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Element 1.1 for home theater PCs

Posted Apr 1, 2010 21:15 UTC (Thu) by thoffman (subscriber, #3063)
Parent article: Element 1.1 for home theater PCs

I've set up MythTV once before, and don't want to do it again. But I have this nice new dual-tuner Hauppauge card, and would like to record TV...

Is there any alternative program, or pair of programs that can do:

1. "TV" - View live HDTV by controlling "Video For Linux 2" tuner hardware from a defined channel listing, with basic channel changing & volume control, and windowed / full-screen support.

2. "VCR" - Schedule automatic recordings by channel and time, (same hardware as above) and save the recording with a reasonable name and file format to be played back later. A background recording daemon and separate front end UI might be nice but I'm equally happy to just leave the recorder running.

Ideally, these would be standard GTK2 programs that integrate nicely into a Gnome desktop. But KDE or whatever would be fine too. Just something that works and isn't hideously ugly.

That's it. That's all I want.

MythTV is unsuitable for me, due to a long list of usability problems starting with setup but sadly, not ending there.

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Element 1.1 for home theater PCs

Posted Apr 2, 2010 18:04 UTC (Fri) by waucka (subscriber, #63097) [Link]

If I knew of such a thing, I would be using it, too! MythTV's setup process
is a massive pain.

Element 1.1 for home theater PCs

Posted Apr 2, 2010 18:10 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I built something like that a few years ago, at the cost of about 200 hours of labor (coding, building other people's code, shopping for suitable hardware, etc). I knew something designed for somebody else, like Mythtv, would not satisfy me and some code I could get already written would take me longer to learn and get working that it took me to code it myself.

What I never did get working, and would dearly love, is a wish even simpler than yours: I want a DVD player that plays the movie when I press a button. No menu, fancy wipes, disclaimers, FBI warnings, previews, ads, or logos. Just play. And a related feature: never disable user controls.

It is presumably easy to build such a thing, and I believe lots of people have done it, but I myself have never witnessed a Linux machine playing a DVD. I tried half a dozen DVD players and rippers on Debian Lenny and not one could read my regular Hollywood movie DVD (error messages were unhelpful, but seemed consistent with the proposition that these programs were not designed for anti-ripping features). I was almost successful with the old Mplayer I use on the above mentioned TV recorder. I fixed a few bugs in the DVD code, and then the DVD menus operated and the movie played, but it was too jerky to watch. I know I don't have time to debug and fix that.

Based on my experience and what I've heard from others, I think expecting a software package to meet our needs is a pipe dream. There's too much integration. (My jerky playback might well be unique to my video and/or sound controller). So I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a hardware package I can buy that contains a wide open (i.e. not helpfully concealed from me) Linux OS so I can start from there to customize it to my whims.

Element 1.1 for home theater PCs

Posted Apr 5, 2010 19:46 UTC (Mon) by a9db0 (subscriber, #2181) [Link]

If it's been awhile since you wrestled with MythTV, you might want to give it another try. The .22 series was far easier to setup and use than the previous versions. I'll admit it's no picnic, especially if you run it as I do - a headless backend server and a separate frontend. Makes for some challenging configuration sometimes. But if you can run a unified system it's not that difficult to set up anymore.

If you just want to see it in action, or find out if your hardware will work with Myth, try one of the many prebuilt myth systems - KnoppMyth, Mythbuntu, or MythDora.

Also, the .23 release is about ready (RC2 was out last week) which may improve things further.