MythTv

[Mike]

I was looking at the Toms Hardware article, and was wondering if anyone had some comments on MythTV.

I tried MCE, and switched to sage (happy with it) as it seemed to be a better integration choice with CQC. I have not looked at Myth. Anyone have any thoughts they want to share? The architecture seemed interesting.

 

[Digger]

I ahve been playing with Sage the past few weeks. Its not so bad. Not perfect but not bad.

More reliable than Insteon........

I want to use a tablet to schedule recording shows etc. There is a free download on the forum I want to try next that is a web interface.

 

[Mike]

I've been happy with it (sage). It locks up occasionally, but not enough to get me annoyed (rather infrequently). Got my 3400 tablet the other day so I guess I need to install the Global Cache and get cracking.

One day perhaps I can post screenshots vaguely reminiscent of IVB's...

 

[electron]

MythTV is an awesome product. The only problem is that it can be a pain in the butt to setup, but there are companies now which sell preinstalled MythTV boxes. MythTV will blow MCE out of the water when it comes to features, and I am strongly considering myself building another MythTV box since I want several 'extenders'.

 

[v1rtu0s1ty]

MythTV is an awesome product. The only problem is that it can be a pain in the butt to setup, but there are companies now which sell preinstalled MythTV boxes. MythTV will blow MCE out of the water when it comes to features, and I am strongly considering myself building another MythTV box since I want several 'extenders'.

I concur. I've been a mythtv user for more than 1 year now and I'm very impressed with the quality most especially with local high definition captures. It's jaw dropping.

I've got few screenshots from an article I wrote before.

http://restricted.dyndns.org/hookingpc2hdtv.html

 

[electron]

great article!

 

[justonemore]

I have decided to play with MythTV. Wish me some luck. downloading the ISO for Red Hat's Fedora Core 6 Linux Distribution right now, as it seems to be the newest. Will probably take some time to even get the box up and running!

 

[pgray007]

I have been using myth for about 2 years and I am on the fence with it. It is like many linux/open-source apps, in that it is great considering what you paid for it (nothing). It occasionally has problems and/or errors with little explanation, and is composed of so many disparate components, debugging them is almost impossible other than rebooting or starting/restarting various services and hoping for the best.

I am personally planning on buying something off the shelf. When myth works it's pretty nice, but the hours of frustration getting it working, and keeping it working are begining to outweigh the benefit of having a free solution.

You may take these comments with a grain of salt since I have a pretty funky setup, and is probably at the "bleeding edge" of myth. I am running a Mini-ITX motherboard and a PVR-250 card, using the cards HW encoding and the mobo's HW decoding with tons of beta drivers and a custom kernel and gentoo distro. A "myth on a CD" might work much better, although I think I am heading towards SageTV.

 

[electron]

There are commercial MythTV products based out there, so if you don't want to deal with tinkering, then that's the way to go. I want to start using MythTV again as well, but my ATI Radeon 7000 isn't supported :/

 

[Mike]

I have been using myth for about 2 years and I am on the fence with it. It is like many linux/open-source apps, in that it is great considering what you paid for it (nothing). It occasionally has problems and/or errors with little explanation, and is composed of so many disparate components, debugging them is almost impossible other than rebooting or starting/restarting various services and hoping for the best.

I am personally planning on buying something off the shelf. When myth works it's pretty nice, but the hours of frustration getting it working, and keeping it working are begining to outweigh the benefit of having a free solution.

You may take these comments with a grain of salt since I have a pretty funky setup, and is probably at the "bleeding edge" of myth. I am running a Mini-ITX motherboard and a PVR-250 card, using the cards HW encoding and the mobo's HW decoding with tons of beta drivers and a custom kernel and gentoo distro. A "myth on a CD" might work much better, although I think I am heading towards SageTV.

I have not tried Myth, but I started on MCE and then switched to Sage. I have only had minor issues and they seem to do a reasonable amount of updates.

One thing that also led me there (which may be a future driver in your case) was the integration options. Take a look at IVB's thread as he has examples of controlling Sage through CQC. From a conceptual standpoint that sets a great example, whatever home automation software you choose to go with (if you go down that path).

On the other hand, it worked well enough to stand on its own and I have been very happy with the extender ($109!) which lets you do everything (that I have seen) and it supports hard drive based DVD playback as well.

 

[justonemore]

It's kind of a toss up for me. I have tinkered with XLObby in the past, and wasn't unhappy at all. I was sort of looking for a linux attempt this time. If for nothing else that to be able to say " well, tried that and royally screwed it up!" I can always fall back on Xlobby if necessary.

Although I don't have tons of time anymore, I do have tons of hardware to build a fairly decent htpc. Not the best, but decent. OS excluded