[mythtv-users] More problems than it's worth?

[Greg Woods]

On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 11:37 -0500, James Minihane wrote:
> Initially I thought MythTV was THE ANSWER. But reading these lists, it
> seems that MythTV is more of a headache than a godsend. 

That is of course a matter of opinion.

The software is still version 0-point-something. That means it is still
in rapid development. It is NOT a drop-in consumer product. It takes
some work, time, and technical skill to get it going. 

I was able to do it without "thousands of dollars" in hardware. I had to
buy a PVR-500 (for the main backend which is also my primary desktop), a
PVR-150 (for the slave BE/FE in the TV room; probably could get by with
just an IR receiver of some kind but once in a while the extra tuner is
useful), and a Pundit-R system (about $400 including CPU) as the TV room
display system. 

Once I got it installed and configured, it's great. And don't expect
that commercial system to be all that great either. My Comcast DVR,
which I only have because my Myth system is not HD-capable, has a bunch
of problems and lacks the ability to schedule recordings remotely a la
MythWeb. The Comcast box has missed recordings altogether, stopped them
in midstream for no apparent reason, has frequent glitches in signal
reception, has almost zero storage capacity (I have already had to erase
the Super Bowl to make room for the Olympics stuff), and has little
scheduling flexibility compared to Myth. It basically sucks. My MythTV
system is far superior, and also handles my music and photo collections.
I would like to dump the Comcast box completely but we seem to have a
very restrictive cable company; only the analog channels appear to be
available via Firewire, no HD channels work (the test-mpeg2 gets a zero
length file). I connected the cable directly to the TV with a QAM tuner,
and it only found two HD channels, the local NBC affiliate and the local
PBS affiliate. I couldn't even find the other broadcast channels there.

So my conclusion is, Comcast digital cable sucks, MythTV rocks. I wonder
if DirectTV would be any better?

--Greg