MythTV - A Personal Video Recorder [LWN.net]

The MythTV project by Isaac Richards is an effort to create a homebrew Personal Video Recorder (PVR).

MythTV is a homebrew PVR project that I've been working on in my spare time. It's been under heavy development for two years, and is now quite useable and featureful.

The project was started in April, 2002, the Background document details the early history and motivation for the creation of MythTV.

The introduction section from the Installing and using MythTV document explains the project in more detail.

MythTV is a suite of programs that allow you to build the mythical home media convergence box on your own using Open Source software and operating systems.

Some of the main features of MythTV include:

Capabilities to pause, fast-forward and rewind live TV.
The ability to record video to a hard drive.
Support for multiple capture cards and cards with multiple inputs.
A client/server model with support for diskless clients.
Support for multiple servers.
The ability to record multiple programs simultaneously.
Support for capture of analog, MPEG-2, MJPEG, DVB, and HDTV streams.
Ability to control set-top boxes.
Support for North American program guide data from Zap2It.com.
Modules for viewing images, the web, RSS feeds, and weather.
Modules for playing MP3 files and DVDs.
Support for web-based control.
Support for multiple themes.

A large collection of screenshots show many of the display and user interface features.

Custom mini-distributions of MythTV are available for the Knoppix and Fedora Core Linux distributions and the XBox and VIA EPIA M hardware platforms. MythTV has also been built on Debian and Mandrake systems.

To set up MythTV, new users should read the Checking prerequisites and System Configuration Requirements documents.

MythTV version 0.17 was released this week, changes include native OS X support, a timestretch function, interface support improvements, a new firewire capture method, and wide screen/HTDV support in the user interface. See the UnderDevelopment document for details.

MythTV would make a good platform for home use, it could also be envisioned as a platform for a commercial video product.

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On the Road with MythTV

Posted Feb 17, 2005 18:08 UTC (Thu) by captbunzo (guest, #1234) [Link]

I travel every week as a computer consulant and MythTV, especially including it's web frontend MythWeb, has made keeping up with my favorite shows very convenient. The ability to login remotely to the web interface is awesome.

A tip for fedora users - check out this page - http://wilsonet.com/mythtv - for an excellent MythTV on Fedora guide. In my opinion, Fedora + this guide is the best and easiest way to get a MythTV box setup.

And that's coming from a Debian freak who switched his MythTV box over to Fedora after 7 years of using Debian.

If anyone needs any tips on transcoding files into smaller versions for easier remote download and viewing, give me a holler. captbunzoREMOVEIFYOURNOTASPAMMER@gmail.com

On the Road with MythTV

Posted Feb 17, 2005 22:13 UTC (Thu) by jeskritt (guest, #4092) [Link]

Also www.lircsetup.com/ tells you how to setup an external LED controller (for say digital cable/satilite boxes) using only 1 instance of lirc on FC3. It's the only place I've seen instructions where you don't have to compile a custom version of lirc. The instructions are pretty generic so should work on other distros.

MythTV - A Personal Video Recorder

Posted Feb 17, 2005 20:14 UTC (Thu) by smeg4brains (subscriber, #207) [Link]

Tivo is still a lot easier and better for your average user, but MythTV really is very impressive (and sports many more features).

I wouldn't go to MythTV expecting to save a ton of $$ and still get the same performance as a tivo (unless you have a really impressive pile of spare parts laying around already..including something like a PVR-250 or PVR-350 card).. If you're going to go MythTV, do it for the fun and the geek factor, or if you need something that really scales up. Otherwise Tivo is still a better solution, and you can still have tons of fun hacking the heck out of it too.

I've had a Tivo for about 4 years now, and for the last 2 I've been using MythTV to catch programs that were conflicting in Tivo. I originally thought I'd eventually switch my main setup over to MythTV, but it could never quite match the convenience and ease of use of a Tivo. Too bad for my parents that were going to inherit my old Tivo when I changed over.

MythTV - A Personal Video Recorder

Posted Feb 24, 2005 15:19 UTC (Thu) by TuftedPuffin (guest, #27584) [Link]

There are a few reasons one might choose MythTV over Tivo that could override the convenience factor.

One is the subscription service. If you want to use Tivo, you have to continue to pay for it. A MythTV box is yours with no subscription necessary.

The second is privacy, or lack of it. A Tivo system reports what you're doing with it. What shows you watch, which parts you skip, which parts you replay over and over. Maybe they connect that to your personal info, maybe not, but they certainly have the capability. Pass me that tinfoil, please... :)

A third is the pop-up ads that appear when fast-forwarding over commercials. Not so much the ads themselves, though that burns some, but the fact that Tivo can do things like that. When you bought your Tivo, you didn't have that little "feature," did you? But someone somewhere made a decision to alter a product you'd already bought, and "fixed" your system for you without asking your permission beyond "continued use of the service indicates acceptance." THAT is something that doesn't happen with an open-source project like MythTV. If you want to change something, you (or a technically inclined friend) can modify to your heart's content - your only concerns are on the technical side and not the legal.