[mythtv-users] More problems than it's worth?

[James Fryman]

James,

I'm sure you've already had quite a few message come to your box after 
this reply, and I think it's important to take all things with a grain 
of salt. Of course, posting on a mailing list that something may *not* 
be the answer is sure to stir up the flames a bit... nonetheless here 
are some points to take a look at.

As with any project you may be uncomfortable with, I would never 
recommend investing thousands of dollars into a system at the first 
go... that right there is a setup for failure. A very stable and proper 
SDTV MythBox can be built for under $600 dollars, look good, and do 
anything you might need it to do.

I can personally vouch for using Myth for most of its intended purposes 
(Videos, Live TV, Watching DVD's, scheduling, listening to music, 
surfing the web... everything is utilized on a daily basis at my 
household except MythPhone... I'm still trying to figure out why it's in 
the main source tree. ;) ) Granted, the core functionality (Live TV and 
Recordings) are rock solid, some other plugins like the Music player are 
a bit buggier. Nonetheless, my main frontend has uptimes in the months, 
and usually is only updated if a kernel security update is required. 
While there are some people on this list that tinker with each release, 
I use my MythBox as a general purpose box... once it is up and running, 
it's really not played with much at all.

Furthermore, the mailing list is often used to help solve problems with 
the more esoteric of setups... so you'll probably see more griping than 
anything. I believe the point that many of the list users are not Linux 
experts... but are still venturing into the field. I like to watch the 
list for important notices that come across the wire, but refrain from 
adding most of the time, as I suspect most successful Myth Users do as well.

I encourage you to review several well-made documents to help you out 
(Jarod's Guide with Fedora is excellent - http://www.wilsonet.com ) as 
well as exploring with some of the ready-made distributions (Knoppmyth - 
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html). Furthermore, while there are 
more horror stories than not on the mailing list, the Knoppmyth Forums 
have an excellent HCL (Hardware compatibility List) separated in tiers 
to show what hardware combinations work well in conjunction with others. 
Check it out here:  http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/

In all the decision is ultimately yours to make. While I do Linux 
administration for a living, the internals of Myth are very easy for 
me... there exist several hundred happy folks that have working 
MythBoxes by following excellent documentation guides out there. I hope 
these guides help you choose a good path, and I can personally vouch for 
my own family (Self and Wife) and my extended family (Father and Mother 
+ Siblings) that are overjoyed daily with MythTV and its functionality.

Good luck!

-James Fryman


James Minihane wrote:
> Initially I thought MythTV was THE ANSWER. But reading these lists, it
> seems that MythTV is more of a headache than a godsend. I'm not about to
> invest a few thousand in hardware into a problem ridden system.
> Here's the question...
> How many of you actually use MythTV to...
> Time delay live TV, watch DVDs, schedule recordings, listen to music, and
> view pictures and actually have things work without reboots etc?
>  
> J. Minihane
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> 

-- 
-------------------------
James Fryman
email : jfryman at gmail.com
Cell  :  757.812.3126
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