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Television Businesses Media Software Apple Linux

MythTV 0.17 Released 337

Posted by Zonk from the do-it-yourself-tivo dept.
foobar01 writes "MythTV 0.17 has been released. Changes include Mac OS X frontend support, big improvements to DVB and HDTV support, "timestretch" feature (for changing playback speed but not the pitch so you can watch shows more quickly), firewire capture support for cable boxes with firewire output, and widescreen user interface support. See the changelog for the full list of changes."
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MythTV 0.17 Released More

MythTV 0.17 Released

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  • Why Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BobPaul ( 710574 ) * on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:21PM (#11645054) Journal
    Obviously this relates because of the native Apple Frontend, but is there any other reason this is in the apple section of slashdot? This project is still primarily a linux toy, is it not? (real question).

    • Re:Why Apple? (Score:5, Funny)

      by lpangelrob2 ( 721920 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:28PM (#11645136) Journal
      I'm not really sure, but here's a guess...

      if (product.getDescription().contains("Apple")) {
      setCategory("Apple");
      logger.warn(this.class + " [TODO] -- needs to extend SteveJobsRealityDistortionField");
      }

      Obligatory disclaimer... I own a couple of Apples.

    • An honest mythtake...

    • Re:Why Apple? (Score:2, Informative)

      by illtron ( 722358 )
      Well it has always run on Linux. An updated version to run on Linux isn't really as big as an update that will run on Macs is. That said, I'm sure it is newsworthy to Linux people too. Maybe I'm biased, though.
    • I've been using firewire based HDTV playback/recording on a Mac for a year or so. Had it not been tagged as "Apple," I might have missed this.

      Mistake or not, it works for me!

      -Pie

    • Re:Why Apple? (Score:5, Informative)

      by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:43PM (#11645306) Homepage
      Because some time ago, /. started putting stories in more than one category. For example, this story is in Linux, Apple and what appears to be Television. The only thing the OSX program can't do yet is record; it would be interesting to see a OSX backend that used iCal or something to record shows.
      • If you have the right cable box, you can record on OSX. You can schedule recording using iCal, too. I know its not exactly MythTV based, but its still cool as hell.

        http://macteens.com/more.php?id=410_0_1_0_C

        As an unrelated aside, MythTV hackers/ contributors have been making strides, writing code to assist in changing channels and complelely controlling /s treaming from cablebox firewire things. Which is cool; one cable for audio, video and administration makes PVR'ing supereasy.
    • Apparently you haven't been reading slashdot lately, or you'd know about the Mac mini, which can function perfectly as a DVR -- the MM has very small form factor, in addition to its inexpense easy set up.
      • Isn't DVRs based on some advanced MPEG2, while Apple is always in favor of Quicktime?!

      • Re:Why Apple? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BobPaul ( 710574 ) *
        But does the backend work on the mac as well? As I understand it the front end is just the interface that plays shows recorded by the backend.

        I don't know. Put it in the apple category, but I'm disagree that the primary category should be Apple.

        Just my opinion, I guess.

  • Mac Mini Frontend (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LinuxOnHal ( 315199 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:22PM (#11645066) Homepage
    Who's ready for a Mac Mini frontend?
    • "Changes include Mac OS X frontend support"

      "Who's ready for a Mac Mini frontend?"

      Did I miss something? Since when did the Mac Mini not run OS X?

    • Re:Mac Mini Frontend (Score:5, Informative)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:54PM (#11645452) Homepage
      From what I've heard, the horsepower requirements for decoding HDTV are:
      • 480p - XBox Media Center
      • 708p - Mac Mini
      • 1080i - x86 >2.8GHz, or equivalent
      So, the Mac Mini may not be enough in all cases, right?
      • You could still use it for regular tv which >90% of people have and for which the Mini will work good enough.

  • Ooooh... timestretch! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:22PM (#11645069)
    That means I can watch 24 in 18.

  • Why is this in the Apple section? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SECProto ( 790283 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:22PM (#11645070)
    I agree, frontend support for the mac was one of the bigger changes, but... it still will not record tv shows on a mac. it can only be used to watch already-recorded shows. Which is not much different than a video player, which is not the only function of MythTV

  • Shouldn't Apple put something like this out? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Joshua53077 ( 849570 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:26PM (#11645110)
    Cool program. This looks like a perfect compliment to the digital lifestyle. If this were part of the iLife suite, I bet a lot of people would jump at it. If Apple had put it in iLife 05, it definitely would have justified the $20 increase in price, and it probably would have sold better and could draw more people to the platform.

  • Native or X11? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by illtron ( 722358 )
    I was looking at the site earlier and didn't immediately notice anything saying if it was running as a native OS X app or through X11? I'd be really tempted to check it out at work, but, well...I'll let you guess the rest.

    • Re:Native or X11? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dalroth ( 85450 )
      It's a native OSX app using the Mac OSX port of QT. I've run the previous version (0.16) on my iBook. It was a bit unstable and crashed often, but it ran. I suspect 0.17 will be considerably more stable but haven't tried it yet.

      Bryan

  • or... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ooter ( 741986 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:27PM (#11645120)
    "timestretch" feature (for changing playback speed but not the pitch so you can watch shows more quickly)

    Or, if you're from the south, you can slow down the show for easier understanding.

  • myth (Score:4, Funny)

    by rogabean ( 741411 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:28PM (#11645130)
    Bah! I was going for a quiet weekend... Now I gotta decide whether or not my MythTV box needs an upgrade or not...

    ok what am I saying? Sounds like a fun weekend for me :)
    • Then again I also now have to wait on the changelog to get un /.'ed /sigh

  • been thinking about mythtv for a while... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:28PM (#11645132)
    ... but the thought of going from component input to coax irks me a lot (I also like how my non-hd Sony tv is able to 'compress' the DVD output so I get more lines of resolution for example, which I don't think would happen off a wintv pvr-350), what do people here do?

    I'd like to have a mythtv box in the basement, drops in a few rooms and some sort of wireless system to remote control it all from wherever, but if the video quality will drop noticeably it wouldn't really be worth it.
    • Maybe I'm confused but I don't think capturing TV off of your PVR-350 will affect your DVD playback.
      • my TV is connected to my digital cable box via component inputs, which is a heck of a lot better than the RF I'd be getting out of a 350

        having mythtv would mean that I might be tempted to rip all my DVDs to avoid the constant disk shuffling, but I wouldn't be able to do that due to, again, the video quality issues.

        The PVR from my cable company (which would cost me not that much more than a mythtv setup) although abysmal from the functionality standpoint does output in component *and* even downconverts HDT
    • ...but the thought of going from component input to coax...

      I know I'm just being pedantic, but don't you mean from component to RF? Your component cables probably are coaxial.

    • I don't know about your first question, but the second part I know about. MythTV is setup as a frontend and backend. The backend has the tuner and storage (or you can use NFS). The frontend is the part that displays material. They can be on separate machines. You can have multiple frontends and backends. A backend can have multiple tuners. It's all very flexible. I think you can even have separate machines for the commercial detection and other CPU-hungry tasks.

      So, don't go running coax or anything arou

  • HDTV. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:29PM (#11645156)
    So say I buy a HDTV tuner card to avoid future issues w/the broadcast flag. Will I only be able to watch the HDTV content on an HDTV capable monitor?

    Does that mean that I need to have both a regular TV-in card and a HDTV-in card to record both types?
    • My understanding is that having an HDTV tuner card doesn't get you anything in terms of the broadcast flag, unless you happen to get one that ignores the broadcast flag, which either are or shortly will be illegal to purchase.

      Also, for cable, you still need to have a HDTV cable box or HDTV cablecard that is compatible with your cable provider's service.

      For satellite you would obviously need their equipment.

      For OTA broadcasts you can just use an antenna to pick up whatever the local channels are. Even tho
    • But since I can't get a decent broadcast NTSC signal, what are the chances that I'll be able to receive a decent broadcast HDTV signal? Seems to me that in my situation, buying the pre-July broadcast-flag-free HDTV tuner card is just a way to give the company a donation, and store another unused PCI card.

      Is there any other option for someone stuck with cable/satellite to run myth-HDTV? I've heard about IR kludges and the like. Can that do it? What kind of signal comes out of the back side of the cable/sate

  • Totally changes the way you watch TV (Score:5, Informative)

    by PsychoKiller ( 20824 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:34PM (#11645206) Homepage
    I just got my MythTV system running 2 weeks ago. I'm still running 0.16 but it's still great.

    I'm using a Pundit-R that sits beside my TV, and it uses a 802.11b wireless card to get programming data.

    Since I've been using it for 2 weeks, it's totally changed the way the wife and I watch TV. We never miss an episode of our favourite shows, and never watch commercials.

    The commercial marking function is like magic, it looks for blank frames in the data stream and flags that as a commercial. I'd say it gets it right 80% of the time, 15% of the time it will include the station ID clip, and 5% it will grab an extra commercial, but I'll just hit forward on the remote to skip it.

    My favourite part is using it to watch a new show that's 'almost' live. I'll set it to record the show, but then start watching it 5-10 minutes after it's started. When I get to the commercials I skip over them, and by the end of the show I'll have hopefully synced up perfectly with the real time stream.

  • Is there a good mythtv live cd? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:35PM (#11645218)
    I did a quick search on google and found one knoppix based live cd but it seemed to be only the front end and still required the backend to be installed some where.

    Is there a standalone CD that I can try out with Mythtv ready to go for my GeForce FX 5700 personal cinema?

    • Re:Is there a good mythtv live cd? (Score:4, Informative)

      by prowley ( 587280 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:49PM (#11645393)
      Knoppmyth is the whole shebang. I based my dedicated install on it. http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html [mysettopbox.tv]

    • Re:Is there a good mythtv live cd? (Score:5, Informative)

      by masonjd ( 657070 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:54PM (#11645461)
      If you are referring to KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv] then it also installs the backend. You can use the cd to just install the frontend but it will install the both pieces on one computer. That is the way I have done it.

      KnoppMyth definitely makes MythTV more accessible. The entire install and configuration takes about 20 minutes provided that you are using linux compatible hardware. Pretty much if you are using a Hauppauge card then you are set.
      • I was very happy with KnoppMyth, but Hauppauge changes their hardware around so often that KnoppMyth isn't entirely plug-n-play.

        The PVR-350 that I got was the newest version, so I had weird "color issues" and had to download new ivtv drivers (and feed them non-default arguments). Also, the new PVR-350s come with a cooler remote, but it has different IR codes. So I had to find a config file for those too.

        Still: MythTV is awesome, KnoppMyth is fantastic, and I love my time-shifting :).
    • I did a quick search on google and found one knoppix based live cd but it seemed to be only the front end and still required the backend to be installed some where.

      Is there a standalone CD that I can try out with Mythtv ready to go for my GeForce FX 5700 personal cinema?

      No. In order to use Myth, you must have an installed system somewhere. There's enough setup to a Myth system, you wouldn't want to use it on a Knoppix boot type cd anyway.

      After you get a Myth server running on your network, you can use

    • Re:Is there a good mythtv live cd? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ThogScully ( 589935 ) <neilsd@neilschelly.com> on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:05PM (#11645580) Homepage
      KnoppMyth is probably the one you're talking about, but it's not trivial to setup. It's much easier than doing it from scratch and so long as you pick hardware that is receiving attention in the forums there, you should be fine, but there's a lot of options and configuration you need to do sometimes. A live CD backend wouldn't help too much, given that.
      -N
  • HDTV support has been an absolute bitch for the last year. Now I can finally pull my computer (3ghz P4 computer I built for HDTV, $700) out of the closet and record some HD CSI!

  • Is this possible? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scottking ( 674292 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:44PM (#11645318) Homepage

    With Lokitorrents getting taken down [theinquirer.net] today, and left with a rather tasteless warning [lokitorrent.com], I wonder if the MPAA will start looking to litigate the source of illegal content, like MythTV?

    Do you (slashdot readers) think it's a possibility?

    • Sony v. Universal (Score:3, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      I wonder if the MPAA will start looking to litigate the source of illegal content, like MythTV?

      MythTV merely turns your computer into a VCR. The movie studios lost that battle back in 1984.

  • Of all the HDTV capture cards on the market, which will ignore the "broadcast flag"? Which ones work in Windows, and which ones work on Linux?
    • Of all the HDTV capture cards on the market, which will ignore the "broadcast flag"? Which ones work in Windows, and which ones work on Linux?

      I'm talking without any knowledge of what's out there, but if I were designing an HDTV capture card I would make sure that the hardware didn't do anything with any flags in the data stream except pass them on to the driver/OS and let them decide how to handle them.

      There's no value to having separate hardware versions for each region the device is sold in, depending

    • Re:HDTV capture devices which ignore broadcast fla (Score:4, Informative)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:05PM (#11645576) Homepage
      Visit the EFF broadcast flag [eff.org] page, scroll down about halfway, and look under the Linux/Windows/Mac sections on the left.

    • Re:HDTV capture devices which ignore broadcast fla (Score:4, Informative)

      by dowobeha ( 581813 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:54PM (#11646200)
      Linux HDTV capture cards:

      pcHDTV 3000 [pchdtv.com]
      This card is the successor to the original pcHDTV 2000. Its chipset allows you to record either standard over-the-air NTSC or digital over-the-air ATSC. I believe that drivers are in the works to allow you to record unencrypted QAM channels from digital cable.

      Air2PC [pchdtv.com]
      This newer card allows you to record digital over-the-air ATSC. It allows you to record unencrypted QAM channels from digital cable.

      From what I've heard, there's no clear winner for which of these two cards is better. The pcHDTV 3000 can be purchased at the pcHDTV web site for $189. The Air2PC is on sale here [mythic.tv] for $169. If you plan to purchase, do so before July 2005. After that date, it's questionable at best whether they will still be sold.

      Search the MythTV user group mailing list archives [gossamer-threads.com] for more information about these cards and support in MythTV.

  • That'll get me to move from VDR.

  • My prediction for the DVR market (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @02:52PM (#11645436)
    Apple will buy Tivo.

    Disclaimer: I own a DirecTivo. I don't really know why I needed to declare that. I think I just wanted to sound important.

    [1] Tivo is starting to look like it might become "beleaguered" much like Apple was declared during the years 1970 through 2005. Yes, Apple was called beleaguered by the tech media even before it existed.

    [2] Tivo is (I think) Linux based. Making it compilable on BSD Unix is, like, what? Two man hours? What? Different motherborads? Ok, four man hours.

    [3] Steve Jobs wants the Mac to be the center of our digital media warm fuzziness thing where we go for brief respites from the wacky demon haunted world in which we live.

    [4] The Grammys have become dominated by hip hop and gangsta rap. Only a vast array of Mac powered DVRs spread across the nation can protect us from whatever.

    It can't be any more obvious that that! You savvy?

    You heard it here first.

    • I don't think so. TiVo is great for what it is, but it's really not up to Apple's standards. The user experience is good, but not NEARLY good enough. Plus there's no FireWire support, which would be necessary for an Apple product. Also, no QuickTime, which means no easy way to add support for H.264/AVC.

      But the bigger problem is that TiVo's software is, I believe, encumbered by the GPL. That's a show-stopper for Apple.
    • I don't believe it. I would not be surprised to see Apple come out with a DVR, probably when the CableCard 2.0 standard becomes final, but I don't see what it gains Apple to buy TiVo. What would TiVo bring to the table? User interface? Apple's perfectly capable of doing that on their own, and as good as the TiVo interface is, it is beginning to look dated. Apple would want something new. Profits? TiVo is losing money. Affiliation with DirecTV? DirecTV is switching to a non-TiVo DVR. Userbase? Most TiVo cust

  • I think that the bigger news here... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Yonder Way ( 603108 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:04PM (#11645568)
    ...is that a lot of digital/HDTV cable customers will be able to use their digital cable box as a capture device, and plug into the MythTV back end host with firewire. This uses almost none of the host CPU as the cable box is spewing raw MPEG2 over firewire, and MythTV just needs to save it to disk.

    That right there just tripled the number of channels I could record, and gave me HDTV capabilities as well as premium channels.

    I'm one of the people scratching my head over why this was put in the Apple category where few people would see it. Most of the people running Myth are on PC/Linux platform.

  • Too little too late (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zapp ( 201236 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:04PM (#11645570)
    I ran myth for over a year... it served its purpose for a while.

    I have since put XP and Beyond TV on my box. The single biggest contributing factor to dropping Myth was the lack of a standard format. I couldn't view .nuv files on any other platforms. Oh, and good luck trying to transcode something to divx, that took way way way too long.

    Myth: Record to mpeg or avi!

    • Re:Too little too late (Score:5, Informative)

      by gremlins ( 588904 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:23PM (#11645829)
      First if you use IVTV [sf.net] it does record mpeg. But besides that nuv is just an encapsulation for various diffrent encoding formats. So even though it says nuv the underlying encoding format is usally either mpeg2 or mpeg4. Now if you want to view them on other platforms mplayer has a patch to play nuv files. Also you could use winmyth [sourceforge.net] to play them on windows. And if you want to easily convert nuv files to divx you can use nuvexport [forevermore.net]. Or you could play them through mythweb with mythstreamtv [sourceforge.net].
  • "timestretch" feature (for changing playback speed but not the pitch so you can watch shows more quickly)

    And there are already plans to support blipverts in the next version!
  • to go out any buy myself a capture card and install MythTV on my linux box? I've been thinking about it for a while, waiting until the time is right. I already have a TV, so is the ~CDN$300-400 worth it?
  • I set up a box to run MythTV with a cheap DVB card late last year, but the configuration of the DVB channels left a lot to be desired.

    Particularly troublesome were time shared channels that only broadcast during part of the day, as the mechanism to insert channels would feed incorrect values into the various fields. Even when I correct this when the channels were on air didn't help with a coupld of channels. I hope this mechanism is better.

    I'll have to spend the next week or three re-loading this box, as
  • What providers offer FireWire cable box? Have I been living in a cave?

    I have Comcast digital cable in Massachusetts, which is about 700 channels (including 100 or so of just music and a handful of HDTV feeds). The cable box is Motorola, black, but I've seen some silver ones at friends houses. Are these the FireWire ones?

  • Nice software, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TeeJS ( 618313 ) on Friday February 11, 2005 @03:39PM (#11646031) Homepage
    I never did understand why it's database driven. I first got into MythTV because I wanted to record shows at work (better cable service) and watch them at home - an never have figured out how to do it because of the database integration. I've been told Freevo may meet my needs better, but Myth is so nice...
    • Duhhh...
      My first attempt at "networked MythTV": I installed the full MythTV suite on a stationary PC, played with it, works fine. Then i installed mythfrontend only on a laptop, pointed it to the PC, boom! it works!
      No fiddling required. It just works. Just tell mythfrontend to use another backend than 127.0.0.1

  • TV = a huge time waster (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rolling_or_jaded ( 645622 ) on Saturday February 12, 2005 @05:17AM (#11650647) Homepage
    Interesting thread. I looked into setting up MythTV a few months ago, but a few problems (me being a MS kiddie and knowing zilch about *nix, and being Australian, where the program guides were something of an issue at the time) foiled my attempts.

    My partner and I (yes, a girl! :D) have sinced moved to a new house, and the TV now sits in one of the spare bedrooms. Our antenna has several missing elements, so free-to-air TV is fairly unwatchable... so we download most of the TV we want to watch, and occasionally stream it via the xbox.

    End result? We watch a *lot* less TV. And... it's bloody great. We've gone from, say, 4 hours a night of TV - 28 hours a week, over 9 hours(!) of ads - to maybe 8 hours a week, no ads.

    Break your TV. Cut off the cord. Move it to another room. Give TV a break... it's phenomonal what you can acheive without it - PetRescue [petrescue.com.au] is my example.

    Finally, and a little more on-topic:

    "timestretch" feature (for changing playback speed but not the pitch so you can watch shows more quickly)

    So can you slow it down, for the stoners? Damn cartoons are getting too quick for me.... ;)

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