[mythtv-users] rebuttal from the linuxmce video guy

[Paul Paul]

I saw some of the comments about my LinuxMCE demo video.  Sorry if my
voice bothered people.  But re: content of the video I have to rebut the
claims that I in any way exaggerated the "out of the box" and plug and
play nature.

True, the hardware compatibility is very small.  But, if you do have
compatible hardware, it is entirely plug and play.  Seriously, I only had
to plug in the serial/control port on my Sharp LCD to my pc, and it
detected the connection (by monitoring rts/cts change, or looking for new
usb/serial devices), and kept pinging the device until it figured out
what it was, and then started controlling it.  And I only plugged in the
hauppauge pvr usb2, and it popped up a 'new tv tuner' device message and
asked for my datadirect password/lineup; it even knew I automatically I
lived in the U.S. and would use Data Direct by doing an ip2location
lookup first.  After that, mythtv was fully configured.  Plug in a usb
uirt remote dongle, hit the 'menu' button on the wmce remote, the tv
turns on, chose media, tv, and myth starts, and the guide data is there. 
Hit 'power' and it stops.  Hit it again to turn the tv off.  So you have
all the stuff you need in a pvr without every switching to a console,
editing a conf file, or doing anything that grandma couldn't do (after
installing the software).

Don't you feel that is a significant improvement, and a way to get MythTV
to a much broader audience?  I think that if that happens, more companies
will make pvr cards with good Linux drivers, and there will be more
hardware to work with Myth.  I'll concede several points, including that
the LinuxMCE<->Myth integration isn't complete and that my video was
lousy, but as far as an architecture that can be built upon to make
MythTV easier to get up and going with, I think it's a very good start.

No, I don't have any intentions of selling hardware or trying to
commercialize LinuxMCE and, personally, oppose it since the whole reason
I forked this from Pluto was that being commercial they were too busy
taking care of their "paying" clients to concern themselves with the
needs of the foss community.  And as far as it being simply a 'renamed'
Pluto, it took me over 3 months of working on it at least 50 hours a week
plus the help of several others to get  it to run on a standard distro,
like Ubuntu.  So it wasn't just a trivial fork.  And the PNP
functionality to get the PVR card going was my own addition.
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