[mythtv-users] XBMC + Myth = ?? Was:Comcast Cable encrypted channels

Alan Marchiori alan at alanmarian.com
Wed Aug 5 14:39:51 UTC 2009


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Brian Wood<beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 August 2009 07:46:11 Alan Marchiori wrote:
>
>>
>> As predicted everything went fine.  XBMC does support 64bit with their
>> apt distribution.  I also got the playOn server working with hulu and
>> netflix with little problems.  It is actually pretty nice (I was
>> expecting less).  For now I'm running it on a core2 laptop @ 1.5GHz
>> and it uses 50-60% CPU while playing SD-like resolution.  My main
>> complaint is the video from netflix looks a little fuzzy to me.  I'm
>> not sure if this is the source or the transcoding by playOn but I
>> think analog captures from my PVR-150 are of better quality. FFWD is
>> maybe about 5x max.  Rewind doesn't work at all.
>>
>> After playing around I'm thinking the best way to do this would be to
>> have a upnp client tuner for the backend.  Then the backend would
>> "record" the upnp streams just like it does with any other capture
>> card.  Then playback would be just like any other source.  The upnp
>> tuner would populate its "channels" by making a single channel for
>> each video on the upnp device that starts now() and repeats forever.
>> Seems easy enough, right? :)
>
> Should be.
>
> The problem might be the ToS for Netflix, and other services. The idea is they
> want you to watch them, not record them. Granted that if you can watch it you
> can record it, if you want to badly enough. Things like HDCP seem to make the
> content providers happy, even though we all know they are easily beatable.
>
> But a system that records directly, and could easily produce DVDs that could
> be distributed, would almost certainly upset the content providers, who
> generally see Linux users as a "bunch of pirates".
>
> To me the whole point is that you would not need to record any of these
> services, because you can watch them any time you want. Of course a
> particular program might be pulled for various reasons, but in general most
> of the material is always available, thus saving the expense and hassle of
> large storage arrays for people like us.
>
> The whole internet TV scene is in a continuous state of flux, nobody seems to
> really know what they are doing or where they are going. Glitches like the
> Boxee/Hulu dispute will continue to crop up , and it will probably be a long
> time before things stabilize, business models settle down and advertisers
> decide what such services are actually worth.
>
> In the meantime I'll sit back and watch the show, and try to not invest too
> much money in anything that depends on the providers acting rationally.
>
>

I was actually wondering how what PlayOn does is not in violation of
the TOS.  I am worried to give them money because I think it is only a
matter of time until they also get shut down like boxee.

The obvious advantage to recording the stream is the ability to
ffwd/rewind.  Do you think it's really worth it to create a myth setup
to record streamed movies (in low quality) to a DVD when you could
just buy a netflix subscription for 8.99/mo?


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