[mythtv-users] Slightly OT - MythTV wins again!

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 26 May 2022 16:02:55 +0100, you wrote:

>On 26/05/2022 14:48, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> On Thu, 26 May 2022 06:01:14 -0400, you wrote:
>> 
>>> But the DVR for Cable, Satellite, and streaming services like YoutubeTV, DirecTV Streaming, etc. only allow fast forwarding or rewind like a VHS tape and you have to guess when to stop.
>> 
>> You do realise that this is deliberate so that you are forced to watch
>> the advertising?  Here in New Zealand, our FTA service is called
>> "Freeview" and any equipment that is "Freeview Certified" is certified
>> to not be able to skip over the ads - it is one of the conditions of
>> certification that fast forward and rewind as in VCRs is allowed, but
>> skipping like MythTV does is not.

>Curious. Here in the UK we have an old YouView box, originally provided by BT, which does our 
>version of Freeview plus anything else BT cares to let down the wires (upon payment, of course). 
>Oddly, considering its age, the software is kept reasonably up-to-date.
>
>The box has Fast Forward and Rewind but also has Skip Forward and Skip Back, though there appears to 
>be no way to set the skip times. We do use it occasionally to pause live TV - usually some news 
>program or documentary - when something urgent comes up, like making more coffee.
>
>It looks like the rules this box uses are slightly different from those Down Even More Under.

The Freeview in New Zealand is not related at all to Freeview in the
UK, except the name.  I have always wondered why they had the same
name but no relationship.

Unlike the USA where they have laws preventing you from working around
technical limitations, NZ law allows you to use any equipment you
like, and modify the firmware yourself if you can do that.  It is only
equipment that is Freeview Certified that is not allowed to skip, as
the manufacturers have agreed to that in order to get the trademarked
Freeview label on the equipment.  I imagine UK law is likely to be
fairly similar to NZ, rather than USA law.

Almost all the commercially available gear in NZ is Freeview
Certified, including all the TVs sold here.  Which is good from the
point of view of an average user as it guarantees that it will work
correctly with the Freeview service, but very bad if you hate ads. Due
to this, I have trouble convincing fellow kiwis online that you really
can skip over the ads if you use MythTV (or MediaPortal, or NextPVR,
or many other options).  They are so used to everything they have seen
being unable to skip.  Even older people who had good VCRs that could
fast forward the ads easily seem to have just given in and now put up
with having to see at least some of the ads.  I could never do that -
I would probably stop watching TV if I had to suffer ads all the time.

And of all the software that I have tried, MythTV is by far the best
at skipping, so I am very glad that I chose it when TV when digital
here.  Actually, I started using MythTV on analogue tuners, but by
then we knew digital was coming soon.