MythTV is the best project I've found in years

F

fuxxy

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 16, 2005
Messages
94
Just wanted to hop on the soapbox for a minuite..

Been piddling (and piddling's the word) with this project the last year or so..

Backend is running Gentoo Linux on a P4 2.8Ghz, 4GB RAM, and a combined raid5 volume of 786 Gigs
Hauppauge PVR-150 for analog
Silicondust HDHomerun for digital

Three frontends:
One in living room running Gentoo Linux
One in bedroom running MythBuntu
One on my laptop, Ubuntu desktop build.

the capabilities of this project are insane, I can do everything the commercial DVR's can do, plus more!

High-Definition video capability
Record 3 streams at the same time
Pause playback of a recording on one frontend, and resume playback in another room.
Playback of movie trailers
Playback of video files shared on my network
Playback of music on my network

management through a web-based GUI, with flash video playback
Yes, I can sit at work and watch recordings on my myth backend!

plus much much more :)
 
fuxxy said:
Just wanted to hop on the soapbox for a minuite..

Been piddling (and piddling's the word) with this project the last year or so..

Backend is running Gentoo Linux on a P4 2.8Ghz, 4GB RAM, and a combined raid5 volume of 786 Gigs
Hauppauge PVR-150 for analog
Silicondust HDHomerun for digital

Three frontends:
One in living room running Gentoo Linux
One in bedroom running MythBuntu
One on my laptop, Ubuntu desktop build.

the capabilities of this project are insane, I can do everything the commercial DVR's can do, plus more!

High-Definition video capability
Record 3 streams at the same time
Pause playback of a recording on one frontend, and resume playback in another room.
Playback of movie trailers
Playback of video files shared on my network
Playback of music on my network

management through a web-based GUI, with flash video playback
Yes, I can sit at work and watch recordings on my myth backend!

plus much much more :)
Click to expand...

Yeah I've been using it at home. Not bad at all. Keep an eye out for 0.22 UI should move to QT4 and Open GL.
 
0.22's gonna open up a whole new branch of features, in addition to the OpenGL and QT4 dependancies.

one of the mythtv devs is working on a "home theater" style patch that will offer to play X number of new movie preview trailers (I'm assuming from appple trailers, or mabye a trailer directory on the hard drive?) before playing the "Feature Movie"

For those that have "movie night", I'm sure will be pleased :)
 
Anyone knows if it works well with the HD-PVR? I'm just finishing up my trial periods of SageTV and BeyondTV and I'd rather not pay for SageTV if something just as good is available open source. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare system I can put a full linux install on atm to try it.
 
Thanks for the link, looks like driver support for it is still in alpha since there is no official Linux support from Hauppauge (no surprise). I'll have to check it out later when I have a free box, but will probably end up buying sageTV For now.
 
If all you're wanting to do is stream videos from another source, MythTV may not be the solution for you.

Don't get me wrong, myth will do what you want, but it's geared more towards recording streams and playing them back rather than simply streaming a source somewhere else.
 
Also there are no linux drivers for the 2250 yet, so your choices would be limited to some other platform, Most likely windows, and whatever else hauppauge supports
 
mythtv is great if you want to run linux..... for use PC people sagetv, mediaportal, GB-PVR, beyondtv and VMC are all nice
 
Adidas - agreed. There is a Windows frontend port getting some steam, but it's nowhere near usable as a day-to-day frontend.
 
fuxxy said:
Adidas - agreed. There is a Windows frontend port getting some steam, but it's nowhere near usable as a day-to-day frontend.
Click to expand...

In addition some of the windows variants will make you pay per client on top of subscription fees. Something that could conceivably start as a cheap HTPC system could end up costing more money than just settling for the cable provider.
 
I loved mythtv when I was using it. Nothing came close to it in the server/client (backend/frontend) setup they had going. Only reason I switched to a windows solution was due to its hindrances on the HD side, namely lack of gpu acceleration and very little support for bluray/hd dvd. I recently slapped mythbuntu on my workstation for the occasional time I want to watch some tube while working. Setup is easier than ever. Took me a whole 5 minutes to be able to watch/record tv. I am hoping that the recent releases will address the gpu offloading so I can give it a go again.
 
quique55 said:
I loved mythtv when I was using it. Nothing came close to it in the server/client (backend/frontend) setup they had going. Only reason I switched to a windows solution was due to its hindrances on the HD side, namely lack of gpu acceleration and very little support for bluray/hd dvd. I recently slapped mythbuntu on my workstation for the occasional time I want to watch some tube while working. Setup is easier than ever. Took me a whole 5 minutes to be able to watch/record tv. I am hoping that the recent releases will address the gpu offloading so I can give it a go again.
Click to expand...

What GPU do you have?
 
right now at the moment I am rolling with nvidia 8200 igp boards which take care of everything on the windows side.
 
Never heard of this before. However it is quite interesting to say the least :).
 
might have to switch back. I can use my ps3 for bluray. I dont have the storage to rip those movies to hard drives.
 
Verge said:
Record something off HBO....



oh snap !
Click to expand...

You can record from HBO. The setup is different though. But it is possible. CableCard support is the problem, but as I've said before if you adjust the setup. There's no problems.
 
kac77 said:
You can record from HBO. The setup is different though. But it is possible. CableCard support is the problem, but as I've said before if you adjust the setup. There's no problems.
Click to expand...


Does anybody in the nation have cablecard yet ?


Either way, i'm interested to know how you plan on recording a digital channel with mythtv?

Do you have some sort of HDMI input?
 
Well, cablecard is out there and available, but I haven't heard of anybody getting it working on anything but an OEM windows install. As I recall, there is a motherboard flash that it needs, plus an additional windows activation, before it will work. But even if you do get that working in Windows, it won't record PPV. So I think that perhaps the HD PVR would be your solution to record HBO in mythtv, although you won't get 1080p. So really no matter which way you go (windows or linux), there is going to be a limitation.
 
mryerse said:
Well, cablecard is out there and available, but I haven't heard of anybody getting it working on anything but an OEM windows install. As I recall, there is a motherboard flash that it needs, plus an additional windows activation, before it will work. But even if you do get that working in Windows, it won't record PPV. So I think that perhaps the HD PVR would be your solution to record HBO in mythtv, although you won't get 1080p. So really no matter which way you go (windows or linux), there is going to be a limitation.
Click to expand...

Well this is how you would do it. My box has coax so my mythbox is set to channel 3. I have an IR blaster than changes the channels on the cable box. So I get all of the channels, even PPV. As far as being downsampled It's kind of hard to tell. My card doesn't honor all of the downsampling rules so I get channels in 1080 that some probably don't. Hauppage is coming out with a component tuner however, which should solve the down sampling problem. That should have myth support in 0.22.
 
Getting Netflix through Myth would be a real perk. I installed the Boxee alpha on my Ubuntu install but still no netflix at this time.
 
So it has GPU acceleration now? I know the nvidia drivers support it but it requires the right codec. It just doesn't do it by itself. You have to use a cyberlink or arcsoft codec. Or MPC-HC codecs.

Does it have 7.1 output? PCM or bitstream? Can it play mkv's?
I have an Intel G45 board with HDMI. I think Intel has linux drivers but I don't know how well it will work.
I know my hdhomerun is supported.

Does it have a mymovies like add in? Now what I do is add a movie to a watched folder on my server and my movies in VMC asks if I want to add it and will even add the cover art automatically.

My goal with a HTPC is to play all video formats through one front end with a remote control. I never want to have to use a mouse to open up another player.

Also, what does MythTV offer me who currently has VMC doing everything I want or need?
 
Archer75 said:
So it has GPU acceleration now? I know the nvidia drivers support it but it requires the right codec. It just doesn't do it by itself. You have to use a cyberlink or arcsoft codec. Or MPC-HC codecs.
Click to expand...
Yes it has GPU acceleration. It's always had it. The problem was Nvidia stripped out GPU acceleration on their 8 and 9 series cards so you had to use a Geforce 2 through 7, which wasn't that big of a deal since making your HTPC cheap is always the goal. Geforce 8 and 9 were added last month.

Archer75 said:
Does it have 7.1 output? PCM or bitstream? Can it play mkv's?
I have an Intel G45 board with HDMI. I think Intel has linux drivers but I don't know how well it will work.
I know my hdhomerun is supported.
Click to expand...
That's a yes on 7.1. PCM or bitstream and yes it can play mkv's.

Archer75 said:
Does it have a mymovies like add in? Now what I do is add a movie to a watched folder on my server and my movies in VMC asks if I want to add it and will even add the cover art automatically.
Click to expand...
Adding movies is as simple as dropping it into your movie folder and updating the database. You don't have to transcode, and it reads isos too. Cover art can be added. You will have to add images manually though.

Archer75 said:
My goal with a HTPC is to play all video formats through one front end with a remote control. I never want to have to use a mouse to open up another player.
Click to expand...
I use a remote control. I don't think I hardly ever use a mouse. In terms of file formats there hasn't been one yet that I haven't been able to read.

Archer75 said:
Also, what does MythTV offer me who currently has VMC doing everything I want or need?
Click to expand...
Server configurability. You can have multiple servers throughout your house and they all can talk to each other and share one database. If you added music or movies to one machine all of your other frontends know it and make the content accessible from anywhere within your home. You can pause live tv in one area and unpause it in another. Also I can play games on mine. All of my SNES and Sega Genesis games are on it too. All are read into the database and played through myth using my wireless force feedback controller.
 
kac77 said:
Adding movies is as simple as dropping it into your movie folder and updating the database. You don't have to transcode, and it reads isos too. Cover art can be added. You will have to add images manually though.
Click to expand...

Do you have to update the database manually?

The nice thing about mymovies is it's a simple drag and drop. Database is updated automatically and the images are downloaded for you.

Do you know of hardware acceleration is working with the Intel G45 chipset and myth?

I'm not concerned with server configurability. I have one server that houses everything. With the ability to add a great deal more storage to it. I'm not concerned about music of photos through my HTPC. Just video.

I was just reading about XBMC and it sounds like that may work better for me. I can always test it out on one of my machines and see how it works.
 
Archer75 said:
Do you have to update the database manually?

The nice thing about mymovies is it's a simple drag and drop. Database is updated automatically and the images are downloaded for you.

Do you know of hardware acceleration is working with the Intel G45 chipset and myth?
Click to expand...
It's barely working for Windows, but you can get it to work for Linux too if you want. Yes. I did check. But we are on a hardware site, if you are looking to Intel for GPU acceleration for video I would suggest you go with Nvidia to get way more performance and quality than what can be achieved from the G45.

As for the database updating automatically as in searches the directory, you can make it to do that. It doesn't do it by default though. Also it does have the capability to download images from IMDB based on tag, which is why I edit mine before retrieval.

It seems to me you are looking for something far more basic than myth. Give XMBC a try.
 
kac77 said:
It's barely working for Windows, but you can get it to work for Linux too if you want. Yes. I did check. But we are on a hardware site, if you are looking to Intel for GPU acceleration for video I would suggest you go with Nvidia to get way more performance and quality than what can be achieved from the G45.
Click to expand...

The G45 works fine for me in windows. I have full hardware acceleration. Always have and I was one of the first to buy the board.
I have used Nvidia on my last HTPC. I see no difference in image quality or performance in terms of video. I primarily view 720p and 1080p content. They either have HA or they don't. But there can be difference in how they handle interlaced content. But that is not what I primarily view.

I have everything working perfectly in VMC now. But I like to tinker from time to time and just want to take a look to see if I can do things better. Downloading XBMC now....
 
Archer75 said:
Also, what does MythTV offer me who currently has VMC doing everything I want or need?
Click to expand...

I have the same question. I've tried to ditch VMC, but can't find anything that works as well. I'm basically stuck on Vista because of it. And by "works well" I'm just talking simple stuff like general picture quality oob, handling aspect-ratio properly, dealing w/ overscan, etc. I tried SageTV on Windows and Mac OS X and this stuff was all broken and I just don't have the patience to pay for a product and then have to work fix such basic functionality.

I also tried EyeTV on Mac OS X and it just didn't run well at all. Maybe because I was on a hackint0sh, but I really doubt it.

Does Myth play well with Linux Mint or is Gentoo the recommended distro? I'm using an HDHomeRun with ClearQAM.
 
bing said:
I have the same question. I've tried to ditch VMC, but can't find anything that works as well. I'm basically stuck on Vista because of it. And by "works well" I'm just talking simple stuff like general picture quality oob, handling aspect-ratio properly, dealing w/ overscan, etc. I tried SageTV on Windows and Mac OS X and this stuff was all broken and I just don't have the patience to pay for a product and then have to work fix such basic functionality.

I also tried EyeTV on Mac OS X and it just didn't run well at all. Maybe because I was on a hackint0sh, but I really doubt it.

Does Myth play well with Linux Mint or is Gentoo the recommended distro? I'm using an HDHomeRun with ClearQAM.
Click to expand...
It should play well with Linux Mint since it's based off of the Ubuntu Distro. It should be in the package manager.

"sudo apt-get install mythbuntu-control-centre"
(It will install within System -> Administration)

That will install the mythtv control panel. You can install both the frontend and the backend on the same box. However, I will caution that myth is feature rich.

Read this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV
and this: http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php

With the control center it's easy to install. However, you will spend some time learning it if you've never used it before. This is not Windows Media Player or VMC. Myth is more like Tivo on steroids. If you want something simple stick with VMC, if you want a STB/DVR then go with myth.
 
Just a quick note on cablecards, they are really being phased out at this time by cable providers (who have never liked them). SDV (switched digital video) is needed in areas to provide more content and cablecard support for it is not coming on strongly. Also many TV and other device manufactures are stopping to produce as many if any models with cablecard slots.
 
Grentz said:
Just a quick note on cablecards, they are really being phased out at this time by cable providers (who have never liked them). SDV (switched digital video) is needed in areas to provide more content and cablecard support for it is not coming on strongly. Also many TV and other device manufactures are stopping to produce as many if any models with cablecard slots.
Click to expand...

I thought by law they are supposed to offer Cablecards to give end-users options on STB's? Although it's not like they've ever fully complied.
 
kac77 said:
I thought by law they are supposed to offer Cablecards to give end-users options on STB's? Although it's not like they've ever fully complied.
Click to expand...

Yes there is an FCC law, but like you said many are sneaking under the radar or trying to find loopholes. Overall it is making a VERY rocky road for the cablecard technology that is really wanted be the CEA and not cable companies.
 
Verge said:
Record something off HBO....



oh snap !
Click to expand...

Check out the new Hauppauge HD-PVR.

I can take the commercial set-top box that receives HBO, send it using the analog component video output into my HD-PVR, and record it to my mythbackend.

Oh snap!
 
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