[mythtv-users] SageTV HD200 as an HD MythTV frontend?

[Andrew Gallatin]

Patrick Davila [pdavila at thelinuxlink.net] wrote:
> The box is apparently running Linux under the hood. It's using a 300mhz
> Sigma SMP 8635 LF chipset.
> 
> For $200 I'd buy a pair of them in a heartbeat if we could get MythTV
> running on them. If SageTV locks this thing up in a similar fashion as the
> Roku Netflix player maybe we do an end run and get it unlocked from the
> hardware manufacturer?

I bought its predecessor, the HD100, a year ago.  An HD100 is not
quite as locked up as a Roku (eg, an open source request will actually
get some results).  I was really hoping somebody would port MythTV,
but that never happened.  I'm assuming the HD200 is similar, from a
"locked down" perspective.  At least the HD200 seems to be in ample
supply, so maybe more people will get them and increase the
likelyhood that somebody will do a port.

The biggest advantage these extenders have over most devices is that
they can do commercial skipping.  The drawback is that this only works
when you're running them in extender mode, via SageTV.  So you'd need
to spend an extra $70 or so to get the SageTV Linux license, and
invest some effort into trying to make SageTV and MythTV coexist
(regularly linking MythTVs' cryptic filenames to something sane, and
then refreshing SageTV to notice new links, then running comskip on
the new recordings).  

FWIW, I got sick of trying to make MythTV and SageTV peacfully
coexist, and so I switched over to 100% SageTV.  I still lurk here
because I'd still rather run MythTV, and I'm hoping somebody
eventually ports MythTV.  If not, I'll probably build a VDPAU based
box when it attains stable, supported status.  I really, really,
really miss timestretch...

Drew