[mythtv-users] Three cheers for four years with MythTV

[Yeechang Lee]

Engadget just gave the new TiVo Premiere a scathing review
(<URL:http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/tivo-premiere-review/>). The
buried lede: "What the hell has TiVo been doing all this time?"
Highlights of the criticism include:

* Much faster, but non-updated hardware architecture (no Atom)
* Dual-core system that doesn't use both cores
* Still no support for copying over recording rules and preferences
* New Flash-based UI that manages to be both "super slow" *and*
  incomplete[*]

The bottom line is that TiVo hasn't kept up with the times.

I loved my TiVo Series 1 for the four years and a few months that I
used it. Back then it was state of the art in terms of its overall
combination of features, storage space,[#] and user interface.

I have now been running MythTV for about as long as I used that
TiVo. When I started 0.18 was current and 0.19 was about to debut. The
key advantages versus TiVo that I noticed immediately were already
present:

* Support for multiple tuners and multiple types of inputs. Almost
  immediately I was recording from multiple FireWire boxes. Today I
  routinely record from two FireWire and two over-the-air inputs.
* A simple, but remarkably effective, recording rules engine that puts
  those multiple inputs to work with great efficiency. (To read in the
  Engadget review that "Season Pass priorities . . . still locks up
  the entire system while it resolves conflicts" makes me very sad.)
* Support for as much storage space as I can afford to buy.
* The clever two-pane UI that provides multiple ways to find a
  specific recording.
* Support for viewing upcoming episodes anywhere a recording or rule
  is visible. To me this and the previous are MythTV's two real
  "killer apps" versus TiVo.
* High-definition recording and playback. How remarkable is it, that
  the same Pentium 4 3.GHz frontend/backend I purchased from a Fry's
  Black Friday sale is still in use today?[$]

Think about it: Things that many people still have trouble doing in
any elegant and simple way (as a cursory reading of AVSForum will
show) in 2010, I've taken for granted since December 2005. Yes, since
that first day many improvements have come along. MythTV, regardless,
then was remarkably mature, and the subsequent years have further
refined a masterpiece.

As we await 0.23, let me thank MythTV, and the people behind it, for
the last four years . . . and for the many more ahead. I, for one,
can't wait.

[*] Way, way, way worse than MythTV not yet having migrated the OSD to
MythUI in the main code line.

[#] I had it running with 200GB in 2001! See
<URL:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.video.ptv.tivo/msg/23afcf8fdd7c30c4>.

[$] Admittedly with a different power supply and video card, 4X the
RAM and 10X the storage space, and a new sound card. Still the same
stock case and motherboard, though.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | San Francisco CA US