<div dir="ltr">We've used mythtv for at least 15 year, my children, now 15 and 17, grew up on it and found it easy to watch shows unattended even before they could read.<div><br></div><div>It takes time to set up an instance, then to tweak it the way you want. i started with Knoppix distro, then moved over to mythbuntu, but still the tweaks were necessary. I run a main backend and nuc front ends and now they just work, but every dist-upgrade, every mythtv major upgrade seems to bring its own problems. I held off for a while upgrading from ubuntu 16.04 to 18.08, and now finally 20.04 for fear of spending a weekend troubleshooting and repairing mythtv.</div><div><br></div><div>Mythtv used to be my main media player using the scheduler for cable, first analog then clear QAM and now cable card with HDhomerun and mythvideo managing my media.</div><div><br></div><div>Nowadays mythvideo can no longer handle the size of my media collection and PLeX handles that duty. Plex also shines allowing easily sharing my media with family and friends both inside and outside my household. Plex handles the playback of almost all
media and recording from myth via mythlink.</div><div><br></div><div>I prefer using mythtv's player because it handles everything, without transcoding. I configured the playback setting to playback everything at 120%, along with commercial detection, skipping and the lightning fast seeks when commercial detection fails, I can catch up on all the nonsense I record in no time.</div><div><br></div><div>Outside the main dedicated frontends, I also use the android frontend, which has great potential. It is a drop in app that mostly just works. I have used it on FireTV 4k and nVidia Shield, both playback smoothly. But the startup and shutdown times are a downer, I fear anyone not familiar with mythtv will think it's locked up and become frustrated. Using the barebones remotes takes some getting used to, but for anyone familiar with streaming dongles, it should be a short learning curve. But the lack of button minimizes the features of the frontend player, which the next logical step is a dedicated player for android that strips out or hides all the extras that aren't needed but presents the familiar interface we all know and love.</div><div><br></div><div>Leanfront is fine and playback is exceptional, but the media UI needs some help. I don't find it intuitive enough to give it to my grandparents or Inlaws</div><div><br></div><div>LiveTV is a double edged sword and I haven't found a solution better than mythtv yet. Yes mythtv's live tv is buggy, but it mostly works, there's no to very little buffering, a small blip in between guide programs. There is the occasional lockup, but not enough to complain too much. I wouldn't use live tv but the older generation grew up with linear TV and must watch it that way.</div><div><br></div><div>The main problem with mythtv is there are too many moving parts and an enthusiast can't understand them all: mysql, xmltv, lirc, not to mention tuning hardware. Someone looking to set up a media manager can just run plex, emby, or jellyfin in a docker container and be done. Docker being the only "new" technology to learn, but even with today's NAS's like unraid or synology, that isn't much of a hurdle.</div><div><br></div><div>With all my ramblings above, I intend to continue to use mythtv to record as long as possible, but I've moved on from my youthful tinkering and have new hobbies that I want to spend my time on and getting the "TV" to work isn't high on the list. If the bar gets too high I would likely move on out of convenience. I've just come up on the next renewal for schedules direct and I will be signing up for another year and I hope for more to come.</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you everyone for all the dedication to MythTV, it has been a great journey so far.<br><div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Jun 5, 2021 at 7:47 AM John Hoyt <<a href="mailto:john.hoyt@gmail.com" target="_blank">john.hoyt@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>So I've been using mythtv since 2007 when I replaced my replayTV with an HDPVR. At the time, the main driver was to have a new hobby to tinker with plus record video at 720p/1080i resolutions.</div><div><br></div><div>Over the years, my family still uses MythFrontend on most of our TVs via small low powered computers (was zotac ions, now nucs), but of late I've been seeing the family (and even myself) starting to use Plex on our Rokus/Firesticks more and more often for music, videos, and photos. A large reason is that they can pick up where they left off with their ipads (...they have mac laptops and will use mythfrontend there, but that's probably just a bit of an appeasement to me and my more recent. compiling hobby :) ). I've also noticed, we tend to watch fewer recorded shows these days as the family has moved to online media (youtube and other streaming services).</div><div><br></div><div>I guess this is a long winded way of saying I agree with many of the past posters. Focus on the backend and recording capabilities. These are still top notch and I won't be using any other similar services while MythTV is still available and working. Either keep mythweb going and/or complete the update (I still use mythweb to manage recording - as does my family - because it is so easy). FInally, I'd definitely be supportive of a better Plex or Jellyfin plugin for accessing (and maybe managing) recordings.</div></div>
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