[mythtv-users] using replay's hardware

[Kyle Rose]

"John P. Poet" <john at BlueSkyTours.com> writes:

> Why would you want to?  Myth is cool, but is not what I would call the most
> stable system.  I also prefer the ReplayTV user interface.

So, for some people, the extensibility offered by an open source
system like MythTV provides the greatest reason to switch.

I have been a happy TiVo owner for about two years now.  I can't
imagine going back to regular TV at this point, but the TiVo itself (a
series 1) has problems that will never be fixed because TiVo wants to
sell new equipment and associated new lifetime service contracts:

(1) No commercial detection
(2) God-awful slow interface (50 MHz PPC!  Ack!)
(3) Inability to deal with DirecTV's fucking-over of RCA receiver
    owners (more on that via email, if you're interested)
(4) No categorizing of recordings, even by program title
(5) No sharing of programs between machines or people
(6) No ethernet support
(7) No remote access or streaming to remote front ends
(8) No burning of program data to VCD/DVD or trancode to open formats

And the list goes on.  Lots of these (5, 6) are resolved by add-ons
like tivoweb and tivo/turbonet, but they are hacks that TiVo could
disable with a single software push.  That's too fragile for my taste.

MythTV solves all of these problems, and opens the door to solving
other problems and providing new features merely by virtue of the fact
that it is *open*.  When I want another tuner, I don't need to run out
and buy a new $400 TiVo and then blow $250 on a new service contract:
all I need to do is buy a $130 PVR-250, stuff it into my existing box,
and voila! extra tuner.

When I decide I want to start burning archive DVD's of old episodes I
have lying around, all I need to do is buy an $80 DVD+-RW, stuff it
into my existing box, and voila! archived programming.  No new box
required.

When some great new software feature appears, I'm not forced by the
Myth guys to buy new equipment and a new service contract in order to
take advantage of it.  I just download the latest tarball, compile it,
and voila! new features.

The weakest link in the whole system isn't the IvyTV driver, which is
getting more stable all the time, or the configuration screens, which
while poorly organized don't make much of a showing once the thing is
up and running: it is xmlTV, which has the problem that it can be shut
down by zap2it.com anytime they feel like it.  I would personally be
more than willing to pay $5/mo for a listings service subscription
that provided programming data in XML format, but it's not clear how
much demand there would be for such a service. *shrug*

Anyway, there you have it.  Even in its current state, I would take
MythTV over TiVo or Replay any day (and, in fact, have unplugged my
TiVo in favor of it) simply because I know the thing won't be
artificially obsoleted in two years time.  With luck, I'll be able to
keep this box hooked up to my TV for a long, long time.

Cheers,
Kyle