Finished review: MythTV 0.18.1

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Sorry, the last post got truncated. Here's the whole thing:
I just updated my wife's PVR to MythTV 0.18.1, and I'm really impressed. MythTV is an open source (free) TiVo like application for linux, and, like linux, it's jammed with features that commercial implementors wouldn't dream of.
Here's my setup:
Shuttle SG51 case, 2.6GHz P4, 1GB DDR RAM
Hauppauge WinTV PVR250 TV tuner card
nVidia GeForce FX 5600 video card (fanless)
250GB hard drive, LG DVD+RW drive, ATI RF remote control
Gentoo Linux 2005.1, Kernel 2.6, nVidia drivers, all optimizations
The CPU is *way* overkill for this setup, but I like having clock cycles to spare.
Features at a glance:
Full Tivo-like operation with free program guide content from zap2it
Supports multiple tuners and distributed front and back ends (one MythTV box can connect to several others and share content and recording jobs)
Sophisticated recording priorities system to automatically resolve recording conflicts, with manual override
Automatic commercial flagging for fast skips
After you watch a recording, you can have it automatically recompress to a lower quality and smaller size to save space
Extensive list of plugins: DVD player/ripper, music jukebox with CD ripper based on cdparanoia (almost as good as EAC,) Skype plugin, weather plugin with TV news style graphics and weather radar, RSS reader, picture viewer, web browser, emulator plugin to play MAME games, web server plugin to program your MythTV box over the internet
Basically, it works just like a regular TiVo, but with a lot more features. The learning curve is a bit steeper, if for no other reason than it's so customizable that there are several ways to perform the same operation.
What makes MythTV really nice are all the small touches that programming geeks love to put in their applications. When browsing the previously recorded shows list, a video thumbnail of the show pops up for the highlighted show. If left alone, you could watch the whole show in the tiny thumbnail box. When you watch a DVD, it automatically rips it and puts it in your "videos" media folder. When browsing ripped DVD's, it pulls the movie poster off of the IMDB and displays them as icons over the titles.
The real power comes in it's divorced front-end/back-end configuration. One MythTV user built a video server that runs the backend, with five dual TV tuner cards, and a multi-terrabyte disk array. This feeds a gigabyte ethernet network, linking to small, book-sized computers hooked to each of his TV's. Thus, he can record ten TV shows simultaneously, and watch them from any TV in his house. Same with his music, pictures, home movies, DVD's, etc... The whole setup only cost a couple thousand dollars, the biggest expense were the tiny, silent computers. Of course, you don't *have* to use this configuration; if you have two MythTV boxes they can link to share content, program guide data, and recording jobs.
All this functionality comes at a price, it's pretty hard to install. You need to know a good bit about Linux. If you have fairly standard hardware, you can use a ready-to-roll distribution tailored to running MythTV, such as KnoppMyth, which is based on the popular CD-based Linux distribution Knoppix.
If you're computer-savvy and looking for a nice PVR project, I highly reccomend MythTV. It's under vigorous development, and, although it's still technically in beta, the releases are extensively tested to be stable before distribution.
Similar products tried: TiVo, FreeVo (Open Source) SageTV (Windows) Windows MCE

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Topic - Finished review: MythTV 0.18.1 - jbmcb 08:13:48 10/03/05 (0)

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