[GLLUG] more Penguicon thoughts

[Richard Houser]

Thomas Hruska wrote:
> Richard Houser wrote:
>> Stanley C. Mortel wrote:
>>> My thoughts based on what I've read from all of you:
>>>
>>> Richard -  Sure, let's do a MythTV panel.  By next year I hope and 
>>> plan to have it implemented at home with all of its feature set.
>>
>> I'll plan on it then.  I'll look into scheduling and the like sometime 
>> late fall or early winter when all that stuff starts coming around.
> 
> While on the subject of MythTV.  How does it compare to Freevo?  A nice 
> (fairly complete) side-by-side comparison chart is what I'm looking for 
> that shows me a whole list of features and says which one has which.
> 
> By comparison chart, I mean something like what forummatrix.org does 
> only not on such a grand scale.
> 

MythTV used to have such a comparison matrix on it's site, but it's been 
long enough it might have disappeared or become outdated.  I only messed 
with Freevo a little early on.  As soon as it was clear Freevo wasn't 
going to meet my needs anytime soon, I moved on to MythTV and didn't 
really look back.

Again, some aspects might have changed, but MythTV is basically the 
800lb gorilla of the space.  The name is a reference to the "mythical 
convergence box".  It does everything and has a lot of potentially 
important features that its competitors lack.  Due to this, the setup 
and install process used to be a little bit intimidating.  I don't think 
that's the case any longer, but it's definitely a complex bit of 
software if you dig into the internals.  In the past, Freevo was mainly 
a smaller, more basic application that kept most all the focus on the 
core PVR functionality and creating a system closer to what you get with 
a Tivo.

For me, the killer feature is the separation of the front and backend in 
MythTV.  This lets you run your system distributed over the network. 
This way, you can actually get a completely silent living-room system 
with zero moving parts (no hard disks, no fans, etc).  Basically, you 
just stick the machine doing all the heavy work in the basement, a den, 
a closet, etc and run an ethernet cable to your display point.  You can 
also run multiple televisions from a single machine if you are willing 
to pull a few wires.  Front-ends already exists for devices like the 
Playstation(2?) and X-Box, and a Wii front-end is on the wish-list. 
Front-ends don't take that much horsepower or specialized hard, so they 
can run a lot more places a full system like Freevo can.

In my case, I run a single backend (it's still in Flint at the moment) 
that records all my shows with two tuners.  That backend drives a normal 
maintenance console off a monitor in the closet, but also a television 
display off a PVR350 to a television in a nearby room.  Another machine 
in the den connects over the ethernet to display locally on an LCD 
display.  I often watch television wherever in the house over an 802.11g 
  wireless connection on my laptop.  I also use this laptop to transfer 
large amounts of older programming for later viewing while I'm out in 
Lansing (40-50 hours of programming at a time).  In addition, I have 
written scripts to automatically compress down and trickle select new 
shows over the Internet to my Lansing backend machine so I don't have to 
wait a week or two to pick them up.  Eventually, I'm planning to get a 
PVR-500 to replace my failed PVR-250 and start recording again in Lansing.

Combined with commercial auto-skip and accelerated playback (depending 
on the series, I watch at anywhere from 1.15 to 1.35 times normal 
speed), I can watch all my shows in a lot less time.  It really gets to 
be the ultimate TV system.

Soon, I'll be buying the hardware to get my parents a standalone MythTV 
system and moving that second one out to Lansing.  My plan for them is a 
single low-power machine mounted between the first-floor joists in their 
house with the PVR350 tuner driving both the upstairs and basement 
televisions directly and the den machine via an ethernet connection.

If you have any interest in that kind of flexibility, you want to stick 
with MythTV.  If you only expect to want a Tivo on a PC (or something 
almost as simple), you should probably look at something like Freevo.