[mythtv-users] Ubuntu Media Center team dumping MythTV for Elisa (yuck!)

[Jarod Wilson]

On Tuesday 15 May 2007 18:46:28 Erik Warner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to let you know that Ubuntu is starting its "Ubuntu Media
> Center" initiative, and that they are apparently choosing Elisa
> instead of MythTV:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMediaCenterTeam
>
> Given that MythTV is way more feature-rich, stable, and powerful,
> forgoing MythTV is a terrible decision on the part of Ubuntu and its
> parent company, Canonical. MythTV is _the gold standard_ of Free/Open
> Source media centers. Both MythTV and Ubuntu have great communities,
> and they could certainly benefit from a mutual relationship.
>
> I hope you will join me in attempting to convince the Ubuntu Media
> Center team and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's founder,
> http://MarkShuttleworth.com) that MythTV is the obvious choice for the
> Ubuntu Media Center.
>
> Thanks,
> Erik
>
> BTW: Our DRM-loving, anti-GPL, anti-Qt/KDE friends at Fluendo are the
> main culprits in this deal, as they are the ones pushing their own
> semi-proprietary product.

I'll stick with MythTV, thank you, but some food for thought:

There are multiple reasons Linux distros backed by US-based corporate entities 
won't ship their own MythTV packages or support a MythTV distribution, almost 
all of them involving codec patents here in the US. Fluendo appears to be 
going about things in a manner which would allow Elisa to be shipped free of 
patented codecs, but with the ability to "legally" acquire them from Fluendo 
(of course, in my eyes, it'll be largely useless without them, I need mpeg2 
support for pretty much all my recordings).

Anyhow, as a result, I think you could wind up seeing US distros actually able 
to support/endorse Elisa, whereas that ain't gonna happen with MythTV, at 
least not anytime soon.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com