. The program guide and recording scheduling functionalitys make choosing what you want to watch easy. I find its best to record stuff you want to watch because the advert detection is so good. It is possible to do advert detection during recording. There are performance constraints of course. Another nice function is slowing down or speeding up playback without altering the pitch of the audio. When you watch Attack of the Clones you can speed up through some of the crappy stilted dialogue and slow down in some of the excellent action scenes!
It's a bit of a bitch to setup the whole system and it does take quite a lot of hardware resource but the results are so good that I really think this thing is going to attract a wider and wider audience. It's not just the TV....various plugins provide gaming, music, weather information, news, dvd playing, movie playing, photo viewing and importing. Altogether it makes an excellent entertainment centre in any living room.
I have an Athlon-XP 2.4 with 640Mb RAM, a generic SAA7134 (LifeView 3000) tuner which does no hardware mpeg encoding. Its got an Nvidia GeForce FX5500 graphics card with a Tv-out connected to my
Re:Excellent news (Score:5, Informative)
My 1.2GHz machine uses 10-15% CPU encoding/recording one channel and, at the same time, playing something previously recorded at 1366x768 (with ads removed of course
Also, unless you have done some significant work around dealing with heat, you have a pretty noisy machine in your living room. Ick.
If anyone starts this type of project, get a low spec and very quiet machine, such as one based on an EPIA MII10000 (1.0GHz) [viavpsd.com] or fanless Eden600 [via.com.tw]. Add a PVR-350 [hauppauge.com] and a *quiet*/fast/big disk [theregister.co.uk] (I have 550GB), and you are away.
Oh, and use KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv] for a quick and painless install.
Re:Excellent news (Score:2)
Re:KnoppMyth vs Gentoo Myth (Score:2, Informative)
As for that guy who was having dropped frames, he could probably get rid of them if he removed a filter or disabled the commercial detection.
I found that the commercial detection added about 20% cpu usage on my amd64 3400+, the deinterlacer added about 10%. As it stands with both commercial, deinterlacing, recording, encoding to mpeg4 and playing back a recording,
Re:KnoppMyth vs Gentoo Myth (Score:3, Informative)
Kind regards,
Cecil
Re:Excellent news (Score:2)
Re:Excellent news (Score:2, Informative)
MythTV is packaged just like many of our favorite complex programs. KDE is a bitch to set up, but it's pretty easy to do "apt-get install kde"
Similarly, atrpms and others package MythTV for easy installation.
Installing MythTV is a 5 step process from bare hardware.
0.) put together an old box (I'm using an Athlon 1.4ghz in my recording box and and a Via M10000 in my playback-only box) and a cheap tuner card. The Hauppauge WinTV-D series for around $40 on ebay works great. The WinTV PVR's
Re:Excellent news (Score:2)
You can get a linux driver from nvidias web site. The biggest drawbacks are that you have to compile it into the kernel and that you can't set the front-porch or back-porch settings unless it is a GeForce4 or higher. (front/back porch lets you squeeze to fit your tv. Absolutely necessary on my 16:9). The kernel thing is only an issue to me because I'm hooked into DVI on the TV and don't get any video until X loads. You'll find lots of
OT, but I can't resist (Score:3)
Re:OT, but I can't resist (Score:4, Informative)
The PVR-150 is a good single tuner card, or even better, the PVR-500. The 500 is detected as two 150s (so you can record two programs simultaneously), takes up only one slot, and splits the coax input internally.
However, the 150 and 500 cards are supported only under the IVTV development branch (0.3.4). Although very stable, the driver is changing daily and requires more effort when compared to Fedora MythTV or KnobbMyth.
Re:OT, but I can't resist (Score:3, Informative)
I'll also be adding a PVR-250 (hardware encoding only) to my backend system as a second tuner eventually.
UK programme guide (Score:3, Informative)
Re:UK programme guide (Score:2)
Re:UK programme guide (Score:2)
If you've got dvb-eit support (and dvb, obviously, since you need a digital tuner card to watch freeview) in your mythtv build, then it's a simple as ticking the OTA guide option on each channel setup in mythsetup. Can take a few minutes to populate the listings when you first switch, but after that you can just forget about it.
Much simpler than messing about with xmlt
Just signed up... (Score:5, Informative)
Been using Myth since 0.15 in August, '04. With a PVR-350 in a Shuttle SN41G2 V2 box and 2x200GB LVM'd drives. Having a PVR really helped me to get the most out of my Dish subscription - hard to believe how cool it is to be able to record all those research and university networks in a managed way - you can take entire courses this way. And watching "Mosaic: News from the Middle East" has been an education.
There is a HUGE opportunity here... (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone started selling these pre-made and ready to go, I'll be the first to buy. Of course, I could probably build one, but I KNOW the market is there to buy them if somebody steps up to the plate.
Re:There is a HUGE opportunity here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong I LOVE MythTV, I just don't think my dad or average Joe could handle it's quirky nature just yet.
Buy it here (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Buy it here (Score:2)
And who cares if its loud? Just use a front-end (like a cheap soon-to-be obsolete Xbox)?
Re:There is a HUGE opportunity here... (Score:2)
Re:There is a HUGE opportunity here... (Score:2)
Mac mini (Score:3, Interesting)
Is anyone else here using a mini as a HTPC? What does your setup look like?
Re:Mac mini (Score:4, Interesting)
Have a look at CenterStage [centerstageproject.com]
CenterStage is on open source project to build a powerful and intuitive media center application for the Apple Macintosh, this project was inspired by the launch of the Mac mini, an ideal Mac to use as part of a home theatre system.
Re:Mac mini (Score:2)
Re:Mac mini (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, you said full port so I assume you also mean the backend. That would require two things. First, a video input (which the Mac mini may have, I just do not know). Second, the encoding would have to be handled via software as I do not think there is any encoding hardware in the mini.
From a form factor standpoint, it is perfect.
Re:Mac mini (Score:2)
(repost since my cookie got lost and I ended up posting as an AC)
Re:Mac mini (Score:2)
Movie Box [pinnaclesys.com]
Re:Mac mini (Score:2)
http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eye
Re:Mac mini (Score:2)
Re:Mac mini (Score:2, Informative)
What is different? (Score:2, Interesting)
yeah right (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow all the cost of Tivo and a pain in the ass too (Score:4, Funny)
-Eric
The day this becomes the only option (Score:2)
Why should I be nickel-and-dimed by some startup who will be dead in a year or two and then I'll have to get a Tivo anyway? Personally, I have no problem filling out a short survey once a quarter.
But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Slight correction (Score:2, Informative)
from the faq (Score:2)
TV listing information is currently limited to the USA. If there is enough demand for listing information outside of North America, we can make DataDirect::TV data available to European users."
Come on guys! The USA is not North America. As a Canadian MythTv user I would definitely consider the service if offered here. Just don't tell me I'm actually in the US.
Canadian Listing's (Score:4, Informative)
Is LxMSuite available outside the USA?
TV listing information is currently limited to the USA. If there is enough demand for listing information outside of North America, we can make DataDirect::TV data available to European users.
Since I live in Canada, which is in North America, I was wondering if the listing would be available here. So I emailed their support and here's their response
There was a last minute contract snafu that led to support for Canada being dropped at launch. Canadian listings should be available via LxMSuite very soon.
Thanks,
LxMSuite Support
Just an FYI for us Canadian's
Endangering the freeness of Zap2It? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BUY A FREAKIN TIVO ALREADY (Score:3, Insightful)
MythTV - open, flexible, can do pretty much whatever you want with it if you are willing to put in the effort, will work anywhere someone has an internet connection, and where someone (else?) is willing to provide scheduling data.
I haven't even mentioned the geek value!
obligatory (plus corny and redundant) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:obligatory (plus corny and redundant) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:obligatory (plus corny and redundant) (Score:2)
Re:BUY A FREAKIN TIVO ALREADY (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BUY A FREAKIN TIVO ALREADY (Score:2)
What's the point of a MythTV setup?
Sounds like an arguement for a Windows license.
Re:BUY A FREAKIN TIVO ALREADY (Score:2, Informative)
Tivo's can be upgraded for the cost of a hard drive. First thing I did when I got my Tivo was drop two 120 GB drives into it. Yes, it does void the warranty. But MythTV doesn't have a warranty either.
-Eric
Re:TV downsides (Score:3, Interesting)
I just record everything we might like to watch, rather than watching any old crap thats on. And no time wasted watching adverts.
Re:TV downsides (Score:2)
Re:As long as they don't remove the free EPGs... (Score:2, Interesting)