Tivo vs MythTV (was: *pout* HDTV No Recordee....)

[Ted Roche]

On Nov 7, 2006, at 2:45 PM, Ben Scott wrote:

>  Those of you here who are already using MythTV, how do you find it
> works in day-to-day usage?

Like I hear from my Tivo friends, "It will change your life."

On the Columbus Day holiday, I installed a PVR-150mce in a spare FC5  
box following Jarod Wilson's HOWTO, and it was pretty much plug-and- 
play.

>  I'm not as concerned with how hard it is to set-up -- I'm confident
> I can figure that out.  What I want to avoid is something that's a
> pain to *use*, or that I have to tinker with to keep it working, or
> that fails to record programs properly, etc.

"It Just Works" to coin a phrase. Or it doesn't. X-Files on Turner  
record fine, on Sci-Fi, they never do, so perhaps I have a setup  
error. But mostly it just works.

We've recorded a bunch of stuff, played and paused live TV,

I haven't tried anything fancy, just a single box with cable and  
wired internet, and I'm running it from the keyboard. Cursor-up, - 
down, Escape and Enter pretty much do what you want them to do. Had  
to look at the user manual to figure out that "D" deleted a  
recording. Haven't tried to figure out much more than that, so far,  
but there's lots of other cool things it will do.

>   If I'm watching TV, it
> means I want to take my brain off-hook for awhile.  :-)  So I want it
> to behave like a good appliance -- something that, once installed,
> stays working for long periods of time.

Yup. The core MythTV just installs and works. Now, if you want to  
tweak with the whole MythTV Suite - rip DVDs, make it a music  
jukebox, archive your DVDs, play arcade games,... you can tweak forever.

Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com