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

[greg at nodecam.com]

> How many of you actually use MythTV to...
> Time delay live TV, watch DVDs, schedule recordings, listen to music, and
> view pictures and actually have things work without reboots etc?

I've been using Myth for approximately a year, and had very little problem
getting it up and running.  Hardware selection seems to be a key.  I've
got an XBox frontend that occasionally has issues, but that's related to
the fact it's a 1.6b revision box I think.

I recently lost the hard drive in my winXP laptop, and couldn't find my
rescue disks, so I grabbed an Ubuntu ISO at the recommendation of a friend
- I installed myth on it as well (simple matter of setting up sources and
apt-get installing it) and now I can watch live TV/recorded shows/ripped
DVD's/etc on three screens - Laptop, xbox and combined FE/BE box hooked up
to a projector.

I use it for live TV (though not much - I schedule virtually everything I
want to watch and watch it from the recorded items menu, either "live" or
after the fact - a fine distinction that doesn't make much sense until
you've used Myth a bit) listen to music, view pictures etc.  I don't watch
DVD's with it because I have a standalone DVD player, and never bothered
to get DVD playback working on the Xbox.  Those DVD's that I do want to
watch through Myth, I rip to the video library.

Scheduling recordings via mythweb is awesome, and Myth is super flexible. 
It's pretty rare that I can't do something that I want it to.

As an example, I wanted to record a kids' show that is frequently broken
up  into 5 minute segments, but also aired as a full show in 25-30 minute
time blocks.  I had to go into the database to do it, but I came up with a
rule that cherry picked only the ones I wanted (the longer ones)

Setting it up in the first place took a few weeks of evenings (mostly
reading documentation and getting my first full time Linux box set up the
way I wanted,) but since then it's been solid and required no babysitting
or handholding.  I'm fully confident that the knowledge I've gained
setting this box up would enable me to set a new one up with similar
hardware in an evening.

I used to run OpenBSD on a server though, so I did have a little bit of
*nix background to draw from.  Plus, I like to think I'm smarter than the
average bear :P

Long story short, don't let the volume on this list scare you off, Myth is
a great piece of software!

Greg