Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Television Linux

MythTV 0.23 Released 214

Posted by kdawson from the record-with-daring-and-whimsey dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

MythTV 0.23 Released More

MythTV 0.23 Released

Comments Filter:

  • Grow some gonads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luke has no name ( 1423139 ) <fox.cyberfoxfire@com> on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @04:02AM (#32166740)

    Man up and call a version 1.0! The new 'hip' thing to do, having version 0.x so you can excuse bugs as "Oh, it's just a beta" is bull mess.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, it's starting to become the classic passive-aggressive "tactic" for open source products to avoid any kind of responsibility. Also, it makes them look unprofessional. All these changes, and all they did was increase minor? X.y.z versioning has a well-defined meaning and is used by lots of other open source products, including commercial. Use it! Not only should it make it easier for you to make a proper roadmap, release quick fix releases and so on, but it also makes it easier for users like me to und

      • Re:Grow some gonads (Score:4, Insightful)

        by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @06:45AM (#32167478)
        Don't be too hard on Myth TV. After all it's only some guys hobby, that's outgrown itself. If they want to keep it in a state where they can play around with the code, rather than entering the world of professional standards and expectations then that's their business. It does however raise one helluva red flag for people who want / need / expect a product that comes with proper support and can be relied on.

    • Re:Grow some gonads (Score:5, Informative)

      by managementboy ( 223451 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @04:30AM (#32166856) Homepage

      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by BitZtream ( 692029 )

        You and I have entirely different meanings for the word 'stable'

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You and I have entirely different meanings for the word 'stable'

          Just hold your horses there, buddy.

        • I can't guess what your definition of stable is, but I can tell you mine. It's based on my experience with 0.22 and 0.23. Stable means my mythbackend service runs 24/7 and hardly ever crashes. If it ever crashes, I have a small cron script that detects it and restarts the service. Mythfrontend gets started once a day and hardly ever crashes (I don't leave it open over night).

          Regardless of your or my definition, what counts for a bump in version numbering is what the developers define as stable.

      • Actually, it does make a difference. Granted, most of the people using Myth are probably geeks who understand about point releases, but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time, and the fact that MythTV has been around for, oh, roughly eight years (archive.org's oldest page is July 2002) and is still at such a low point number says to me that there is not much development going on in it. The fact that its a stable release i

        • but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time

          If it makes you feel better, you can call it MythTV 23.0.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ookaze ( 227977 )

          Actually, it does make a difference. Granted, most of the people using Myth are probably geeks who understand about point releases, but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time, and the fact that MythTV has been around for, oh, roughly eight years (archive.org's oldest page is July 2002) and is still at such a low point number says to me that there is not much development going on in it. The fact that its a stable release is moot. If I were to start an operating system, it booted and simply displayed "Hello World" without crashing makes it a stable release - doesn't mean its ready for world wide use.

          No, I agree with the parent. Find a release that is stable and relatively bug free, and call it 1.0 already. This staying at 0.x for 8 years simply says your project is either not organized, lacks proper development, or lacks the balls to release a product that's ready for prime-time.

          All this text just to say : "I won't use it, I can't bash it without looking clueless, so I'll troll the product so that I can repel people from even trying it".
          For what purpose ? God knows.
          If you just need reassuring, lots of MythTV users (including me) are using it for years and it's stable, in the sense that everything I recorded years ago is still available in MythTV, despite several MythTV versions updated already (started with 0.19 through 0.22, sometimes even using SVN versions, and now I'll go to 0.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by gravis777 ( 123605 )

            No, all the text was there to say that, without a 1.0 release, you will probably not find many new users outside of the community of users you already have.

        • Just so you know, 0.23 is not the same thing as 0.2.3. It's the 23rd minor release, it's not in the middle of it's 2nd minor release.

          And MythTV is a hobby project for linux geeks. It likely always will be. I use it and I love it. My wife can use it, but if anything goes wrong, I have to be there to clean it up. And it may take an hour of searching internet forums to find answers.

          It has been around for quite a while now, and it's not hard to set up if someone is willing to put some time and effort
    • It's not worthy of a 1.0. The setup SUCKS. Seriously. It's a PITA to get it going. Until they have a decent installer/install-process at a minimum, this thing shouldn't be 1.0 to warn folks that 'This is not ready for general use by anyone approaching normal folks, and even geeks may get angered by the crappy install process'.

      • +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). 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 j

        • there's still alot of manual text-editing steps involved, for those of us in the UK at least

          MythTV has no text files. The only one it uses is a couple lines to point it at the database. Any manual text editing you may need to do is an external dependency, such as LIRC or XMLTV. It's currently in the near term plans to replace the current setup with a web based one through the backend, move the external MySQL database to an embedded one, and export recordings with a portable metadata file for later import. For what its worth, the current devs don't actually want MythTV to be able to import rand

          • Granted XMLTV is an external dependency, but since Myth is pretty useless without it I would have thought more work might have gone into streamlining its use - heck, even running the setup app in a window rather than fullscreen would have been a massive help in that regard.

            The near term plans of which you speak are, IMHO, stuff that should have been considered years ago back when these problems first started arising en masse. And I don't see why I shouldn't be able to import mythtv recordings into the mytht

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by ookaze ( 227977 )

          +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 neces

      • I haven't tried installing it in 3 years because of this. Is this current knowledge, or a residue from that time? I ask, because if you asked me, I'd say the same. But I *know* my experience is 3 years out-of-date. Has it gotten better?

        I always ran into database issues, and a laggy, unintuitive UI. When your UI doesn't make clear sense, and it lags, a wrong button push spells frustration. My setup wasn't too awful either - an old dell with a huppauge card and remote, and a radeon video card. Between those

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spectro ( 80839 )

      I agree with this, mythtv has been stable enough to be called 1.0 for like 10 years.

      Yes, it is still not perfect but if you compare it to some commercial epic fails such as Windows Vista...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hitmark ( 640295 )

      or how about just dropping the x.y fully, and just go with x+1 for each release?

      first release, 1. Second release, 2. The problem with x.y is that it gives the impression that development started with a set of features planned out, and that 1.0 will be all those features implemented without any obvious bugs.

  • And just in time for H.265/HTML5...

  • MythTV rant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by daid303 ( 843777 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @04:59AM (#32166992)

    MythTV is a mess. I used 0.21 for a while, and it took me quite a while to configure right, the scanning for channels crashed, backend crashed from time to time. The UI is not friendly for a media player.
    I looked under the hood and quickly ran away, database is a mess, codebase is huge.

    I wanted a few simple things:
    -1 machine, which can record TV shows and watch them later
    -Play other media files
    -Have a web interface to choose what to record

    MythTV with MythWeb and MythVideo should be able to do this all, but I never got the other media to work. That with the crashing backend, unfriendly configuration tool and stupid frontend UI. And it has no 'overlap in 2 shows' option, if 2 shows follow eachother on the same channel, why not save the overlapping time in both files? If the 2nd show starts early and I have watched and deleted the first show then I mis the first part of the 2nd show. Totally pissed me off.

    Then I found XBMC, which does a wonderful job at playing media files. But doesn't do any recording. I already had tv_grab_nl_py for guide data, my TV tuner is a simple V4L device that gives an MPEG stream, so 1000 lines of PHP code later I had a daemon that records TV shows, a webinterface where I can select what to record. With thumb generation, reencoding. Basicly I replaced the whole of MythTV with 1000 lines of php and XBMC (in my case) which is running stable for months now.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by managementboy ( 223451 )
      I suggest you try 0.23 as most of your concerns have been addressed.

      • Re:MythTV rant (Score:4, Interesting)

        by daid303 ( 843777 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @06:18AM (#32167334)

        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?
        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?
        Does it play DVDs out of the box?
        Does it allow me find&copy the recorded files to another machine so I can watch them on the road? (searching trough the hashed filenames is no fun)
        (Looks like I missed a few)

        My needs just don't match with the priorities of the MythTV team. Commercial flagging doesn't work here in the netherlands, don't need repeated shows, reencoding options are tough to setup, I don't need scheduling from the frontend, I don't need multiple machines.
        Basicly, MythTV is great for a power user, but is really sucks for the basic user.

        • Re:MythTV rant (Score:4, Informative)

          by juissi ( 1737550 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @06:40AM (#32167450)

          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&copy 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: (Score:2)

            by daid303 ( 843777 )

            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.

            I hope you are joking... right? That's the 'sollution'? And then people wonder why I rant that it's a configuration hell?

            Does it allow me find&copy 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.

            Must have missed the download link in mythweb. My bad.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Nesman64 ( 1093657 )

          Does it allow me find&copy 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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Etherized ( 1038092 )
          MythTV has its weaknesses (mostly UI related), but I'm not sure what you mean by this:

          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,

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by daid303 ( 843777 )

            MythTV has its weaknesses (mostly UI related), but I'm not sure what you mean by this:

            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.

            I forgot to add "on the same channel". What happens is, there are 3 shows that I watch that are on the same channel, and they start after each other. Due to schedules not being very accurate I have 10 minutes padding on both ends. So recording starts 10 minutes before the first show, records the first show, up till the point where the schedule ends, starts with the 2nd show in a new file, same for the 3th show, and then stops recording 10 minutes after the last show.

            As I don't watch everything at once, I fi

      • Oh he could save himself years of pain and just buy a license to Windows 7 Media Center, the frustration of dealing with MythTV for a couple hours taught me that sometimes its well worth paying the MS tax.

        Mark me as a troll but MythTV is crap.

        I will say that the version number does seem to be a good match for its current state of being.

        The problem is, it implement a whole bunch of stuff ... like crap. Nothing in it has any polish or completeness. Its simply a collection of source thrown together by a ra

      • Re:MythTV rant (Score:5, Interesting)

        by vlm ( 69642 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @07:15AM (#32167622)

        I suggest you try 0.23 as most of your concerns have been addressed.

        Except for the hardware problem that makes his backend crash. I know its a hardware problem, not software, because I've been doing what he claims can't be done with the same software, for many years on multiple sets of hardware.

        Most likely outcome is he upgrades the software on the crashy hardware, notice it still crashes, and post to slashdot again that the myth software doesn't work.

        • Well, to be fair, it could also be the kernel. When I had a major hard disk crash, I finally upgraded my Myth system from Fedora 5 to Ubuntu 8.10 on more modern hardware with more RAM, and performance went *down*, while the number of bugs went way up. I went from a rock solid, stable system to:

          1. ivtv demonstrating really really annoying bugs, including random audio problems, and occasional tuner lockups that require a full reboot to fix.
          2. I/O performance problems, such that I suddenly started seeing IOB

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by daid303 ( 843777 )

          I already pointed out in another post that the hardware has been replaced (P3 -> ATOM) and the tuner is a WinTV-PVR-USB2, which runs without problems with my own scripts (and the backend also crashed when not recording)
          Also, the machine runs more then just my media center (webserver, subversion repository, backup jobs) and none of those crash.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TenMinJoe ( 727612 )

      It's a shame that you had a bad experience with MythTV. For the record, to provide some balance:

      I have been using MythTV continually since 0.14, back in 2004. It's always been hard to get it set up in the first place, but this has improved over the years. Anyway, once it *is* set up, it's just fantastic, and I'd never settle for a lesser system (e.g. retail set-top-box) now that I'm used to the power of MythTV.

      With power, comes complexity, but I think it's worth it. I love that I can tell it, e.g. "Record t

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by JayAEU ( 33022 )

        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: (Score:2)

          by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          MythTV (and other PVR/HTPC software) is what you run when an appliance just isn't good enough.

          It might be a bit of a bother but the other options just aren't up to snuff at all.

          If your needs are really simple, there's probably a cheaper appliance out there for you.

      • More balance :)

        I've also been using it since late 2003 and whilst the setup has improved, it's still an utter pain in the arse to setup and configure. Whenever the channel setup changes, I have to manually edit my xmltv entries for the various new channels (using the EPG only provides a week of entries, as opposed to 2 weeks for RT, plus keeps mythbackend running at 30% CPU and occasionally crashing). Keeping the database and filesystem in one piece whenever you rebuild a machine or switch to another distro

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by TenMinJoe ( 727612 )

          I agree that it's hard to set up. I don't agree that it's hard to keep it running.

          You talk about problems when you rebuild the machine, or switch distributions, or upgrade to a new version of MythTV. It's true, those are troublesome. Try to avoid doing those things!

          If you want a MythTV system that works reliably, then build a Myth box, get it into a working state, and then *stop tinkering with it*.

          Obviously as geeks this is hard for us to do - the temptation to upgrade everything to the latest version is gr

          • Pretty much impossible to keep the box in a consistent state - this is a Myth system with two combo backends, three dedicated frontends, and it's used by between seven and nine people. It's got recordings going all the way back, so I've had to keep upgrading from the year dot. Should I note have upgraded it, hardware or software-wise, in all that time?

            The primary backend of myth is also a caretaker for the house - none of the other software on the box ever has problems when I switch to another distro or upg

        • "why can't myth have a "save my database" and "look in this directory for recordings" import , rather than me having to edit my 450MB MySQL database?"

          Don't know the last time you tried, but since at least 0.22, it has exactly this using an included python script. Also I'm no fan of MySQL, but I've never had my database corrupt itself yet, and I've done upgrades every 6 months since MythBuntu 8.10. Wonder if there are other causes?

          I imagine the reason for using the database to store confs (besides the

          • Don't know the last time you tried, but since at least 0.22, it has exactly this using an included python script.

            Last I looked the backup script didn't offer the option to change, e.g. the location of recorded TV shows, so you always need to keep the same paths all the time... so I can't just build myself a new system and import my config into it without editing it first, as paths may well have changed.

            In terms of storing global configurations in the database, I'm all for that and it makes plenty of sense.

            • "Last I looked the backup script didn't offer the option to change, e.g. the location of recorded TV shows, so you always need to keep the same paths all the time...".

              I believe by default all TV recordings go to /var/lib/mythtv/recordings. I don't see value in granulating them further. So if you decide to put recordings on another disk or in a different location on a subsequent install, the easy way is to just symlink the new location to /var/lib/mythtv/recordings and no database edits are necessary. Now
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Did you try a purpose built distro? My experience has been quite the opposite, the only things I ever had to hack was the xorg config, which thank goodness is now not required. My distro of choice is LinHES [linhes.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlm ( 69642 )

        Did you try a purpose built distro? My experience has been quite the opposite,

        And my experience is the opposite of yours, in that big generic distros like Debian and its downstreams like Ubuntu have a large staffing advantage in fixing the problems that develop. Also distros like Debian are install once, upgrade forever. No need to wipe the drive and restart from bare metal when upgrading like other OS, or when the purpose built distro's developers evaporate away. And better security support, important if you make the system available over the internet (remote programming, etc).

        • LinHES is pretty much Arch Linux (previously debian, but I like the way they are doing things far better now) underneath and has quite a thriving community (It's been going since sometime in 2004). They have their own repos and a reasonable amount of packages apart from the standard myth ones. You can in theory add the arch repos to get extra stuff, but it isn't recommended and you can cause some issues if you replace the wrong thing. To note Unisen is available from the repos.

          What I find with the Larger d

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by daid303 ( 843777 )

        I tried mythbuntu at first, but for some unknown reason that didn't install the mythtv package. So I installed normal ubuntu and mythtv on top. I'm no stranger to installing missing packages, or compiling stuff from source, creating databases, and adding startup scripts. And that's not what bothered me (I guess there are distros that set this up for you without issues)

        Just... pick some random person, which computer experiance, start 'myth-setup', give him the keyboard and the mouse, and watch. The 'everythi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Have you looked at the dreambox line? They run linux, support recording and media playback and some of them have modular tuners...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nexus7 ( 2919 )

      OK, well, while we're ranting...

      MythTV and XBMC, which were as of the beginning of this year, the most current/usable Linux HTPC options, seem to be focused solely on the use case of displaying on a TV. Meaning very poor mouse support. Now you'd think the easiest thing is mouse support, because environments like GNOME or KDE/Qt, already have mouse support (I mean, you don't even have to think about it). But MythTV and XBMC bend over backward to take that away. Go to the config screens in MythTV (front and b

  • I have FiOS and until MythTV supports CableCARD, it's rather useless. A google of the site just turns up a dry wiki definition of CableCARD and a bunch of forum postings that degenerate into DRM-related poo flinging.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Abcd1234 ( 188840 )

      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: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      Until I can get a CableCARD PC tuner at Best Buy or Frys, all of this whining about Linux not supporting CableCARD is mindless nonsense.

      If these things ever really see the light of day, I suspect it's only because component tuner(s) are available.

      I can buy one of those at Frys. ...and CableCARD is nothing more than a means to enforce DRM on what used to be an open protocol.

      So you may find your blessed CC recordings less useful that you might like.

  • I have an ATI AllInWonder 9800 Pro TV tuner card for my PC, and a Hauppauge USB TV Tuner stick for my laptop. Both are common as dirt, and neither of them are still supported by MythTV. Bummer.

    • Nor should MythTV support either of those. The LinuxTV [linuxtv.org] project provides hardware support. MythTV will use (with a couple exceptions) any card supported by one of the V4L, DVB, or IVTV APIs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ookaze ( 227977 )

      I have an ATI AllInWonder 9800 Pro TV tuner card for my PC, and a Hauppauge USB TV Tuner stick for my laptop. Both are common as dirt, and neither of them are still supported by MythTV. Bummer.

      It helps to understand what you're talking about though.
      MythTV doesn't support any specific card or stick, the Linux kernel does, and the OS brings in some generic interfaces upon that.
      MythTV then uses that.
      It helps to read the MythTV documentation when you don't know anything about these, before trying to install such a complex application.
      At least it would prevent you from saying stupid things, and direct you to LinuxTV site which lists hardware supported in Linux. I would be surprised your USB stick is n

  • I tried the previous version via mythbuntu, and found it so inconsistent and ugly [shishnet.org] (all those screenshots are from a single theme) that I even filed a bug report about it, but it was marked wontfix on the basis that a new version with new theme would be here in 6 months -- looking at the screenshots on the website I don't see much sign of improvement, can anyone who's used it comment?

  • Moved to Media Portal (Score:3, Informative)

    by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @08:24AM (#32168174)
    I moved to Media Portal a while ago, and while integrating commercial skipping with it is a real pain I haven't missed MythTV. MythTV was great for several months, but I had to replace the system with an Asus Pundit and the level of hardware support for the graphics card was non-existent on a Linux system. In additon, I had problems with the Hauppauge dual tuner and the Linux drivers as it would quite often hang the card. I had no such problems with Windows and reception was far better.

    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.

  • I'll wait a few weeks for the package managers to get any fixes in them, but I fully intend on upgrading soon. It'll probably break my video card setup again, which'll require

    I guess I'm just one of the few folks who are happy with MythTV on /.

    It took a while to get it running smoothly. Plus, I can't think of any other projects that can manage schedules and records HDTV over clearQAM with the flexibility that a MythTV box does.

    It's a pain, but, combined with the helpful folks at KernelLabs.com [kernellabs.com], it's getting

Slashdot Top Deals

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

Close