Preview the New MythTV User Interface 229
Tombstone-f sent in a cool update on a project that I continue to keep an eye on. MythTV has become a dominant force in the do-it-yourself media-mega-box space, so any improvements to the UI matter significantly. "One of the biggest new features of the next version of MythTV (version .22) will be its new user interface. This new interface will offer many new features to MythTV, including animation, better interactivity, and faster and easier development for themers and developers alike." I think it still has a ways to go to compete with some of the more mainstream PVR boxes in terms of minimalism and good use of whitespace, but hopefully the improvements will get more people into the door.
News? (Score:2, Insightful)
Style over substance (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole thing is such a PITA to set up and keep going without something or other packing up (usually the programme guide) that it makes it worthwhile paying £60 for Windows MCE just to save your sanity.
Re:Just dumped MythTV (Score:4, Insightful)
At a glance, I would say no - at the moment it looks more like technical infrastructure for new themes, rather then a full blown new look for the software.
MythTV really is meant to be for watching and recording TV, there's a clue to that in the name. For what you describe XBMC, especially with some of the newer high resolution themes, is easily a better choice.
Re:Considering now...NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
I ended up with XP and SageTV. That product took a total of 20 minutes to install and configure (including my huge media library) and not hours to get nothing like mythtv.
Re:Considering now...NOT (Score:4, Insightful)
I used Mythbuntu to install my current setup. It was as easy as anything else has been in Windows. Boot from CD, answer some questions, let it copy files and reboot. Then tell it that it's OK to install the binary NVidia driver and that all worked fine. I did have to tweak the XOrg.conf a little, but I understand that the new release of XOrg doesn't even require the conf file now. And my changes were more to make the TV output a little more how I like it than anything else, it worked fine out of the box. Then I told Myth what my tuner device was (HDHomeRun) and it found it and did a channel scan. Then I gave it my login info to Schedules Direct and it was up and running. Probably about an hours work from CD boot to working Myth install.
Note that I did pick my hardware for Linux and Myth compatibility. I knew that's what I was going to be using the hardware for, so I chose accordingly. It's still a hacker's TiVo, but I hacked my TiVo boxes, and Myth was easier than that.
Re:Pointless chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me correct that for you.
If I had a no-name brand capture card from some fly-by-night taiwanese company, this might make sense, but there is NO excuse for one of the two big players in the industry not supporting their hardware on Linux .
Myth shouldn't be struggling to support hardware. You think Microsoft have to reverse engineer and hack away at every card to make it work with their media center? The folks at ATI should be making sure something like a capture card works properly on linux with mythtv.
Re:Considering now...NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pointless chrome (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're confusing the stupidity that the "We're ATI, Of Course We Have Drivers, Which Version of Windows XP Do You Have?" crowd with the "We're Linux, Please Just Release Some Damn Specs So We Can Support The Hardware Already" crowd. There's a difference, you know.
Remember, that address again is Investor.Relations@amd.com.
Re:Pointless chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Microsoft sits down for a bit and thinks about how they can best support a particular kind of hardware. They sometimes call up the relevant hardware manufacturers and say "hey, helps up define the API for this." After a few months they come away with an API that clearly defines what they hardware manufacturer is responsible for, what Microsoft is responsible for, what the basic functionality is. Then they stick to it. They don't change shit on a whim because "it's better this way." Thus the hardware vendors don't have to rewrite their drivers every few months just to provide the same functionality they had in the first place.
True, sometimes Microsoft fucks this process up and the standard just isn't right (wrong functionality, wrong prediction of what the future holds for a particular technology.) But quite often they're right, or at least right enough.
Linux might get more buy in if hardware vendors didn't have to commit to a full time employee rewriting drivers to suit the whims of some hobbyist on a caffeine and sugar bender.
Re:Best hardware to put it on? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's worth remembering you only need a client in the living room.
I'd imagine you quickly end up with hundreds of GB of video, so you want some kind of RAID to protect from drive failure. That means multiple disks which tends to mean bigger box, more heat more fans and more noise.
Personally I'm using xbmc not having much need to record live TV. I run it on an eeebox that I picked up for $300. It's tiny. It draws 20 watts, is practically silent, runs 24x7 and can play up to 720P. It has DVI out so can be hooked up to HDMI and has optical audio out if you want to connect the sound to your amp.
It fills all my needs. If I was deploying Myth, I'd be looking for a tower with plenty of cooling to live in a cupboard and use something like an eeebox as the client.
Re:Pointless chrome (Score:4, Insightful)
"If I had a no-name brand capture card from some fly-by-night taiwanese company, this might make sense, but there is NO excuse for Linux not supporting hardware from one of the two big players in the industry."
There is plenty of excuse. The biggest players in the industry tend to be the ones that don't give a damn about Linux and hence refuse to provide documentation. ATI TV cards are notorious in this regard - The AMD purchase/merger seems to be helping in this regard, but ATI cards (not just TV cards but graphics in general) had a very long track record of poor Linux support due to lack of manufacturer cooperation.
Maybe you should've given your business to a vendor that actually cares about Linux and has even given sample hardware to select Linux driver/application developers for driver development and testing. Hauppauge is a good place to start - they don't officially support Linux but are VERY cooperative as far as giving driver developers documentation, support, and even in some cases early access to new hardware (such as with the HD-PVR 1212).
Mod Up, +1 Insightful Please (Score:2, Insightful)
All the responses posted to this one - especially those labeled "insightful" have themselves been either flamebait or ridiculous, while this one got the bad break of an early mod-down by a linux partisan who can't face the real problems within Linux.
Linux, at its core, is NOT user friendly. You can whine and complain all you like, but when normal hardware requires a ton of command-line stuff to push through and a script from a wiki site that may or may not work on YOUR particular distribution (and there's no standard between the distros) it is a LINUX problem that doesn't go away just because Linux people shout "we hate Micro$oft" really loudly.
The Linux community HAS to get beyond the idea that people ought to be building boxes specifically to run Linux. Parent post is a GREAT example of this: someone who's run a windows-based PVR for years, who gives Linux and MythTV a try, and finds out it doesn't work right.
This is the kind of person the Linux crowd is trying to convert to their cause, and yet what do they do when he gives them a shot? When he comes for help, does the Linux community help? Do they deal honestly and openly and say "yeah, we're having some trouble with this hardware right now, we're working on it and sorry it didn't work right"?
No.
He gets an insulting and completely undeserved "-1 Flamebait" moderation, he gets a dick posting a bunch of wiki links to old instructions that don't work on the latest distribution any more, and he gets spat on by a bunch of jerks who insult him for "buying the wrong hardware."
One actually insinuates that he's part of some giant DRM cabal simply for making a purchase of certain hardware years ago.
THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE LINUX COMMUNITY. Instead of being honest and open, instead of working on solutions, instead of having the simple integrity necessary to admit that their stuff didn't work and may need to be improved, they shout "heretic" and "burn it at the stake" whenever someone from "the outside" comes in... and these are exactly the kind of people they will one day need to win over if Linux is to succeed and get out of being a niche thing.
You got that?
Re:Mod Up, +1 Insightful Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pointless chrome (Score:2, Insightful)
No, Microsoft sits down for a bit and thinks about how they can best support a particular kind of hardware. They sometimes call up the relevant hardware manufacturers and say "hey, helps up define the API for this."
Man I really wish there was a '-1 Just Plain Factually Incorrect'.
Re:Pointless chrome (Score:3, Insightful)
I've read pretty much all of this thread and so far as I can tell, there is a serious misunderstanding going on here and everyone is now so pissed off that it's hopeless. Here's how I read it:
You *already had* some PVR gear that has been working fine for a number of years.
Some folks occasionally recommend that you try a mythtv solution. So you try it and it fails because of known hardware compatibility problems. Whether these incompatibilities were known by those making recommendations or not is debatable.
This causes you to feel that linux is an epic failure at pvr's.
lather rinse repeat.
Is that a fair assessment of the situation?
Assuming so, and moving on.
So you are correct, IMO, to be upset at people recommending you spend a bunch of money to get the linux solution to work for you. You already have a working solution with already-paid-for hardware. There is no reason for you to spend money just to *try out* another solution.
Likewise, those involved with the linux solution are correct to be upset with you for expecting known incompatible hardware to work properly without serious hoop jumping. They try to maintain reasonably accurate compatibility lists and are rightly annoyed when someone bothers them about their incompatible stuff not working.
The solution is this: In the future, if you decide to upgrade the hardware you might think about choosing hardware that is known to work with *both* products. Then you can actually try out the mythtv solution and make a real comparison and decide which you like, or which suits you better.
But, until someone with authority (like a driver dev) says that your stuff definitely works with linux, don't bother trying because you'll only be frustrated. Meanwhile, you should take a deep breath and stop being overtly inflammatory towards people who are probably genuinely, if misguidedly, trying to help.
hopefully I've provided a balanced approach to this silliness between all of you and we can move on... heh...