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Television Media

MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2 337

Posted by kdawson from the head-to-head dept.
Egadfly writes with a comparison of the open source MythTV and the highly commercial TiVo Series 3. "How different are the two systems' available remote control devices and their graphic interfaces when it comes to ease of use? Which product should you choose if your HD signal comes OTA or if you plan to use CableCARDs? And what software features (present and future) can you expect with each product? Will loopholes in FCC regulations and cable company encryption ultimately squeeze out MythTV and other open source players?"
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MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2 More

MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2

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  • Completely Off Topic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WaZiX ( 766733 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @06:26AM (#18344963)
    But maybe there should be a rule about not allowing links to Articles full of Advertisement that span over 7 pages with about 100 words/page...

  • CableCARD is all that matters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RoboRay ( 735839 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @06:39AM (#18345013)
    Until I can get CableCARD support in a home-built Linux box (and I know I never will) Myth is completely irrelevant. A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.

    • Re:CableCARD is all that matters (Score:4, Interesting)

      by croddy ( 659025 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @07:28AM (#18345201)
      For you, perhaps. I haven't a clue what CableCARD even means, and somehow I've managed to keep my Myth box's 160GB hard disk full continuously for as long as it's been in service.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        CableCARD is basically a system that allows any equipment, not just provider-supplied decoders, to recieve and decrypt encrypted digital TV (typically from digital cable). It's similar to the CAMs that have been part of the DVB standard since the beginning, with the exception that CAMs were intended to be an open specification, and are supported well by Linux.

        CableCARD is intentionally proprietary, and will likely never be supported by Linux without someone being sued for DMCA violation, despite still needi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        In the U.S., at least, Cablecard is the only way for someone with cable to receive the digital channels (i.e. channels 60-1000) without using the cable company's own cable box. It's a card that fits into a slot on your DVR that allows it to decrypt the digital channels.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:CableCARD is all that matters (Score:5, Informative)

      by jotok ( 728554 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @08:05AM (#18345421)
      My Myth setup simply uses an IR blaster to interact with the set-top box. It does precisely everything the latest HD TiVo does.

      Just a suggestion, maybe you should know what you're talking about before you dismiss Myth as "irrelevant."

      • The usage of IR blasters it not optimal. I know because I'm using it on my Series 2 TiVo with my cablebox. In general it is pretty good at changing the channels, there times when it does not change the channel correctly. Honestly, the IR blaster are making me give serious consideration to buy a Series 3 TiVo so I can use a cablecard. I think given an option, most people who use IR blasters would use an alternative method if available.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jotok ( 728554 )
          Yah, a CableCard would be better (especially since at least Cox Cable and probably some other providers are bundling the HD STB with DVR functionality). But to say that a homebrew DVR is not functional because there is no CableCard support in Linux is just plain wrong.
        • In general it is pretty good at changing the channels, there times when it does not change the channel correctly.

          Then it's not set up terribly well. I have a pair of DCT2524's controlled by my Myth box using a pair of blasters from here [irblaster.info], and I have never, repeat, never missed a single tune.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jeaton ( 44965 )
        Interesting, can your Myth setup record HD channels, including those which aren't in the clear, from cable without recompressing the bitstream? No? Then you aren't doing what the TiVo series 3 does.

        Just a suggestion, maybe you should know what you're talking about


        Irony.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jotok ( 728554 )
          Can anyone watching appreciate the difference?

          No?

          Clown.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tji ( 74570 )
            What are you talking about? Noone can tell the difference between true HD and downconverted SD? That's what he's talking about. The Tivo can record encrypted HD channels, because it has CableCard cards.

            The Tivo cannot use those channels, so it would either need to record the SD version of the channel (ESPN vs. ESPN-HD), or control the cable box & record the S-Video (standard definition) output of ESPN-HD. There are no HD encoder cards available in the home-user price range.

            The difference between

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tji ( 74570 )
              Oops, submitted that too quickly. Obviously the second paragraph should be "MythTV cannot use those channels" because it doesn't support CableCard.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        Really? including recording all the HDTV channels?

        where are you because Comcast scrambles all HD content and disables the firewire connector on the back of the set top boxes around here.

        Granted, if the Tivo Series 3 does not have cablecard, then it's useless as well.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by pyite ( 140350 )
          Comcast scrambles all HD content and disables the firewire connector on the back of the set top boxes around here.

          While it's expected that some content is encrypted, by law, they must enable the Firewire connector. So, you can get it enabled. It will only help for unencrypted content, but it's still useful.

          "...To accommodate these interfaces, effective April 1, 2004, upon consumer request, MSOs must provide functional 1394 outputs to HD STBs, either by downloading the necessary software to STBs with existin

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Lumpy ( 12016 )
            where did you get that quote from? I really need that document to force the cable companies hand.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jotok ( 728554 )
          I'm in Virginia Beach. Cox also scrambles the HD content, so I take it from their HD set-top box.

          They are replacing my STB with one that includes DVR functionality, so it's about to become moot--I could still use the myth box in the same fashion, but it would be redundant...though on the other hand, a TiVo or cable box won't let you space-shift your shows. So maybe there is still some value.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        Can it record two channels at the same time? Can it record an HD signal at full resolution without recompressing it?
        • Can it record two channels at the same time?

          Yes. I have two tuners on my Myth box connected to two DSTBs. If you'd done any reading at all, you'd know this.

          Can it record an HD signal at full resolution without recompressing it?

          Of course, not, but we both know that's a rhetorical question. OTOH, downconverted HD still looks pretty friggin' good. And there's firewire or ATSC capture options for some.

          But I will agree, the fact that Tivo is in bed with the cable industry does give them an advantage, here.

      • You're lying. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @10:48AM (#18347289)
        I know you're wrong because I tried to do exactly this before I went and bought a Series 3 Tivo. The only way to have a DVR for encrypted HD is to get a Tivo or a POS cableco DVR. Your setup (unless you have some magical HD capture card that nobody makes) can only record encrypted HD content that has been downconverted to SD, and even if you did have HD capture, it would be re-encoded.

        Oh, and put a watt-meter on your cable box+MythTV combo. I'll bet you spend more on additional electricity than you would on the monthly Tivo service fee.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Abcd1234 ( 188840 )
          Oh, and put a watt-meter on your cable box+MythTV combo. I'll bet you spend more on additional electricity than you would on the monthly Tivo service fee.

          Ha ha, yeah, if you think Myth users selected it as an option because it's cheaper, you're seriously misguided. I know I selected Myth because it's more flexible, powerful, and featureful than any commercial DVR I could buy (I don't have an HDTV at this point, so downconverted HD would be just fine for me).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Professor_UNIX ( 867045 )

      A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.

      How do you define a minimally-functional system? Every single thing I've wanted to watch over the past 3 or 4 years has been available via the analog cable tuner so my Hauppauge PVR 250 cards capture it just fine. If I really wanted to watch pay channels (though I don't subscribe to any) then I could just plug my cable box into the SVIDEO input on my card and use an IR blaster to change the channels as necessary like a TiVo does

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )
        Setup a couple of broad category wishlists and you will probably be quite amazed with what you can pick up from non-premium channels. A lot of it is mutiliated but still there's a lot of stuff out there if you have an agressive PVR and LOTS of storage space to dump it all.

        This is why I think any PVR without at least 200 of recording time (even in HD) is going to be a non-starter.

        Ok, fine so I've got my 5 movies recorded in HD and nothing else on the thing. My 20 episodes of 20 network shows are all gone bec

    • Re:CableCARD is all that matters (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @09:06AM (#18345935) Homepage
      Not to me.

      I dont have cablecard and I enjoy all the shows in full HD.
      I use the bittorrent card.

      Full HD, no commercials, I get to watch them the next day anyways. Heck because the same guys release the TV shows I can easily write a script with wget and other apps to look for the torrents and download them automatically. It's just like a tivo except it extracts the commercials and compresses them to mpeg4 so it's even easy for me to take them on my laptop.

      and yes, I dont give a rats about "legality" these same asshats that run these networks are forcing me to find the shows on bittorrent because they demand the cable companies scramble it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by heinousjay ( 683506 )
        Ah, they've forced you. Well then, it's all justified. I had a big rant prepared for you until I saw that they were taking away your entertainment, against all reasonable sense of entitlement. Pirate away!

        • Re:CableCARD is all that matters (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ballwall ( 629887 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @12:52PM (#18349295)
          I don't necessarily agree that downloading is ok, but just wanted to play the devil's advocate for a second.

          Take these scenarios:

          1. Let's say you have a VCR recording over the air broadcasts, and it's set to record Heroes on Monday. It does and you happily watch your show, commercials and all. Morally acceptable, right?

          2. Ok, same thing, except you fast forward through the commericials. Is this still morally acceptable? Really you're not upholding your part of the bargain (watching commercials) for the free TV you're getting.

          3. Ok, so now you discover on Tuesday that your VCR didn't change timezones properly (something about DST being moved forward or some other nonsense), and didn't record Heroes for you. You download it with commericials and watch it. Is that bad? Is there a fundamental difference between this and the first scenario?

          4. Or, say you download it with no commercials, how is that different at all than the second scenario?

          Where exactly does downloading previously broadcast material become immoral?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by grasshoppa ( 657393 )
      A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.

      Never used Myth, huh?

      Myth is constantly talked about as far as PVRs ar the like are concerned. What is often ignored is, frankly, the best part of the project; The videos section. I can "backup" a DVD on to disk, then play that from my myth box at the click of a button. A VERY handy thing to have with a house full of children. No more lost DVDs, scratched or otherwise unwatchable discs. Just quick and simple click of the butt

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )
      While having a system that can suck down movies that are 20G a pop sounds nice in theory, it kind of falls apart once you start to really think about it. Short of having 20TB drives (or arrays) or having realtime H.264 transcoding capabilities such a system is going to be all that it's cracked up to be.

      OTOH, an HD PVR driven by a MythTV backend could be a handy thing.

      Quality of signal is more important than resolution.

      You can even see this with different HD channels.

    • Until I can get CableCARD support in a home-built Linux box (and I know I never will) Myth is completely irrelevant. A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.

      Wow, thanks for dimissing an entire community of hobbyists based on your pre-conceived notion. For you MythTV is just a "more-than-minimally-functional system" but for others, MythTV has everything they want. MythTV systems offer features not found in a set-top DVR and vice versa. All and all MythTV has more feat

  • I love MythTV because... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by myz24 ( 256948 )
    ...I can run the frontend on my laptop and watch live and recorded TV anywhere in my house. I don't yet use Myth for anything but TV using an 8 year old Hauppauge card but for me, the flexibility of the software is what wins me over. My only gripe is the default keyboard bindings don't make the most sense at first.
  • As a happy customer of Tivo for several years now I am quite disappointed to find that it will not work for me if I move to Australia.

    I have been doing a little research on MythTV (again) and still am off put by the complexity of it. The Tivo box really is my OS X to MythTVs Windows, in my opinion. But an even bigger issue to me is if I had to start paying a monthly fee to Tivo since they dropped their lifetime support fee option.

    ps. The article was so lean on details I wonder if the writer even touched eit

  • As a MythTV user... (Score:5, Informative)

    by edmicman ( 830206 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @09:08AM (#18345967) Homepage Journal
    of going on 2 years, I'd have to say it's not even close - Tivo wins for the masses. Sure, my MythTV box does what my friends' Tivos do and more. But even though they are tech guys, too, I don't see many of them going through the pain in the ass experience that is setting up and maintaining the MythTV box.

    I built my MythTV box a couple of years ago so I could record two shows at the same time (dual tuner PVR500 card) and then watch a third on our main cable. I planned on reusing olds parts as I had a fairly decent PC sitting around unused; all I needed to invest in was the tuner card and a remote. I got the MCE remote and a PVR500 for the job. All was fine and dandy until I found out that some obscure library for MythTV didn't work on my Athlon VIA motherboard chipset. A new motherboard meant new memory, and a new CPU. I also got a "HTPC" case so the thing didn't look ugly in the living room. So right off the bat my quest to do a homemade Tivo on the cheap without monthly fees set me back about $600 after throwing in a large hard drive, too. This didn't really bother me, though, as I figured it was part of doing business.

    I used Knoppmyth to set things up, and granted, it did go fairly smooth. The basic install goes along fine, it's the customization and other tweaks that take time and effort. I currently have it recording up to two shows at once, use it as a multimedia center so I can copy videos and MP3s to it and use it as a jukebox, and have used it to play emulated NES, SNES, and MAME games. But here are some things that I've noticed while using MythTV, in no particular order:

    I started off with a Ti4600 video card. It's fan started to die, so I spent money on an FX5200 card which I've read is recommended for MythTV. This went fine, and configured fine. But for some reason if I need to reset my MythTV box, the video settings revert back to a "generic" video card, and I have to recopy over the FX5200 settings from the Knoppmyth wiki. I have no idea why this is.

    Related to the above, when the generic video settings are on, recorded audio and video is out of sync. The video quality is noticeably bad, too. When it's configured correct, things are a lot better.

    I've played NES and MAME games on it. I've tried SNES, but can't get my Gravis controllers to work for some reason. Supposedly there's Genesis emulators out there, but I can't figure out how to use those within MythTV. I had issues setting up two controllers for the NES games, and they worked for awhile, but then I had some friends over and we were going to play and the 2nd controller didn't work anymore. I don't know why. Also, with the games, integrating the remote is supposed to be possible, but I don't know how to do it for my remote. It would be nice to be able to map certain keys to the remote to do emulator actions or to hit escape. Otherwise, I have to have a keyboard and mouse available when I'm using the emulators (currently via VNC). I don't have a wireless mouse/keyboard for the HTPC yet.

    After about a year, things started locking up, recordings were out of sync. Turns out MySQL defaults to logging every database action, and the database logs filled up my hard drive, killing MythTV. There was a fix in the forums, but it was a pain.

    I can only record basic cable. It can do digital, but it would have to hook up to my digital box and use IR forwarding to control the box. That would sort of defeat the purpose of being able to record a show and watch something else at the same time. Not to mention the whole reason I got it was so I could record *two* shows at the same time. I'd either need another digital box dedicated to the MythTV box, or some sort of CableCARD thing.

    Perhaps the coolest thing about MythTV is the commercial skip. After it records a show, it marks commercials, and pressing a certain button while watching them jumps to the next segment of the show. I've found this to be accurate about 50% of the time. Usually, it works for the first commercial break,

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by airjrdn ( 681898 )
      Excellent info, thanks for posting it. From time to time I contemplate setting up a MythTV box, but end up not doing it for one reason or another. I'm currently on DirecTv running two hacked Tivos. For general media player functionality I use a modded XBox which I've found nothing can compete with. If you've never seen XBox Media Center, check it out, it's really slick, and plays pretty much every format out there.

    • Supposedly there's Genesis emulators out there, but I can't figure out how to use those within MythTV.
      # apt-get install dgen Then if you're on a recent version of Myth, set it up as the 'Odyssey2' program in Game Setup.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jj00 ( 599158 )
      A great little read to remind me why I stopped using MythTV a couple months back. I ended up switching to MediaPortal. However, switching to another application has had its own drawbacks as well, some of them are the same. The software requires more power (CPU and RAM) to run efficiently, and there are definitely some quirks with it (plugins/emulators/etc).

      The ultimate reason I switched to MediaPortal was because most of the emulators I wanted to play with seemed to only run well on Windows. My other

  • GB-PVR (Score:2, Informative)

    by rowle1jt ( 990668 )
    Anyone ever check out GB-PVR?

    I run it home on top of XP Pro SP2, I only have the software installed thats needed for the PVR function, no Office or anything like that. Makes the machine very stable! Multiple tuner support, web based programming.. its got all the bells and whistles of Myth. The nice part is, EVERYTHING that needs to be done on the PVR side of things can be done from the remote! There is a very active forum/developer community and sub, the owner/programmer is on there posting and helpin

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by io-waiter ( 745875 )
      They have been bought by welltonway wich is a led by less than trustworthy people.

      So expect the worst.

      Wellton way went chapter 11 and is now reconstructed and is trying to rake in cash in doubtful ways, consumer authorities in Sweden have issued warnings. Welltons earlier companies include Lappower which went down, bad.
      My guess is that they will destroy GB PVR =(

  • Neither. It's MediaPortal versus Vista MCE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by charnov ( 183495 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @09:41AM (#18346329) Homepage Journal
    Frankly, MediaPortal [team-mediaportal.com] and the new Vista MCE [microsoft.com] are heads and shoulders about the rest and have the added benefit of being able to use Windows drivers which means everything on the planet is and will be supported.
  • At my parent's house they just use Time Warner's HD Cable Box. Has a good 160GB of storage, interface is fine, and the monthly price is comparable to TiVO. No need for cablecard/ir-blaster/etc and there are 2 tuners and on demand video (although they never use it)
    • Because you have no control over the content you record. And they're friggin' buggy. Oh, and they're inflexible. And you can't expand or upgrade them (my Myth box has 2 tuners and 250GB... but eventually, I plan to have 3 tuners and >TB. Good luck getting that on a TW DVR).

      Besides, can you listen to your digital music collection with your TW box? Or web radio? Can you watch your ripped DVD collection? Or downloaded video?

      And then there's the more esoteric. Can you get RSS feeds, or the news, or w

  • VDR (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GoatVomit ( 885506 )
    I'm quite surprised that they used mythtv or is vdr too german? Here in Finland the popularity is reversed to say the least and getting softcam to work with some cheap smartcard readers wasn't that big of a hassle. Recording porn err documentaries has never been this easy.

  • Every time I think of taking the plunge and do it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zuki ( 845560 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @10:05AM (#18346663) Journal
    Rigt before going to spec out a nice bunch of PC components on NewEgg and build a good box, I always pass by the Myth TV Users Mailing List [gossamer-threads.com] to make sure that I get the most relevant and updated hardware necessary, and instead end up reading a sampling of the horror stories they go through, taking a few minutes to savor the different tortures one can be subjected to (video out of sync with audio, artifacts on certain channels, MySQL database corruption, NuvExport screws up, X breaks dependencies, and all the rest) and decide to wait another few weeks, certainly the new upcoming release will be much more reliable and user-friendly? And by the way, what happened to all of the things that were done during last year's Google's 'Summer Of Code' for Myth TV ? All the great features and enhancements [mythtv.org] that were worked on?

    So I keep waiting, hoping that the next time I check the mailing list, their version of Matt Groening's Life In Hell [wikipedia.org] have died down a bit....

    Even though I am definitely doing a fair amount of Sys Admin duties on various distros, this is different, the killer part is what will happen when something screws up while I'm not around, and my wife gets mad because something didn't work, (provided I can even teach her to deal with all of these menus, options and the whole 'watching Live TV through Myth' syndrome) or my kid decides that he knows better and starts trying to hack the box himself in frustration....?

    Surely the TiVo is an attractive box for the wife and kids, but with technology changing as rapidly as it has been, it is questionable whether to invest in such a product today, unless we were hard-core TV addicts, and could justify the cost as it would immediately be recouped.

    Funnily enough, the most expedient thing I've ended up doing has been to identify the things I want to watch, and as a previous poster pointed out, just BitTorrent the shows in HD without commercials the next day, no matter where in the world I may be. (...and yes, it is sweet to download things at 10 Megs speed while in certain countries like Japan or Norway!!...LOL!)

    Net result: I hardly EVER watch any TV whatsoever, and the few shows I care about can be watched on my laptop.

    Well, I wish I had more time to tinker.... and still, major kudos to Jarod Wilson for having created this amazing open-source wonder. But as others have pointed out, for either of these two options, it's really going to all be about being able to have Myth TV interact with the CableCard slot, at least in major urban centers where cable companies rule the roost, and antenna reception is unwatchable!! The killer is that companies like Time Warner Cable are offering their own PVR deals, so they will make sure to lock anyone else out of the convenience until forced to do so by the FCC... Or that someone learns to hack the Firewire outputs of some of those new set-top decoders. Then you potentially still have HDCP to contend with. Oh, brother!! Brave new world !!

    Z.
    • Judging the state of MythTV by the posts on the users list is not an accutate metric. It's like going to the local Toyota dealership, only visiting the service department then saying "I don't want a Toyota, they are always broken down!". Generally the people posting to the list are the ones having the problems, you don't hear from the people for whom installation went smoothly.

      the killer part is what will happen when something screws up while I'm not around, and my wife gets mad because something didn't w

  • This comparison would be completely different in Europe! In europe nearly every digital TV channel broadcasted over Cable, OTA or Sattelite is encrypted with one of many encryption standards (Conax, Irdeto, SECA, etc.).

    Instead of a "CableCARD", which is used for viewing encrypted content in the US, a "Conditional Access Module" (CAM) is used in Europe, Africa and most Asian countries for all digital broadcast methods (DVB-C, -S and -T). Most TV companies supply set-top boxes with a built-in decoder and a
  • Tivo seems a bit dated and irrelevant here. How does Myth compare to the Motorola Dual Tuner HD Box that Comcast and Verizon Fios use? I would imagine more people in the USA who are recording HD content use this box from the cable company. Isn't Tivo HD mostly for satellite?

    Anyway, I'd love to switch away from the quirky motorola box, it's got way to many bugs and is very first generation. Can MythTV do anything for me here?
  • For the non-premium-channel watching geek.

    1) No subscription fee
    2) Commercial Flagging
    3) No ads, auto-recorded shows, or other similar nonsense.

    On the down side, it WAS a pain in the ass to set up. And not cheap; I think I spent $800+ on my box (HTPC case, 1G memory, two HD tuner cards, etc).

    As for CableCard, I'm considering dropping cable entirely. All the shows I watch are on over-the-air TV, and I've now got working antenna set up.

  • Practical experience with MythTV (Score:3, Informative)

    by jlrowe ( 69115 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @01:26PM (#18349883)
    In late December, I set up a unused PC (600 MHZ) with 2 Haupauge PVR 150 TV cards and a 200 GB hard disk as a MythTV Frontend/Backend. The cards are Standard def. The setup was straightforwards and pretty easy. I did have some issues with jerkiness due to the video card in the machine, but got it to work well enough by changing some settings etc.

    After And I set up the server, I then got an even older 450 MHZ PC with barely enough RAM, and made a front end out of it. Again, that didn't work well, but a cheap Nvidia card took care of that AND gave me Svideo out so I could run a monitor and a TV as a second monitor (dual screen) at the same time. I then forced MythTV to run on the TV and got TV plus internet. It was only jerky if I did too much internet or whatever on the PC while watching TV. You do have to watch what window has focus, if you want to do some control to MythTV, but you get used to alt-tab etc.

    Because that worked so very well, at only the cost of 2 cards, I replaced the front end machine with a new 3200+ AMD socket 754 MB and chip at a little over $100. I had the case and everything else already. I also just took the 450 MHZ frontend and put it in another room, still on the MythTV network.

    The new AMD system is a dream. I run TV, internet, Openofffice.org, VNC to other machines, XP in a VMWare session, and much more. And performance is never a problem.

    MythTV is OTA, and there are plenty of stations, ABC NBC CBS PBS etc all have mutiple channels each. Fox goes HD next year, but I can record all of these SDTV using power search (record a show anytime it finds it by name, don't record dups and reruns, and skip commericals.

    nice.

    Still running on the 600 MHZ backend, but I am planning to upscale to a higher end AMD and plenty of RAM and 1.5 TB of Hard disk. This will be my main server for whatever purpose, including VMWare etc. Oh, and 4 or 5 HDTV cards, plus the SDTV cards while there is still SDTV.

    Really, this is the coolest thing for OTA TV.

    Distribution used: MythDora http://g-ding.tv/ [g-ding.tv], which is Fedora Core 5 and MythTV plus add-ons and on one install DVD. Also nice. FC6 would have been better, but this will do fine.

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