Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

MythTV 0.20 Released 281

Posted by Hemos from the build-your-own dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The latest version of MythTV, the open source PVR application for Linux, has been released. New features (as documented in the release notes) include a new menu system, an improved internal DVD player, support for DVB radio channels, and mouse support. There is also a new plugin – MythArchive – which allows recordings be written to DVD. You can download MythTV from MythTV.org."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

MythTV 0.20 Released More

MythTV 0.20 Released

Comments Filter:
  • It (and better TV Tuner drivers) are probably the only things that really make me want Linux over FreeBSD. Still, it's a nice release, even if I can't use it.

  • Questions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @11:49AM (#16081432) Homepage

    For you Myth users out there, I have a few questions:

    1. Is it possible to create "playlists" of TV Shows? Say I wanted to rip all my futurama DVDs to a Myth box and play them at random. Could I do that?
    2. Are there any reputable places that will put together a box for me?

    Thanks. Congrats to the MythTV team

    • Re:Questions (Score:4, Informative)

      by mbelly ( 827938 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @11:55AM (#16081491)
      http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?cPath=21_29&prod ucts_id=44 [mythic.tv]

      A full system built with HDTV support.
      • How well does it work with Satellite or Cable HDTV content?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fratz ( 630746 )
          "How well does it work with Satellite or Cable HDTV content?"

          Assuming the format is QAM, the tuner cards will tune any unencrypted QAM signals. You'd need to check with your cable or satellite provider to see how many channels are unencrypted.
        • If you have comcast or other cable providers that use firewire on their digital boxen, you can record and watch unencrypted HD streams via firewire. Premium channels will be encrypted and therefore will give you ZERO output on the FW port (that includes anything you pay extra for like HBO and whatnot). Sorry, but them's the rules. Thanks DRM.

    • Re:Questions (Score:4, Informative)

      by bshensky ( 110723 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:08PM (#16081608) Homepage

      Playlist of TV shows have been available in 0.19 - works very nicely for my 5 year old!

      (Not that I'm putting him in front of the tube with a playlist and walking away just like that. That would be wrong. But those darned Thomas the Tank Engine episodes are only 4 minutes long apiece!)

    • Re:Questions (Score:5, Informative)

      by ParadoxDruid ( 602583 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:14PM (#16081665) Homepage
      Is it possible to create "playlists" of TV Shows? Say I wanted to rip all my futurama DVDs to a Myth box and play them at random. Could I do that?
      I don't know about MythTV, but I have all my Futurama DVDs ripped to my Linux box, and have a "Random episode" icon on my desktop that runs this bash script:
      #!/bin/bash
      count=`ls /home/paradox/media_drive/Media/Futurama |wc -l`
      let "pick = $RANDOM % $count"
      let "pick += 1"
      kaffeine "/home/paradox/media_drive/Media/Futurama/`ls /home/paradox/media_drive/Media/Futurama |sed -n "$pick"p`"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wormbin ( 537051 )

      I bought a MythTV system from Cosmos Engineering [cosmoseng.com]. You can probably save money by building one yourself but I liked the fact that it just works out of the box. It was reviewed in Linux Journal so that might be reputable enough for you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by harryk ( 17509 )
      Having built a few for friends and family I have to say 2 things. One ... give it a go for yourself, it's really not that terribly difficult, especially if you are dedicating a box to it, and starting from scratch. Second, if you really don't want to do it yourself, I'd be happy to build one fore you.

      The biggest costs are the base components, tuner, motherboard/cpu/ram, storage. A case ... well... everyone has their own opinions, but I cannot justify spending 200 to 300 on a decent htpc case, I'd rather

  • new features (Score:5, Informative)

    by samsonov ( 581161 ) <pennacook@hotm a i l . com> on Monday September 11, 2006 @11:51AM (#16081457) Journal
    Since the poor mythtv site appears to be slashdotted already:

    Major changes

    * Menus are now drawn by MythUI using OpenGL. This option can be enabled/disabled in the Appearance settings.
    * Improved internal DVD player - now supporting menus and other missing features
    * Added MHEG content implementation (Interactive TV in UK)
    * Added Hotplug support for removable media in Media Monitor and MythGallery
    * Added support for the HDHomeRun encoding device
    * Added support for basic FreeBox recorders
    * Added support for H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) TS decoding
    * Added an MPEG1/MPEG2/MPEG4-AVC IP network recorder
    * Added internal UPnP support for TV and Music
    * Added experimental second commercial detector
    * New socket class for backend communications
    * OSD image cache which improves channel changing speed
    * Fixed program transition while Watching LiveTV
    * Added beginnings of firewire capture support for MacOS
    * Support for DVB radio channels and guide data collected via EIT for them
    * Added mouse support in menus, including gestures

    * Menus are now drawn by MythUI using OpenGL. This option can be enabled/disabled in the Appearance settings.
    * Improved internal DVD player - now supporting menus and other missing features
    * Added MHEG content implementation (Interactive TV in UK)
    * Added Hotplug support for removable media in Media Monitor and MythGallery
    * Added support for the HDHomeRun encoding device
    * Added support for basic FreeBox recorders
    * Added support for H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) TS decoding
    * Added an MPEG1/MPEG2/MPEG4-AVC IP network recorder
    * Added internal UPnP support for TV and Music
    * Added experimental second commercial detector
    * New socket class for backend communications
    * OSD image cache which improves channel changing speed
    * Fixed program transition while Watching LiveTV
    * Added beginnings of firewire capture support for MacOS
    * Support for DVB radio channels and guide data collected via EIT for them
    * Added mouse support in menus, including gestures

    • Re:new features (Score:5, Informative)

      by tji ( 74570 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:11PM (#16081637)
      MythTV could really use a marketing guy to help with the new releases (actually, there are many open source projects that could benefit from this). The list of highly technical updates to MythTV don't really do justice to where MythTV is today.

      As a MythTV user, here is what I see as important, and having improved in 0.20:

      - MythTV is a free / open source PVR application, with support for analog, digital, and HDTV recording in most international standards (i.e. it's usable in the U.S., Europe, Asia, etc.). It includes many features not available in commercial PVR products.
          - Automatic commercial detection and removal, or manual skip forward/back.
          - Transcode of video to other formats/resolutions -- including DVD export in 0.20.
          - Network based structure, allowing 'backend' recording storage on different machine than the 'frontend' display. (i.e. stick the backend with all the cable connections, antennas, loud fans and tons of disk in the basement, put a small/quiet frontend near your TV for output.)
          - HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)
          - Improved MacOS X support. The 0.20 version has greatly improved the Mac support, especially for the Intel based Macs. Performance optimizations for HD video playback make the Core Duo Mac Minis a great choice for a small/quiet frontend box.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by chrismcdirty ( 677039 )
        It's a changelog, not a marketing statement. It lets you know what changed. Plain as that.
        • ...is that MythTV could use a bit of exposure to the great masses of people out there who are completely unaware of this software, yet who could use it to their benefit. The parent understands the purpose of the release notes while observing that something else could help the program more.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
            MythTV could use a bit of exposure to the great masses of people out there who are completely unaware of this software, yet who could use it to their benefit

            The kind of people who need it explained in adspeak aren't going to get very far with installing it anyway.

          • The thing about mythtv(and most gpl software) is the developers really only get/want two things out of development:

            1) Better software for them to personally use
            2) Experience/enjoyment of devel.

            Neither of these are any better or worse based on number of people using the software, so most don't care about marketing. If someone else gets good use out of the software than thats great and they can do with it as they wish(assuming it complies with GPL), but theres no reason to market it.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by AJWM ( 19027 )
              1) Better software for them to personally use
              2) Experience/enjoyment of devel.

              Neither of these are any better or worse based on number of people using the software,

              That's not strictly true.

              1) The more people using the software, the more likely (though still a low percentage) it is that some of them will contribute back suggestions (or maybe even patches) for improving the software.

              2) That enjoyment is enhanced, at least for some developers, by the knowledge that other people find the software useful.

              If neit

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Captain_Chaos ( 103843 )

        HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)

        Maybe not for ATSC (the American standard), but I can watch the encrypted HD test channels on my digital cable connection without problems via my DVB-C (the European standard) card. I did have to add the channels manually though, the channel scanner did not find them automatically (although this is one of the things

      • HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)

        It is important to note that if your Digicable provider uses a supported set top box (like the Motorola STBs), you don't need an HD capture card to capture HD. You can grab the raw content right off the box using Firewire.

        MythTV fully supports several boxes via firewire, it can even change the channels over the firew

    • * Added MHEG content implementation (Interactive TV in UK)

      It should be noted that MHEG-5 is currently only used in the UK on DVB- T , not DVB-S (hopefully this will change when FreeSat gets off the ground next year). ATM all the interactive content on DVB-S is propriatory (not-so-)OpenTV stuff. :(
    • How this feature list only gets you from .19 to .20 is beyond me.

      Version 1.0 - released 25 years from now - will be sick!

  • Win32 version (Score:4, Funny)

    by paganizer ( 566360 ) <thegrove1NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Monday September 11, 2006 @11:56AM (#16081506) Homepage Journal
    All I want to know is, is where is the win32 version? this would be SWEET running on WinME!
    (yes, obviously my karma is too good)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IflyRC ( 956454 )
      WinME might be "acceptable" but I'm sure it would run a lot better on Win XP.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xtracto ( 837672 )
      All I want to know is, is where is the win32 version? this would be SWEET running on WinME!

      I dont understand why the funny mod...

      I have just bought a DVB usb dongle for my Notebook and I would like to try it out. I have Kubuntu installed, however it is very unstable and I usually only log in to "play" with it (wireless does not work, graphics card incompatible, etc etc etc...).

      So I would have the same question, is there any kind of Win32 version?, now that I think about it, MythTV would be excellent for a "

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        Oh, and I just thought that, I dont know if the USB DVB dongle I bought work in Linux so maybe it would be impossible to use it there (it is an ebay cheapo usb-dvb dongle). Does anyone know anything about the compatiblity of those things?

        I would really love to test this PVR thing as I have read a lot about them but have never used one of them (I dont watch almost any TV... usually just rent movies via screenselet).

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 )
      this would be SWEET running on WinMCE!

      There, fixed that for you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Klaidas ( 981300 )
      Has anyone noticved that when a post ends in "Bye bye karma" or "So much for my karma", etc, it actualy gets moderated up?
      • Has anyone noticved that when a post ends in "Bye bye karma" or "So much for my karma", etc, it actualy gets moderated up?

        Then why didn't you score some free karma, by ending your post that way?

        Of course, this suggestion is going to trash my karma.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      search google for mediaportal.

      note: using a HD capture card to tune and record QUAM signals will not work under windows. the windows driver for the HD tuner card is broken intentionally to keep evil-doers from watching and recording digital CATV.

      also, if you are using windows, you HAVE to have XP.. ME is 100% crap and will not work in any way shape or form... also you need 3X the machine under windows to run mediaportal.. MythTV can run on as little as a 700MHZ PIII and 256 meg ofram and still play + reco

  • A Year of MythTV (Score:5, Informative)

    by feld ( 980784 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @11:58AM (#16081515)
    I've been running MythTV for about a year now and let me tell you -- TV can't get any better.

    I have the shows I want whenever I want them. Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD? My MythTV box also is my torrent box, fileserver, IRC proxy, IMAP server....

    Let's put it this way -- more features than Tivo, and they can't control what you do with it. Go ahead, skip all the commercials you want. Keep your recordings as long as you want. The Man can't keep you down when you're running this system.

    Also, when that commercial flag becomes law (I think it's still up in the air), MythTV plans to use it to identify commercials and intentionally skip them. Eat that, capitalist pigs ;)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by grasshoppa ( 657393 )
      You missed some of the best features; Video storage.

      I burn a backup of my dvds, store them on my myth box. Watch them whenever I want, with just the click of a button.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nizo ( 81281 ) *
        What hardware are you using (specifically, which tuner card(s))? And are you doing TV out, and again with what specific hardware?
        • Actually, just using a plain old nvidia card with TV out. Some config tweaks, and it outputs to the TV. The TV is of pretty poor quality, however, so any signal loss isn't noticed.

          One of these days I'm actually going to drop the coin on a decently sized monitor ( 20in+ ), and just go that route for TV.

    • Seconded! (Score:5, Informative)

      by drewzhrodague ( 606182 ) <drew@nOsPaM.zhrodague.net> on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:15PM (#16081669) Homepage Journal
      Seconded! MythTV is friggin' awesome. It eats the commercials, shares the shows over the network (NFS and SMB), lets me dump my MP3s onto it for playing, supports multiple heads (and backends), and more. I don't even use half the features of the software, and it still blows me away.

      I'm using KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv], and was totally amazed how easily everything installed. Yes I did have to tweak LiRC [lirc.org], and a few other things.

      I'm getting ready do build another unit into my house, and look forward to the extra features in the new version.

    • Re:A Year of MythTV (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:27PM (#16081766)
      Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition.

      I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you. Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box. I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either. The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often.

      This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal.

      I sound like an MS shill, I know, but for all of MythTV's strengths, it's not for everyone.

      -Erwos

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jidar ( 83795 )
        Security? What? How is it hard? I mean if you're really that worried about it make the whole thing an unrouted private network. You can access it through a second NIC on your workstation if you must.
      • You can get any Xbox from eBay for less than $100 and install MythTV on it using a softmod to use as a Myth front end. It has enough CPU power to do everything except play back HD content (it can upscale DVD to HD fine)...

        I would like you to find a Windows media Center Extender for less than $100....

        And as far as your protocol issue - ssh into the Xbox/Myth frontend, apt-get update- apt-get upgrade. Done. The front end updates when the back end does.
        • You can use the Xbox as a media center extender, too. So, yes, I can find one for under $100, as you said.

          Your magical apt-get trick only works if you're using Debian. Those of us who are running custom embedded hardware, such as the Hauppauge MediaMVP, really don't get that option.

          -Erwos

      • Re:A Year of MythTV (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @01:42PM (#16082418) Homepage
        Comparing WMCE to mythtv is like comparing a burning car in a junkyard to a new fararri. Windows Media center edition is 100% pure unadulterated crap. it sucks so bad that it spawned people to build things like Mediaportal that blow away every bit of MCE in every possible way. I have helped convert many Windows Media Center machines from the buggy as hell Media center to Media portal + XP pro and gave the users more features, higher stability and removed ALL the damned MCE DRM it adds to your recordings.

        Mythtv is far superior and wows the hell out of people... even the Diehard windows guys drop their jaws when I plug into CATV and start tuning the digital Cable channels directly... something that is 100% impossible under windows because of "safety" features built in the driver.

        I personally prefer mediaportal, but nobody in their right mind can like Media Center edition.. ot simply sucks and feels half done in every part of it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Monkey ( 16966 )
          Mediaportal that blow away every bit of MCE in every possible way

          Not entirely true. Mediaportal cannot stream video to the Xbox 360. This is an important feature for a lot of people who own this console.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jerkychew ( 80913 )
        Well, it's all a matter of what you want. Like most OSS vs closed software, the question comes down to: How much is your time worth, and how much flexibility do you want?

        You could run Tivo and have a quick setup, nice interface, and good support. But you gotta pay for the subscription, and you can't (legally) remove the DRM from the recordings or push anything from your PC to your tivo other than .tivo files.

        You could run MCE with a little more tweaking. You could view movies stored on your server from your

    • Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

      Not to rag on Myth, but yes you can... I watch TiVo recorded programs on my Mac and Windows boxes over the net, burn them to DVD, and with a little hacking (I'd hardly call running a bash script hacking though) I can stream video to my tivo from any PC on my network. All of this without DRM.

      Now, back to Myth - I'm sure it's a great application, and I'd probably be usin

      • Current FCC rules do not allow broadcast stations to encrypt, nor do they allow the cable companies to encrypt the local broadcast feeds ("basic cable").

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      Sure, sure, you can do this with Tivo. But can you also watch those recorded shows over your home network on other PCs? Burn to DVD?

      tivo can with lots of hacking and/or spending money for "home network option" or you can buy a replayTV and do it without anything special.

      Things I want from myth that I have on my windows based Mediaportal... Podcasts. I should be able to subscribe to "channel frederator" and simply watch it's episodes... mediaportal this works perfectly... mythtv is much harder or I need t
    • A full multimedia centre:

      Audio:
      Full multimedia jukebox; MP3 shuffle mode with a mood classifier. Choose the mood you're in, or want and it'll find & play appropriate music, with effects.

      Video:
      Auto-record tv shows I might like continuously into free space, based on a classification of the title, description, actors, director etc.

      Basically, a bit of intelligence on the part of the software. There are a bunch of geek features which frankly don't care about, like watching shows over a networ

  • Any word on knoppmyth? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Churla ( 936633 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:00PM (#16081541)
    Any word on when this build will be on a Knoppmyth [mysettopbox.tv] ISO?

    • Re:Any word on knoppmyth? (Score:4, Informative)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:11PM (#16081638) Journal
      I'd like to know that too, because I don't bother with MythTV upgrades until it comes out as Knoppmyth on an ISO. Maybe it's just the nature of my particular setup, but it took me *weeks* of tinkering and pouring over message threads to get my Myth box working exactly like I wanted it to. I would have just given up in frustration if the main "core" of the thing wasn't made easier to get going via Knoppmyth.

      In the past, it seemed like it took the Knoppmyth developers at least 1-2 months to release a new ISO based on a Myth update though, so this isn't something I'd really expect to see from them in the next few days or anything.
    • Also, how much is involved with upgrading an existing knoppmyth box to a newer version? I set up knoppmyth maybe 6 months ago, and still have work to do, but the basic things I want it to do are working and working great. Seems like when I was setting things up and tried "upgrading" and it blew away all of my settings - not just the mythtv settings, but VNC, openssh, samba shares, all were gone after running their "upgrade". Maybe I just did it wrong?
      • A Knoppmyth upgrade is actually more of a wipe-and-install system. The scripts maintain your database and media files, but the OS and its various settings are reset to defaults as determined by the Knoppmyth maintainers. This is by design, since it allows them to upgrade from many disparate earlier versions to the latest. It is a drag to re-initialize my SMB and Webmin settings, and reset the password for MythWeb, and re-initialize my LVM volumes... You know, I'm probably not making this sound better fo
        • Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. Ah well.....guess I'll keep an eye on things. If it gets to the point where I really have to upgrade, I'll probably just wipe it out and start things over. By then, maybe I'll be even more familiar with linux that I can script out most of the setup that I've done. Woohoo!
  • This article is misterious: the reader is anonymous even if he doesn't say anything that could be [insert-bad-reaction]. And the dept is "build your own" Build my own install? o.O
    Anyway, I allways wanted to try it out but didn't ever download it. I guess it's the right time!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Alizarin Erythrosin ( 457981 )
      I would recommend this excellent guide [wilsonet.com] for installing it on Fedora. I use FC3/myth at home currently, and it works wonders.
      • Bear in mind though, that despite Axel Thimm's best efforts, it might be a few days before truly stable RPMs are available through APT or YUM. I'm going to hold out for the weekend or next weekend and do the upgrade.

        Yes, I've been running it on FC3 for well over 18 months now, and I used that same guide for the setup. Despite a few stumbles in my setup (serial connection to satellite receiver etc.) it worked like a champ first time. It just got better with 0.19 and now I'm really excited about the 0.20 chan

  • PVR for me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drewzhrodague ( 606182 ) <drew@nOsPaM.zhrodague.net> on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:19PM (#16081699) Homepage Journal
    I have to pipe-up again, and say that MythTV is awesome. If you've got a tuner card, and a spare box, totally check it out. IT EATS COMMERCIALS, plays DVDs, MP3s, does a photo album, and other things that other units don't do, or don't do well.

    It even has support for MAME.

  • Controlling Cablebox? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:20PM (#16081715) Homepage Journal
    Can MythTV control my existing cablebox (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250)? It's got a USB port, what looks like a smartcard slot, and analog+digital audio/video outs.

    If I could use the cablebox's tuner, maybe I would need only a video digitizer, or even just transcoder. It would be great to use the cablebox to covert digital video signals to TV. I've already got the cablebox and TV, I'd like to spend that money on better quality for the parts I actually require.
    • Can MythTV control my existing cablebox (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250)?

      You can tell Myth to fire up an external program to change channel - I have a shell script to send IR commands to my Sky box.
    • I control my external cablebox with an IR emitter I bought for something around $8. Essentially, the myth box pretends it's a remote control for the cable box.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by SvetBeard ( 922070 )

      Can MythTV control my existing cablebox (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250)? It's got a USB port

      You basically have to Google around for more information specific to your setup, but MythTV can control external boxes (by calling external scripts). You'll need either an IR blaster or a proper cable and know how to interface with your cablebox's USB port. Don't forget that you'll also need A/V in on the tuner card.

      It can be frustrating, though. I have DirecTV now. The box has a USB port, but it requires a U

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by LazyBoy ( 128384 )
      I believe that's one of the boxes Myth can control via firewire.
      If not, you'll need an IR emmiter (Tivo would need this too).

      LB
  • Will Myth ever support Cablecard? it is a better (imho) platform than WMCE but I and my friends still lease the catv MOTO DVRs because it is the only way to decrypt HD channels like ESPN, and watch sports subscriptions like NHL Center Ice., so untill cablecard is supported in these things, it is prettu useless for anyone without a tower and an antenna.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tji ( 74570 )
      It's doubtful that any open source application will be able to use cablecard because of their usage restriction requirements. If it is possible in the future, it would have to also include a bunch of restrictions to MythTV functionality (i.e. the data cannot be unencrypted on the system, so all the editing, transcoding, sharing type stuff is out of the question).

      But, as it is today, my MythTV box works well with all my local channels via HD Cable. The one channel I would really like to be able to acc
    • Will Myth ever support Cablecard?

      Doubtful, unless some hardware manufacturer builds a CC-equipped tuner that can be plugged directly into a PC. Unfortunately there probably isn't a whole lot of demand for that, at least not currently, so the chances of seeing one any time soon are probably pretty slim...

      That's the only reason I'll consider buying one of the new HD TiVo's (aka Series 3) that should be released soon. Rumor has it that TiVo will be announcing it as early as tomorrow. The downside is that it

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by SkiItIfYouCan ( 523527 )
        I think you are wrong about transfering the service. I believe the lifetime service option is for the life of the box, not transferable to other Tivos. Sorry.
        • I think you are wrong about transfering the service.

          Any TiVo that has a lifetime subscription purchased on or before January 21,2000 is eligible for a one-time transfer to a new TiVo, including the S3. Check out the post here [tivocommunity.com] on the TiVo forum by a TiVo employee.
    • Can you clarify something for me?

      I'm actually building a Myth box right now and one of my goals is to record NHL Center Ice. I don't even have digital cable yet, just analog, so I'm a little unclear on it.

      How come you can't use the Coax-out (or composite or S-Video or whatever) of the Set Top Box and keep your Myth box always on Channel 3, and record whatever output? I had assumed I'd be able to record Center Ice that way. Do you mean not being able to record it in HD? I guess that does make sense. But y

  • The funny thing... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:24PM (#16081739) Journal
    I remember when using beta versions of software seemed super-cutting-edge, and <1.0 software was something almost no users had ever seen.

    Nowadays, thanks to Netcscape and Google, beta is the final state of software. And after years of Linux, an escalation to 0.20 is a perfectly reasonable user upgrade.

  • I been loving it since.19. I have a DVB pci card a dishnetwork smartcard, and I can record digitaly with all and AC3 sound. I wish I could do that with directv, but linux does not have DSS support. There are DSS tuners, but they just work with windows. Other than that mythtv is awesome.
    • Indeed, I'm also quite interested. I doubt it can do HD recording (or can it?), but I'd be quite interested to know more. I want to simplify things around the house, and do so at a minimal cost--the $199 lease upgrade fee for a new HD PVR from Dish is a bit much.

  • MythArchive for me! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kravlor ( 597242 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:26PM (#16081758) Homepage
    I've been happily running a set of Myth boxen for more than a year now, and while I love the system, the one feature I had been sorely waiting for was an easy way to export to DVD. While a more involved method was possible, I look forward to being able to just create an ISO directly from Myth itself. Keep up the good work!

  • MythTV rules (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Captain_Chaos ( 103843 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:45PM (#16081920)
    I just finished setting up my home MythTV system. It rocks! I've got my digital cable connected directly to my backend using a PCI DVB-C card, and my projector is connected to my frontend using a DVI cable, so the backend can record the MPEG-2 streams directly to disk with no quality loss whatsoever (and including all the audio and subtitle tracks), and then the frontend can display them on my wall with not a single bit of quality loss in between! Plus it plays my videos and my music, it lets me skip commercial breaks (which it has automatically tagged for me), watch DVD's, play legacy games with MAME, etc., etc.

    It really is a fantastic piece of kit. It can be pretty finicky to set up and you need to be prepared to invest some serious amount of time, but it's worth it!
  • I really, really, really wish this would run on my Mac, back end and all.

    Is no one working on porting it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Thumper_SVX ( 239525 )
      The frontend already runs on Mac, but the backend? Eeehhhhhh... no.

      I think the primary reason is that the majority of Mac owners who are interested in this kind of setup are usually the kind who have a Mini for hacking. No encoding capability. Myself, I run a Macbook Pro; no supported encoders there either. To get PCI, you gotta get a Mac Pro; an expensive proposition. Most people who would build a Myth box are building it from commodity hardware or from their own "bits boxes". In other words, doing it on t

  • HDTV Lockout (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Krondor ( 306666 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:54PM (#16082007) Homepage
    I love MythTV. I'm very excited to try 0.20 (UPnP especially). It's a great piece of software and IMO handily beats MCE (though I hear BeyondTV puts up a fight). The level of control is great, I absolutely like to OWN my media. I have a looming fear though that poor MythTV is about to get 'shafted' so to speak.

    MythTV has HDTV support for broadcast and Cable HD, but lacks a means of decrypting these streams. In fact, PCs in general do at this point, but I suspect that will change. Vista MCE will undoubtedly have encrypted HDTV playback support, Tivo as well (if it doesn't already). How is a free OSS solution like this to compete against imposed proprietary restrictions? I smell a DeCSS debacle all over again. Perhaps it will get cracked. Maybe I can still watch my streams if I subjugate myself to a DMCA violation or two.

    Lets face it, another case of a superior product getting kicked to the curb by an industry that likes to wear tinfoil hats at the detriment of its consumers. I guess I have a decision in the future. Use the software I love and watch the shows it can view, or relinquish control impair my viewing experience and broaden my media options. I think I'll stay with Myth, the studios just lost a viewer (though I doubt they'll notice).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Captain_Chaos ( 103843 )

      MythTV has HDTV support for broadcast and Cable HD, but lacks a means of decrypting these streams.

      There seems to be a lot of this going around. It must be an American thing, perhaps something to do with ATSC, the DMCA, the FCC or some other three or four letter word? Like I said in another post, I can watch encrypted HDTV channels fine with my DVB-C PCI card (specifically, a Technotrend Budget C-1500 [technotrend.de]). But I think DVB is the European standard.

  • One Problem (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ucaledek ( 887701 )
    I just dropped my myth box which I had struggled with for the last few months. Admittedly, I didn't know much about Linux beforehand, just the basics so I wanted to use myth as a learning tool. I didn't mind that struggle at all. Setting up in the end was easy and relatively painless once I understood some Perl basics etc. Myth's qualities are not overstated above. Authoring DVDs of recordings was a bit of a hassle, but it seems with those release notes it might have gotten better. I could even archiv

  • MythTV light (Score:3, Interesting)

    by claes ( 25551 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:55PM (#16082014)
    Below is my PVR. I "at" to schedule a program:
    #at 18:00
    warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
    at> rectv 1 1h simpsons
    at> <EOT>
    job 18 at 2006-09-12 18:00

    #!/bin/sh
     
    if [ -z "$3" ]; then
        echo "too few arguments"
        echo "Usage: record-tv channel duration name "
        echo "channel: 1-9"
        echo "duration: 30m, 1h"
        echo "name: simpsons"
        exit 1
    fi
     
    CHANNEL=$1
    DURATION=$2
    NAME=$3
     
    BITRA TE=4000000
     
    VIDEO_DIR=/home/claes/media/video/re cording/
     
    FCHANNEL[1]=E5
    FCHANNEL[2]=E7
    FCHANN EL[3]=SE16
    FCHANNEL[4]=E6
    FCHANNEL[5]=SE19
    FCHA NNEL[6]=SE20
    FCHANNEL[7]=SE17
    FCHANNEL[8]=SE13
        FCHANNEL[9]=SE14
     
    #Set channel
    ivtv-tune -teurope-west -d /dev/video0 -c ${FCHANNEL[CHANNEL]}
     
    #Set quality
    ivtvctl -d /dev/video0 -c bitrate=$BITRATE
     
    #Start recording
    mkdir -p $VIDEO_DIR #Just in case it does nto work
    cat /dev/video0 > $VIDEO_DIR/$NAME.mpg &
     
    CAT_PID=$!
    # $! is PID of last job running in background.
     
    sleep $DURATION
    kill $CAT_PID
    The resulting simpsons.mpg I play using XBMC.

  • Google Summer of Code (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Viper_Viper ( 881780 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @12:57PM (#16082023) Homepage
    Any idea when the Google Summer of Code projects will be included in MythTV? I am guessing .21? These projects are going to be very usefull to MythTV, especially the AutoConfig, Make Myth Multi-user, and the Windows Port. http://code.google.com/soc/mythtv/about.html [google.com]
  • I've had one of these for about five months and while it was a PITA to install, it definitely increased my e-penis with the local LUG. It looks great and is popular in the household.

    Is it easy to install? No. Myth isn't an application, it's a platform inside Linux relying on MySQL, Apache, PHP, tuner drivers, lirc drivers, and the willingness to tweak the things which aren't guaranteed to work correctly out of the box (e.g. PHP5 not registering itself as a MIME type with Apache 2, streaming requiring not on
  • I'm a little curious if anyone has had any experience with scripting the recording of live content with MythTV? I have a database that I want to use that will determine what the file should be called. Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated. I thought about doing it with ffmpeg and a perl script but I'm new to both and can't find syntax that will work with more than one tuner at a time. I am trying to capture, encode, and catalog 4 video streams all at once. I've done it with virtual dub but I can

  • OSS Versioning (Score:3, Interesting)

    by _Neurotic ( 39687 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @02:18PM (#16082820) Journal
    Has anyone else ever wondered why so many OSS projects are afraid to ever reach v1.0? Here's an example of a project that has been in development since 2002. It's undergone cycles of feature additions and bug fixes, and it's just now hitting version 0.20?

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close