MythTV 0.19 Released

slummy writes "After much anticipation, MythTV 0.19 has been released. The release notes outline the new features and bug fixes, and the official announcement for this release is available on the MythTV site." From the release notes: "The major changes in this release [include]: LiveTV rewritten to support saving buffered content while watching. Signal Monitoring for DVB and pcHDTV recorders. Ending times may be changed while recordings are in progress. Playgroups allow for default playback options on recordings. Channel changes can be made across tuners without changing tuners manually first. New popup keyboard simplifies setup using remote. Preview schedule changes when making adjustments to recording schedules. Added ability to control MythFrontend through a telnet socket."

Re:Lazy Question

[A Life in Hell]

a) In particular, could a VIA EPIA-800 system run it (recording, playback, live tv, etc)?

If you've got the hardware mpeg acceleration working (XvMC), then yes. Otherwise, _maybe_.

2) Does it work with DVB-T (digital terrestrial) in the UK? What hardware for PCs can receive DVD-T, or can it use cheap USB receivers?

I'm told it works there too (I'm in australia, who are also dvb-t, using a twinhan card).

3) TV Guide - does it recognise DVB-T 7-day guide and now & next? Digital text?

Yes, but I found I got better results from the internet based guides still - the OTA tv guide seems to be lacking certain information (such as genre in some cases). ymmv depending on your broadcaster.

Re:Perhaps they can make it possible to configure

[croddy]

Are you serious? That doesn't even remotely describe my experience with MythTV. Everything worked smoothly right out of the box -- spending a 5-10 minutes reading the install documentation *can* be very helpful.

There's a good reason your TV gets by without any metadata about the channels it's receiving -- it doesn't have any functionality which makes use of that metadata. It doesn't have to schedule recordings or resolve conflicts. It just has to tune what you tell it to tune, and light up your CRT with the signal.

All that aside, it's very rude for you to criticize something that people are writing and giving away freely on their own time and their own dime. Lots of people have used it successfully. If it doesn't work for you, track down the bugs and either report them or patch them. Vague, general complaints about the developers' priorities are completely out of line.

Enjoy it while it lasts

[bogie]

5 years from now something like MythTV won't even be possible because A) hardware required to receive signals won't be available on linux B) patents C) it will be outright illegal and you will face jailtime for unauthorized recording of your cable feed.

I think Mythtv and the rest of these HTPC packages will eventually hit a brick wall due to greedy broadcasters. Oh free htpc software market, we hardly knew ye...

Going "digital" and the promise of HDTV is one of the biggest scams perpetrated on US consumers in all History.

Re:Ubuntu Breezy packages

[ThreeE]

This would seem to be a bad idea -- installing .debs from someplace random... YMMV.

Re:Perhaps they can make it possible to configure

[ajs]

If it were rude to critisize open source, then Slashdot would be Miss Manners' nemesis. Fortunately, such criticism is part of the process, and has been since at least when I got involved, back in '88.

If you work on something like MythTV, you expect a ton of BWCing, but not all of it is bad. Often, the complaints of users demonstrate those areas that your software is truly lacking. Of course, detailed bug reports are ALWAYS more helpful, but if all the brain power you can spare is that requried for a rant... well, don't think you're the first.

Re:Perhaps they can make it possible to configure

[sulli]

I found that MythTV itself was rather easy to configure. What was hard was all of the subsystems required by MythTV.

And this, dear reader, is why hardly anyone uses MythTV. Who has time to figure out that subsystems are involved, let alone configure them?!

Re:Same in Windows

[jrockway]

Yes. Why? Because nobody cares. If it's too hard for you to do, pay someone to make it easier. Or learn to program and use your skills and time to make it better. Or buy a TiVo and put up with the mandatory ads and whatnot. It's your choice.... whining about how free software is "too hard" isn't going to get you anywhere on slashdot.