[mythtv-users] Thank You

[Yeechang Lee]

Eric Mesa <ericsbinaryworld at gmail.com> says:
> I don't think this gets said often enough.  To any devs reading this
> list - thanks for such a great suite of programs - mythtv proper and
> the plugins.

Amen and amen. To summarize how I feel about MythTV, go to
<URL:http://www.barneysvideoresume.com/> and substitute "MythTV" in
place of "Barney."

Back in the antediluvian days of early December 2005 when I set up my
MythTV frontend/backend,[1] I knew two things about it: a) It was said
to be an adequate a replacement for TiVo, which I needed since my
series 1 had died and I wanted to move to HD anyway. b) It was said to
be ridiculously, stupendously, amazingly, obscenely hard to set up. So
much so, I'd delayed the initial plunge for months.

Setup was surprisingly easy--if laborius--given all the moving parts I
had to wrap my mind around, and by the second night I had my first
FireWire recording. There were some issues with 0.18; about one sixth
of recordings (all from FireWire, back then) would randomly kill
mythfrontend, and LiveTV audio behaved oddly. mythbackend would die
randomly, too. MythVideo's codec support was so awful that it is no
wonder mplayer was the default choice.

0.18 worked and worked well, though, overall. Even with only one
FireWire input I could see 0.18's clear advantages over TiVo: Total
storage flexibility, a ridiculously-smart scheduler ("Find One" is the
true unsung hero of MythTV, if you ask me) without which any support
for multiple tuners is pretty useless, a very clever way of
organizing/displaying a TV show's episodes. And, of course, complete
support for properly playing back glorious MPEG-2 HD recordings.

0.19 in early 2006 fixed the mythfrontend-kill and LiveTV-audio
issues (mythbackend dying would take much much longer, but I'm hoping
it's finally been stamped out for good) and since then every release
has brought tons of new improvements. 0.22 promises a much-nicer UI (I
think the current one's more than adequate, so 0.22's must be truly
spectacular) and mainstream support of HD-PVR and VDPAU. HD-PVR and
VDPAU answer at one stroke the two biggest ongoing support questions
on -users, "How do I record HD cable/satellite?" and "How do I play
back HD recordings on my [really underpowered] frontend?" Who knows
what wonders we'll see from the developers' hands in coming years?

[1] Still used for the same purpose today. Thanks to VDPAU, it might
very well serve for another three years!

-- 
Frontend/backend:	P4 3.0GHz, 1.5TB software RAID 5 array
Backend:		Quad-core Xeon 1.6GHz, 6.6TB sw RAID 6
Video inputs:		Four high-definition over FireWire/OTA
Accessories:		47" 1080p LCD, 5.1 digital, and MX-600