[mythtv-users] Several General Questions

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Fri Dec 3 00:44:44 UTC 2004


On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 04:40:14PM -0600, Lane Schwartz wrote:
> Once Myth is properly set up, it is just as easy to use as a Tivo. It
> is not a far cry from punching a few buttons on a Tivo remote.
> 

That's not my experience.  I have not been using Myth that long but
already I have run into a number of front end crashes in normal use
(which I could probably train family members to deal with) and a couple
of back end crashes (harder to train.)

Myth's user UI is considerably more complex than the Tivo's -- because we
want it that way.  Ordinary users don't.

Myth's UI is not consistent.   Things act quite differently when you are watching
TV in the buffer compared to watching a recording.  Tivo keeps them very
similar.  Tivo is on the whole much better at the live TV thing, which
matters to transitionary users more than it should, but it does matter.
With Myth its remarkably easy to lose your buffer.  (Though myth does
offer a way to fix Tivo's one error in this where a single channel press
wipes your buffer on the Tivo).  Myth doesn't handle problem conditions
like bad signal very well.  It is beta software after all.

However, Myth is the right concept -- open source, modular, frontend/backend --
it's on course to be the better solution, but to nobody's surprise it is
young and lacks polish.



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