MythTV 0.23 Released 214
An anonymous reader writes "After six months of our new accelerated development schedule, MythTV 0.23 is now available. MythTV 0.23 brings a new event system, brand new Python bindings, the beta MythNetvision Internet video plugin, new audio code and surround sound upmixer, several new themes (Arclight and Childish), a greatly improved H.264 decoder, and fixes for analog scanning, among many others. Work towards MythTV 0.24 is in full swing, and has be progressing very well for the last several months. If all goes according to plan, MythTV 0.24 will bring a new MythUI OSD, a nearly rewritten audio subsystem capable of handling 24- and 32-bit audio and up to 8 channels of output, Blu-ray disc and disc structure playback, and various other performance, usability, and flexibility improvements."
Re:Grow some gonads (Score:5, Informative)
Does it really matter to you that much what number the version has? The versioning in MythTV is just a rolling number stating a stable release. It does not state that it is beta or unstable or anything else. If it makes you happy call it 9.10 or 1.0 for all it matters.
0.23 = Stable version as of 10th of May 2010.
0.23-fixes = Stable version + all backported fixes as of the moment you download the code from svn.
Re:Grow some gonads (Score:3, Informative)
Why do we need to follow some arbitrary numbering scheme?
Because it allows major rewrites to be marked as such, allowing you to stick with the stable branch? Just look at KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.0.
Re:Grow some gonads (Score:3, Informative)
Of course the MythTV "marketing department" is looking for ways to get people to use their product, otherwise they wouldn't be releasing at all
Well, not really. If MythTV was a closed source project you could be right. Code gets released by developers because sharing it makes other developers contribute their improvements/fixes back. To have lots of users is nice, but is not in itself the driving motivation to do releases or set a version number.
And part of having a sensible versioning scheme is to make users understand what it means to upgrade to a new release.
No, that's what release notes are for. A version numbers have so many meanings and uses, that it can't be pinned down like that. The version number you seem to suggest is something like Windows 3.1, but even Microsoft has changed that to product names like Windows 98 or Office 2003. The version number used by MythTV just reflects that the developers deem it stable for production environments AND that they will backport some fixes while developing the next version. To sum it up: 0.23 just states that the code is stable.
If you need a marketing name for this version that includes every information you might need to know, I suggest this one: "iMythTV Premium 2010 (Service Pack 0)"
Re:MythTV rant (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Grow some gonads (Score:3, Informative)
0.23 is the numbering system the developers use.
If there were a marketing department this would be MythTV Revision 3.0GS+ or some other stupid name to make people buy it.
But even so the internal 0.23 attached to the build would probably stay the same.
Re:MythTV rant (Score:3, Informative)
I'd never settle for a lesser system (e.g. retail set-top-box) now that I'm used to the power of MythTV.
Clearly you've been using inferior models to arrive at your conclusion. You might want to use one of these http://www.dreambox4u.com/home/models.php [dreambox4u.com] as a benchmark instead. They run Linux, are fairly easy to set up and are very reliable.
Re: recording cable (Score:4, Informative)
Re:MythTV rant (Score:4, Informative)
Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)?
Yes. You can create up to five virtual tuners per tuner card, which will solve this problem.
Does mythweb has a record button on the shedule overview?
This I don't know. I would check, but my Myth box is not connected to the Internet right now.
Does it play DVDs out of the box?
Yes, at least for me it does. (Mythbuntu 10.04)
Does it allow me find© the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)
Sometimes I have copied an episode or a movie straight from the Mythweb interface to some other computer.
Re:MythTV rant (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, like I'm going to buy a box that
1) has only 1 vendor in the US.
2) has so little info on their website, I can barely tell what sort of features the thing has. Commercial skip? No idea. Does it have a good program guide? No idea about that either, since the only screenshot I can find that is even remotely relevent is for the OpenEPG plugin, and what I see there is horrendous looking. Does the system support playback of mkv files? I can't find any indication of what it supports (other than MPEG-2 and h.264, which doesn't tell you much without knowing supported container and audio codecs)
Re:MythTV is really quite good (Score:3, Informative)
> College of mine has digital HDTV and he told me it was a hell to configure it with MythTV
Like any other PVR package, MythTV is essentially just a generic desktop application that runs full screen and tries to ignore the keyboard.
If you have a problem with an HDTV, then that's a generic problem has really has nothing to do with MythTV.
Most TV's are not setup for computer use in mind and many that are screw up important key details (like only supporting 4:3 resolutions on the VGA port). Many TVs also broadcast bogus pnp data that can be a problem for hardware that's "too trusting". OTOH, those issues are pretty unusual for the recommended hardware.
Yes, it helps to do a little research and see what the recommended gear is.
Re:MythTV rant (Score:2, Informative)
Does it allow me find© the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)
This, at least, is easily done through MythWeb. You can download the file from the interface page of the show you want, and it provides a reasonable file name, at least since 0.21.
Moved to Media Portal (Score:3, Informative)
MythTV is a nice piece of software, but it is still being let down by the level of Linux media hardware support and, on occasion, it's own media support. Playing DVDs reliably and playing things like MKVs still had me plugging in VLC as an external player. The only problem I have with Media Portal is that it doesn't play default subtitle and audios stream within MKVs - it insists on defaulting to English.
All-in-all, I just haven't missed MythTV.
Re:And CableCARD? (Score:3, Informative)
I have FiOS and until MythTV supports CableCARD, it's rather useless.
What, you've never heard of an IR blaster? I've been recording premium content from my cable boxes for the last three years without any problems, and it was probably easier to set up than the nightmare that is CableCARD.
Re:MythTV rant (Score:3, Informative)
Does it record to two files if the shows overlap (due to begin/end padding)? Or does it still decide the two shows conflict, and records only one, or records both but only one partial?
The answer: it depends. MythTV will do the following: if possible, it will record each show in its entirety, with the padding requested by the user (this is configurable on a global and per-recording level). Say you have show A and show B, where show A ends at the same time that show B begins: MythTV it will do its best to preserve both shows, but it's limited by how many tuners you have. With two tuners of equal priority, MythTV will record show A on tuner 1 (including any pre/post padding) and show B on tuner 2 (also including any pre/post padding).
If you only have one tuner, then MythTV obviously can't do that (indeed, no DVR really could). What happens in this case is that MythTV "throws away" the padding in its calculations; so it records show A (but no post-padding) and immediately switches to show B (with no pre-padding). In an ideal world with good schedule data from the TV stations, that would be good enough, but shows often run over/under (which is why you have the "padding" option), so in this case you might lose a few seconds of each show (assuming A runs long and B starts early). MythTV figures that the padding is "nice to have" but, if it can't guarantee that padding, it also figures you'd rather have the show as scheduled than no show at all.
By the way, if you dig deep, most of these things can be modified. MythTV's defaults in this case do what I believe most people would want to do, but they can be extensively modified to taste.
Does mythweb has a record button on the shedule overview? or do I still need to go to the show page, change the state to record, save, and then go back to the shedule?
I don't think it has this as of .22 - it would be handy.
Does it play DVDs out of the box?
. This is distribution specific, and it's not a MythTV problem. In the United States it's illegal to play DVDs in Linux without paying for a decoder license. Many distributions give you easy ways to bypass this restriction at your own peril, and in gentoo with the appropriate use flags everything does indeed work "out of the box."
Does it allow me find© the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)
Mythweb allows direct download of files.
Basicly, MythTV is great for a power user, but is really sucks for the basic user.
I do agree with that sentiment. It does/can do most of what you desire, but it's not obvious due to a murky UI and rather cumbersome setup process. If you aren't interested in tinkering, it's a poor choice.
Re:Grow some gonads (Score:3, Informative)
+1 Insightful. I've been using Myth since 2003 (and keeping it running using the same database from then to now is no mean feat, I can tell you - but that's the only option for people with TV recordings they don't want to delete as Myth has no way of importing random recordings).
This just proves that using a product for a long time doesn't mean you understand the product or are proficient with it. You clearly have no clue.
These are the same problems I read about when I started installing MythTV, and it was a breeze to install for me, and nothing was a feat about MythTV.
But then again, I'm no ordinary user.
In that time the install procedure has changed from "tortuous" to merely "painfully inconvenient" - there's still alot of manual text-editing steps involved, for those of us in the UK at least, and the amount of hoops I've had to jump with for MySQL is atrocious, and anyone else who's run into the various debacles involving charset settings can attest.
I've already switched to XBMC as a frontend UI as it's superior in every way (apart from LIRC setup).
Going on with the nonsense. Like most people that don't know what they are doing but are quick to criticize what they don't understand, you believe configuring all the parts necessary for MythTV to be of any use (disks, TV card, remote, ...) are MythTV itself, which is clearly apparent here.
I agree that MythTV setup (the true one) is far from being user friendly yet, which is a cause of MythTV being a generic product that can be put on most Linux configurations, and offer lots of architectures possibilities.
For now, using external frontends like XBMC is a sure way to lose 3/4 of MythTV features though. But if some user finds it more user friendly, why not.
Not sure it will work with 0.23 though. And sure enough, using XBMC already makes you lose most of 0.22 features.
Re:worth upgrading? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: recording cable (Score:3, Informative)
I'd strongly suggest a HDHomeRun for free to air digital or clear QAM cable TV. If that is too expensive, most Hauppauge cards are supported, though the best dual tuner model HVR-2250 isn't much cheaper than a dual tuner HDHR. pcHDTV cards are also well supported, being specifically Linux hardware.
If you want to record encrypted cable and want it HD, the best choice is a Hauppauge HDPVR encoding from your cable box component output. Though that is pricey. If you still need analog cable, the best is to get a Hauppauge PVR-150/250/350/500 card.
Most cards will require you to use a splitter from your wall outlet into their multiple inputs if they are a dual tuner card, or to split them for multiple single tuner cards. If you have a lot of other splitters in your house cable wiring, you may need to get a high quality digital cable TV amplifier. You can get one on eBay for about $30. Tuner cards need a powerful signal. The HVR-2250 is the only dual tuner card I know of that has one input that is split between the tuners internally.