One mans struggle with MythTV
So it’s that time of year again, the time when i think to myself that maybe, just maybe, it’s worth trying Myth TV again.
I’ve always been wrong, since 2005, every time i have tried it i’ve hard problems with hardware support, flaky software, wobbly codecs and so much more that is just hasn’t been worth the effort with Windows Media Centre outperforming it in every regard.
However, today i tried MythBuntu 2010.04 and finally, finally, it works. I still think the setup is far too complex – a simple tuner wizard would suffice and for sat tuners it should download the transponder information automatically. As of writing it’s currently broken – my DVB-S2 tuner doesn’t work – it’s detected but it wont scan for any channels in Myth (DVB Tools manages ok) and now it all seems to have fallen apart.
However, when it was working i had dual tuner DVB-T, in-band guide information, fast and smooth playback of MKV 1080p, (and everything else) as well as DD and DTS passthrough to my AV amp.
For the first time ever, i think it will be worth the effort to get working fully and look nice, so i can take advantage of multi-channel single-mux recording on one tuner and the front-end back-end design.
Watch this space.
AHA! EDIT:
After a reboot and re-configure of the tuners from scratch my sat tuner appears to be tuning! Fantastic, will report back if i get to see the channels and if BBC HD etc is working nicely.
EDIT 2:
Just had BBC HD running and looking lovely, however it was stuttering – another process on the box has excessive CPU i’m trying to trace down why, it appears not to be uncommon, but hey, the headline features of the system work which is a major first!
June 21st, 2010 at 5:29 pm
You’ve inspired me to give it another go. I’ve had a similar experience to you in the past, with it always being extremely awkward to use/configure and requiring a very limited set of hardware. That was a good couple of years ago now – time for another go
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Hi Luke,
I’m not sure it’s as good as i made out, Myth seems to suffer from legacy design problems – XBMC however was fantastic – only it doesn’t do live TV (it sort of does with plugins but they’re not very good) Myth is also extremely slow at changing channels.
I think XBMC is about 12 months away from becoming useable for me, with full PVR integration, until then, i’ll stick with Windows 7 mediacentre.