Mythtv

[EmmEff]

My MythTV installation is just a backend for my Xbox 360 frontend, so thankfully I'm not subjected to these frontend issues

[stampeder]

Channel Scanning is a mythbackend function, so the new version might be worth a look. Other than that, I agree that this is mostly frontend stuff.

[rpr]

There were some commits to trunk today that apparently fix a lot of the 'pauses' between screens, at least to the point of making the delays less apparent. 0.22 was about getting the UI presentation stuff done, 0.23 I believe will be about fixing the UI performance.

[DdDave]

From one of the mailing list threads:

Ideally, the gap between .22 and .23 will be much, much
shorter than ever before, though I will refrain from making any
promises.

Looks like they are trying to get 0.22 out because there has been such a long delay since the last version. They probably want to get the new MythUI out into the wild to do a general improvement, and then do some clean-up and touch-ups in 0.23.

[mlord]

From that very thread:

Originally Posted by the archtypical MythTV developer:

Thought I would share with you all that I am working on a new theme that I hope to have done for .23.

The theme is going to be released under a fairly restrictive license that disallows copying or derivative works, so I'm not anticipating this ever being distributed with Myth. 2) I'm using proprietary fonts that I cannot/will not distribute. I will provide links for where you can purchase the fonts (about $15) but will leave it up to the user to procure them.

.. it's fun to be a part of something lots of people in the community use.

Sounds really encouraging as a future direction for the project.

[mlord]

Originally Posted by mlord

From that very thread:
...
Sounds really encouraging as a future direction for the project.

I was originally going to say more about the philosophies espoused in that thread, but then just about every second word would have violated the terms of use here at dh.ca.

At this point, I'm seriously looking for MythTV alternatives.

-ml

[rpr]

I'm not sure I follow your logic. What is in that thread that would cause you to not use MythTV? It was a thread about a theme that turned into a discussion about 'free' software and licensing. None of which was really talking about MythTV specifically.

[stampeder]

Fork?

[DdDave]

Originally Posted by mlord

I was originally going to say more about the philosophies espoused in that thread, but then just about every second word would have violated the terms of use here at dh.ca.

Agreed, I was shaking my head as I read through that one. Very contradictory to work on an application like MythTV and then start pulling this nonsense. It should have been kept off the MythTV mailing lists.

That being said, I still plan on building my MythTV box over the holidays, I just won't be using that new theme when it comes out (it really didn't look that impressive anyway).

[pvrfan]

For those curious (and with a lot of idle time on their hands), the full thread is here.

I think this is a tempest in a teacup. It is a THEME at issue. The theme-developer was using a font that is not freely available. He felt the theme wouldn't look right with another font substituted so he's employed a more-restrictive license. He has ALSO done at least 2 other themes that are available under a very wide-open license.

Some people need to untwist their undergarments.

Craig

[mlord]

That "theme developer" is also the head MythTV Dev/Tyrant, so what he thinks and does matters 1000X more than anyone else there.

Back on topic.. I sync'd my test drive with latest Mythbuntu last night, and some things appear to work now.

The themes are still mostly unfit for humans (very poor WAF), but the 2-second pauses are gone.

The HVR-950Q works in analog, but no sound in LiveTV. There is sound from it in a "proper" recording, though, despite identical "Recording Profiles" for the two.

But enabling analog killed the digital side of the 950Q, so we'll just call that an unusable work in progress. It'll likely get resolved about the time that analog completely disappears from OTA here, in August 2011.

I stilll cannot find a way to stop a recording in progress, other than by killing the backend. The nice little menu we used to have in the media->recordings screen for that is AWOL.

Other stuff might work well enough to give this a try on real hardware soon, though. Maybe in a few weeks, after enough others scream about the low WAF and other wrinkles.

Cheers

[Daemons]

I'd like to add my recent experience. This was my first exposure to MythTV & MythBuntu, but I'm an experienced Ubuntu user.

I just build myself a dual core AMD X2 3Ghz HTPC with HVR-1600 tuner this past week.

So I figured... Ah! 9.10 is almost here and MythTV 0.22 has some config changes so I might as well use the "new" Mythbuntu 9.10 beta using 0.22 MythTV and avoid having to migrate to 0.22 later.

I can state that if you've never setup MythTV before, do NOT use 0.22, stick with tried & tested 0.21

In short, Nothing worked! Lol Well, almost nothing. My HDMI to TV did work, but thats it.
I couldn't get the remote to work at all, the new channel scan found no digital channels and the analog scan stays stuck at ch2, and doesn't move so found nothing there again. DVD playback was buggy, at best.

Not a great start when everything is new and you don't know if the problem is hardware or software.

So I installed XP, drivers & WinTV soft and everything worked.

I then wiped 9.10 and installed Mythbuntu 9.04 and almost everything worked right away, once I setup the card of course.
Remote works, Analog & digital scan worked. Recording & pause Live-TV worked.
The only thing I'm left working on is digital sound via HDMI to my TV. But I'm sure it's just some ALSA/Pulse Audio or Mixer problem that I will get fixed soon enough.

Oh, and xubuntu tools suck. I just want to mention that.
It makes it hard to debug not having the usual ubuntu tools around. I know it's lightweight but, c'mon.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my new HTPC MythTV 0.21 setup.
I think I'll be sticking with 0.21 for a while. I don't think I'll have the patience any time soon to work on 0.22 again.

Marc

[rpr]

@mlord: there are 3 ways that I can think of (and verify right now) to stop an in progress recording in 0.22. From the frontend, watch recordings screen, highlight the recording, bring up the recording menu (usually I for info) and the third option is 'Stop Recording'. Or, from the same place, instead press D (if you have it bound to a remote key, or on a keyboard) to delete, and it will stop recording. From MythWeb, go to Recorded Programs, find the recording and select 'Delete' in the right most column of the recording, and it will stop recording and delete the file.

@Daemons: Don't confuse a distribution package that installs MythTV for you with a hand built and installed MythTV setup. The pre-packaged versions try to do it all for you, and sometimes they don't get it right. If you do it yourself, from scratch, you can learn a lot. If you don't have the patience, by all means use whatever works for you, but I don't think it's fair to slam MythTV for that. Yes, it's complicated, yes, it takes time to understand it all and configure it correctly, I've been using it for 5 years and still find out things I didn't know, but it does everything I want, and it does it very well, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Tom

[mlord]

Ah.. so it's now "I" instead of the more intuitive right-arrow from all previous versions? Well, at least I can fix that in the source code. Thanks for the pointer.

As for the rest, MythTV is Open-Source. That's its good point. The rest is simply "adequate" to "mediocre".

But, being Open-Source, at least a programmer (like me) can make it work somewhat better, given enough weeks of unpaid work on it.

So I've been using it for several years now, and *fixing* the worst breakages here in my own setup. And customizing the source to solve unrelated problems (multiple antennas) which cannot be done with any other (closed-source) software I know of.

So I still use it (0.21), but I never, ever, recommend it to friends any more.
Enemies, perhaps. But not friends.

Cheers

[stampeder]

Advice for new MythTV users:

Until MythDora and Mythbuntu release new versions based on MythTV 0.22 it is best to stay with their present versions (based on 0.21) unless you are experienced with rolling your own development software and know some or all of those ropes.

I'm not getting the sense that MythTV 0.22 has any real show-stopper features that would make it a desirable version for new users to try to wrestle with at this time. I'm positive that 0.22 will be worthwhile when wrapped in new MythDora and Mythbuntu releases as it will have been greatly debugged by then.