[mythtv-users] Goals and Aspirations of MythTV

[Indulis Bernsteins]

> As for making myth run for your country of choice:
> All you need is to configure the program for your language preference.
> Capturing is done by the capture device you chose which also should have
> been chosen for your specific needs

As Bill Wobblestick would say "aye, and there's the rub!".

As someone who has built a couple of Mythtv systems over the years, the 
remaining awful, risky, painful, tedious, "must-be-a-tech-geek" area is 
finding a tuner card that works.  I'm talking DVB-T here folks, not analog 
inputs.

If you look at LinuxTV and Mythtv and other wikis there is lots of great 
information about tuners that you can no longer buy, or are PCI when your 
system only has PCI-E slots.  TO find out about actual support you need to 
delve into the linuxtv mailing lists, and/or read the source code for 
comments like "Scumby XYZ tuner (revision E) is now supported, revision F 
sold in the same packaging and indistinguishable from revision E until you 
plug it onto your system is not now, and never will be supported".

The mythtv developers have done a great job to make mythtv reasonably 
simple to implement, and can't be blamed for the tuner fiasco we see now. 
Proprietary chips, internal changes to tuners where chipsets are changed 
with no change in external name or packaging of the tuner card/USB stick, 
all these and more are the blight on the world of Mythtv.

I've tried to do my bit and update the LinuxTV wiki with my experiences, 
but again the tuners I have working now are not that accessible or useful 
(PCI- no longer sold, USB- one of 2 tuners on the Pinnacle USB stick 
works).

Maybe we should approach one of the smaller manufacturers to get some 
"certified for Mythtv" cards/USB sticks.  If all Mythtv users used just 
that product it might be enough quantity to get their interest.

Maybe Mythtv needs a "report my installation" which would (say) every 6 
months ask you if it can send back a snapshot of the tuner cards in 
people's systems, as well as giving us an idea of the # of mythtv users in 
various countries.  WIth some real number then we might be able to make a 
case to hardware manufacturers.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20100510/b587d4b7/attachment.htm>