[mythtv-users] Why did you pick MythTV VS the other PVRs?

[Nick F]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 3:36 AM, Tom Sparks<tom_a_sparks at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> the reason why I picked MythTV:
> there is no upperlimit on capture cards, hard drive space
> I can have as many front ends as I want
> I can use a web based interface
>
> Why did you pick MythTV VS the other PVRs?

The Live 8 concert in July 2005!

My wife commented to me that it would be nice to save a recording of
the concert given there were such one-off events as Pink Floyd getting
together.  I was living in the UK at the time and had been thinking
about Sky Plus (the DVR of the sat provider).  I realised there was no
way to get the recording OFF Sky plus.

So - went to the electronics store, saw there were computer capture
cards - and bought a USB DVB-T device.  Went home, hit google and
tried to figure out the best software to use.  I was a Windows man at
that point.  Saw numerous references to Mythtv.  Sounded awesome - but
it used that darn Linux stuff that I had been reading about.

Downloaded Knoppmyth - and installed it on an old laptop.  Wow - this
thing was cool (thanks Knoppmyth guys!).  But couldn't stand the idea
of a distribution that did everything for me.  Discovered Jarod's
Fedora how-to (thanks Jarod!), installed it from atrpms, and was even
better off.  But what about trying patches - so I then started
compiling from source and was even happier.

Now - four years later have a multi-TB array in the basement, a
gigabit network in my house, several frontends - some running Fedora,
some Ubuntu (thanks Mark Shuttleworth), some with VDPAU
backports(thanks JY!).

So far my Myth 'hobby' was cost me literally thousands of dollars -
man would have I been better off just buying a Live 8 DVD when it came
out! :-)  Many thanks to all the hard-working myth developers.  I've
had incredible fun with the system.