[mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

[Ben Kamen]

On 2/9/2011 4:20 PM, Justin Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Ben Kamen<bkamen at benjammin.net>  wrote:
>>
>> I like to tell people --- "It's TV, not the end of the world. You'll live
>> without... and have more money in your pocket."
>>
>
> But it seems like I'm constantly spending money on methods to
> circumvent DRM so that I can use mythTv...

hahaha...

I'm not sure if you're being funny or not. :P

I assembled my mythtv for the following reasons:

1: multi-tuning system to record multiple channels at once (mostly to avoid conflicts but not more)
2: more capacity than my TiVo (I didn't feel like spnding money on a new TiVo and a new lifetime subscription only to be boxed in)
3: being open source, MythTV had the promise of always being extended resulting in reasonable and incremental upgrades.
4: It's Linux, I can do other things with the hardware if I want.
5: consolidate my Music, TV, Some DVD's into an all-in-one storage/playback center that's compatible with FE's/Extenders.

But here's where my point comes in....

If Myth didn't exist, I would not spend one more penny on a system that's so closed. (Tivo and other products have taught me that.)
Not that the TiVo is bad.. but you get rubbed when they End-Of-Life the product in the hyper-product cycles we're all so used to.
So the software upgrades stopped in short order... it just left a bad taste in my mouth for close-systems.

So I try to avoid them at all cost now.

I can't for the life of me understand why people jumped on iPods when the system was initially closed, you had to pretty much buy from iTunes at what I considered unreasonable prices when MP3 was already free and out of the bottle and LOTS of devices supported playing MP3's.

 From what I remember from iTunes when I checked it out to buy music for my Palm T5 (2003? 2004?) was that I would have to burn the purchased music to CD, then RIP back to MP3, then fix the MP3 ID's (OMG!?! Are you kidding) just to get it back on my Palm. I don't care if it's different now. The point is (and any change on iTunes to ease this process proves my point) that as soon as I hit what I considered unreasonable resistance, my dollars went back in my pockets and Apple forever lost any chance at my business. That's just one example.

I spent minimal money on my TiVo -- it got blasted by lightning on the phone line -- it as barely a year out of warr -- and repair would have equated to getting a new unit and losing my lifetime sub. Whoa. Thankfully, I'm an EE in my copious spare time and I ended up repairing the blown parts on the horrid DAA arrangement in the TiVo -- but then getting a network card for it so I'd never have to hook it to the phone line again.
Surprisingly, the unit is still with me today even though I've swapped out HD's like 2-3 times to upgrade/replace old drives. Ha. I bet TiVo hates customers like me who get 10yrs out of their product. (actually, it's idle on the shelf now. Now that Comcast is digital, I have no one to lend it to.)

So being an EE, I love technology, but I can't stand when it makes things *harder* for me when the returns are minimal.

Thus, I can't understand when others gleefully spend money on stuff that makes getting their desired fulfilled difficult, they know it, they complain about it, but they keep shelling out money for it! (I'M IN THE WRONG BUSINESS!)

Haha, and I'm ranting. Carry on - nothing to see here.

  -Ben