FW: [mythtv] Whats wrong with myth

[Thomas M. Pluth]

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas M. Pluth [mailto:tpluth at surewest.net] 
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 4:20 PM
To: 'Brad Templeton'
Subject: RE: [mythtv] Whats wrong with myth

  This guys post was totally useless.  He disparages MythTV, yet offers no
explanation of what kind of problem he's having or what kind of hardware
he's using.   This tells me he hasn't done the research to see what works
and what doesn't.

  That he claims to be a Linux zealot carries no weight.  Just because he's
zealous about something, that doesn't mean he knows what he's doing with it.
Even the fact the he's been a programmer for 20 years carries little weight.
I can say the same thing, but my experience is not with video processing,
GUI's or driver development (I'm an Oracle Financials developer and I'm very
good at that, but I don't know squat about writing PCI device drivers or
video processing software, and I hate working on GUI applications). 

  A post like his serves no benefit to this list.  If he'd listed the
hardware he was using (CPU, Video card, etc.), what distribution he is
running, how he installed MythTV, etc., the list might be able to point him
in the direction of success, but none of that information has been
forthcoming. 

  If you want things to work out of the box, with no thought having to be
put into your integration, go with MS.  Keep in mind that functionality will
not be added at the rate it is here.  Bugs will not be addressed at the
speed that you'd like to seem the resolved.  You, too, can be just another
drone who ponies up dollars to the Seattle Mafia that holds the whole
computing industry hostage. 

  If you want to do a little learning while you get your system working, and
you're willing to do a little research and experimentation on the road
towards getting your system working, stay here with us.   I had been away
from Linux for a few years before I started integrating my MythTV system.
I'm glad I came back into the fold.   I love my MythTV system (perhaps a bit
too much as evidenced how much TV I've been watching lately), and I'm
grateful to Isaac for developing it and to everyone that has helped to
improve it.  

  Keep up the good work, guys and gals!


-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Templeton [mailto:brad+mydev at templetons.com] 
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 12:32 PM
To: tpluth at surewest.net; Development of mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv] Whats wrong with myth

On Sat, Mar 19, 2005 at 01:20:13AM -0800, Thomas M. Pluth wrote:
> I'll second that.   HDTV works well on my setup. 

Sure, and I have HDTV working too.  He was a bit overbearing saying
it doesn't work.   But it is true that it took a lot of work to get
it going, and I know that's true for a lot of people, and I would
be curious to know if there was even a sizeable group who didn't encounter
some level of snags to fix in making and HDTV box.  What fraction of
people just said "apt-get mythtv-suite" then did some basic config and
had an HD box ready to go?

It's often nothing to do with Myth, but instead the immaturity of the
various drivers for hardware -- video cards and xvideo, tuner cards,
sound drivers for multichannel sound.   People have not been doing this
level of high-res full motion video under linux for very long yet, and
as a result there are more problems, more kinks, fewer people who have
encountered your particular problem and solved it and posted the fix or
work-around.

Of course, if you build myth only for yourself, the problems other people
have in getting it going are not relevant.   If you want the system to
gain more users (and developers) for either philanthropic or selfish
reasons, then you have to listen to the people who announce they are
walking away in frustration.   If they are reasonably skilled linux
users, and they walk away in frustration, it's not their fault, much
as any particular error made can be seen to be their fault.