[mythtv-users] Sell mythtv "set-top" boxes
Ben Bucksch
linux.news at bucksch.org
Thu May 15 19:50:34 EDT 2003
Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
>Unless you're prepared to give *lots* of support (costing you *lots* of time) to your customers, it won't work.
>
Unless you're able to decline any support. Not sure, if that's legal or
feasible.
>Even assuming that Myth itself was rock-solid stable (in a perfect world needing no support), the big issue (the real killer as far as I'm concerned) is TV listing data.
>
If the current grabber breaks and you can't write a new one in time,
you'd have to pay a few bucks for that data, I guess.
>That's 20 customers with (virtually) useless Myth boxes, all waiting for you to come and install a new version of XMLTV (assuming there is one!)
>
eh, there is no need to "come". You can remote-administrate the boxes
(if you told your customers!) or better yet auto-update the boxes with
apt-get or whatever, with one "source" being your server. Just upload a
new package to your server, the boxes grab it and install it
automatically, and that's it. Unless you messed it up.
>Or worse yet, what if Zap2It went away, and the XMLTV project was 'down' for a while trying to find another source?
>
You have a few days to write a new grabber, because it always grabs a
whole week. If there are 2-3 days missing at the end 1-2 times a year,
that's tolerable IMHO.
>How much would you be willing to pay for that?
>
Even if MythTV is not suitable for a mass market (I think it may), it's
still for a niche market: for those who
* want to archive their recordings (!) on CD or huge harddrives in a
common format
* can't place new cables and have to use wireless LAN (from backend
to frontend or from satelite dish to apartment). Even if they
*can* place cables, that's often several hundred dollars when done
by a professional, and that easily eats up the cost difference.
* dislike commercial control like ads, forced recordings etc.
* want to have quality otherwise not found in commercial products:
o absolutely silent (no fan, no disk, because of separate backend)
o custom design case
o high quality video/audio compression
o DVB (or later HDTV) for best TV quality, incl. recordings
o a music archive with high end quality and without CD
changing (usually perfect reading with cdparanoia, lossless
compression with flac, digital out for external DA) (This
last feature alone might be a reason for some high end
freaks to shell out 1000 bucks, if you can convince them of
the (factual) quality)
* Several frontends accessing the same data
* Tons of other reasons, see previous threads why people don't use
TiVo or ReplayTV. BTW: I don't think they are available in Europe
at all. At least I haven't seen them here, IIRC. IIRC, I have seen
similar products, starting at 400 Euro, though.
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