[mythtv-users] Thank You to the Devs

Dewey Smolka dsmolka at gmail.com
Wed Jun 13 03:13:05 UTC 2007


On 6/12/07, Mark Chang <mark.chang at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> I would just like to buck the trend here. I'm here to say a big NO THANKS to
> the devs. You have made me able to watch more TV in less time in higher
> quality than my Tivo could ever have. And you've done it all without a
> monthly fee. How am I supposed to get any work done? How am I supposed to
> put food on the table for my family? How am I supposed to buy another 1TB of
> Myth hard drive space to store all the HD content you so easily suck down
> OTA for me? I am now obsessed with my Myth box that I am constantly tweaking
> it and messing with it. I don't sleep, I don't eat... I just play.
>

I completely sympathize with Mark. These damn Myth developers have
made it completely imposible for me to watch TV anywhere else, and
have made it almost impossible for me to even talk about TV with
anyone else.

I can't even begin to describe the number of times someone has asked
me 'did you see such and such an ad during that game yesterday', and I
have to answer 'no'. And when I say that I don't see ads, they assume
I'm being Zen, or obtuse. Or just have to pee a lot.

But they don't seem to grasp that I really just don't see any adverts.

Sundays in Fall have become just about intolerable. I used to be able
to avoid things like housework and laundry since it would take all
bloody day to watch the football games. But now I can get through a
game without missing a single play in less than an hour and a half.
Leaving plenty of time for all that mopping and tidying that my wife
seems to think is so important.

Even worse, when I go to the shop I have no idea what kind of soft
drink I should buy anymore. I just don't know which brand fits my
lifestyle or self image. Has the Pepsi Generation passed me by? Am I
terribly passe in still wanting to 'Do the Dew' Is Coke still 'It'?

And I have completely forgotten which beer is 'Beechwood Aged', which
is 'Cold Filtered', and which is 'Always Fresh'.

But what's worst of all is the way that Myth has stolen my innocence.
Yum, touch, and X used to mean quite different things for me.

And I used to have no idea what it meant to 'grep' or 'chown' or
'grok' but thought they sounded exciting and fun, given the right mood
and the right people. I thought I knew about fscking, but I was wrong.
Very wrong.

I never used to care about sales on HDDs (and wouldn't be able to
parse the acronym). I used to think RAID was something for killing
roaches. I used to think 100GB was an absurd amount of storage space
that it would take a lifetime to fill.

I used to think kernels were something you pooped and ate, that
subversion was something to admire but not to attach your name to,
that compling was a boring job for people with blue ties, that
dependencies had something to do with taxes, and that xmltv was a
channel I didn't get.

I used to think that, when buying tech products, bigger numbers meant
better -- that MPEG-4 was numerically, and therefore factually, better
than MPEG-2. That a PVR-350 was 200 units better than a PVR-150. That
1080i was more (and therefore better) than 720p.

And that words like 'trusted computing' and 'rights management' were
good things to have in hardware.

I used to think that being able to play a random music playlist on a
seven-disc changer was the bee's knees. I used to think that with 75
channels, something worth watching must be on. I used to think there
was no way to avoid the previews for films long gone every time I
wanted to watch Finding Nemo (which is surprisingly often).

I used to stay up late to catch the highlights and scores of the west
coast games on SportsCenter. I used to check out listings to see when
good films would be coming on AMC. And, long ago, I used to be able to
say what shows were regularly broadcast on what days and/or in what
timeslot.

Damn you, MythTV! You've stolen my collegial banter! You've robbed me
of my innocence! (although my wife and I still enjoy grepping quite
frequently) You've denied me the pointless regularity I used to take
for granted! You've stripped me of my ability to be a good, obedient
consumer!

And because of you I've had to, like, learn stuff.

And that's just dorky.


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