New Review Compares MythTV to Vista MCE

Parkus writes "There's a nice review on AVS forum of MythTV (Ubuntu) and Windows Vista MCE. The author tried both back to back and explains the pluses and minuses of each system after using them for a month. Helpful if you're thinking about setting up your own home theater rig."

Digital HDTV

[tivojafa]

I use both a MythTV DVR (64-bit Ubuntu) and a MCE DVR (64-bit Vista) at home. The MythTV machine is primary and the Vista machine is secondary.

The automatic commercial skip in MythTV is fantastic!
You watch TV shows and there are no adverts. Simple as that.

The biggest problem is resisting to urge to pick up the remote when the show is leading into an ad break :-)

Both machines can record ATSC HDTV and Digital Cable (QAM) - running a total of 4 digital tuners (2 x HDHomeRun network digital tuners with two tuner each - http://www.silicondust.com/ [silicondust.com])

Re:Digital HDTV

[Lumpy]

You are glossing over one major important fact.

ONLY Vista MCE can use a PCI Cablecard adapter giving you ALL digital cable channels to record from as well as ALL HDTV channels.

your MythTV can never Ever tune in and record ALL the HD channels, only a few of the total lineup.

That one little thing you forgot is a major show-stopper for most people, and I really hope someone hacks the cablecard somehow to give us cablecard capability for mythtv.

No Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't beleive this review, I have nothing wrong with what he said objectively, but for god's sake, he just lets his obvious bias, quote "Steve Jobs gets his head out of his hole and decides to reshape the marketplace with a truly good PVR/Media Center/Super-Evolved Life Device (tm)."

He ends the review by just deciding to say all praise steve, the technological messiah, he will purge us of these heathan devices and bath us in his warm white iglow of technological perfection. At best apple TV is an overhyped reincarnation of some good technology pased on others, and more to the point why is he mentioning steve jobs in a review of two products completely unrelated to him!

LinuxMCE

[ultramkancool]

I thought mythtv would have been replaced with LinuxMCE by now, very nice tool, check out the videos. Far more powerful then Windows MCE, no DRM shit, focused on your media instead of giant MS logos.

DVD backup illegality?

[Colz Grigor]

FTA:
"DVD importer looks like it could work well, but it's illegal I think to backup DVDs even for personal use, right?"

When assumptions like this are made, even with slight question, it's clear that the author is misinformed and the MPAA has won.

For the record, at least in the United States, it's not illegal to create backups of any of your owned media, DVDs included. Doing so is protected as Fair Use of the copyright of which you have purchased a license. Selling or otherwise distributing your backup copies is not protected, however, and backups must be destroyed or transferred when the ownership of the original media license is transferred.

Of course, Fair Use goes out the window if you sign an agreement stating that you will obey certain provisions that work against Fair Use. But you'd never agree to such terms, right?

Right?

::Colz Grigor

Re:No Credibility

[russotto]

Who else is going to do it? Microsoft isn't going to make a truly good PVR, because their corporate philosophy interferes; they'd want to control it, not let you do so. The open source community may come up with 80-90% of it (and I'd argue already has), but there are some things which it can't do. Produce a _device_, for one thing, a piece of hardware that is quiet, boots (or wakes from standby; standby with Linux and the V4L/DVB drivers is still not reliable IME) in seconds, can be turned on via remote, etc. Compatibility with premium content is another. Apple is in a position to provide both; we know they can build nice, small, quiet hardware. We know they can negotiate with content producers and not compromise EVERYTHING. So it's not going to be Microsoft, it's not going to be the open source community. That leaves no one, Apple, or some unknown third party. Apple seems like the best bet.

I suppose there's the electronics manufacturers -- e.g. Sony (too tied to locking everything down), Phillips, Toshiba, LG, Samsung, a boatload of Chinese companies... aside from Sony (which has no chance) I think they're long shots.

Re:not mythtv -- Wait, yes it is!

[Stocktonian]

Huh?
When I read the article is was very clearly talking about MythTV compared to Vista MCE. I don't think he tried Linux MCE at all.

Linux MCE is a very different animal and MythTV only forms a small part of it. http://linuxmce.com/ [linuxmce.com] It's an amazing piece of software.

---
http://www.linuxlaptops.eu/ [linuxlaptops.eu]

The FOSS solution wins everytime

[OmegaBlac]

As long as proprietary/closed software from companies (ie. Microsoft) who have a long known history in restricting consumer's rights, but will bend over backward to please their own special customers (the content makers), I'll choose FOSS (MythTV) everytime without hesitation.

Windows Media Center Restricts Cable TV [slashdot.org]

day jobs and switchers.

[twitter]

a lot of GNU/Linux people either are stuck dealing with Windows in their day jobs

If the author of the article was really familiar with Windoze, he would have known to use XP and third party applications for his media center. If not, he would never have made Vista work. There's a lot about this article that does not add up and I smell a switcher attack [slashdot.org].

Re:not mythtv -- Wait, yes it is!

[LordMyren]

what is available that uses no MythTV at all? the fact that every piece of software out there uses the same mythtv recording backend somewhat frightens me. no doubt its fine software but are there really no alterantives?