Myth(HD)TV, part 1.

Geek said:

Several years ago, around the year 2001 a former coworker of mine was trying out a piece of software and was experiencing some difficulty, he called me and challenged me to figure it out. My life would never be the same. This started my long and storied history with MythTV a Linux based DVR/Media Center application. I can't begin to tell you the number of hours I have put in making it work; accidentally breaking it and fixing it; replacing and upgrading hardware.

In the beginning I begged, borrowed and adopted old, used and unwanted hardware to create my Frankenstein Mythbox. It wasn't pretty but it got the job done. I managed to squeeze everything I could out of the hardware and was able to record two shows simultaneously which was a feat because it required the CPU to encode the analog video to digital on the fly. The quality was cranked down so low it looked worse than a VCR recording, but have you ever seen a VCR record two shows at once? A far cry from what my current system is capable of: 4 digital (HD) and 4 analog simultaneous recordings on a single mythbackend.

This post is the start of a series of HTPC posts centered around MythTV. However because I am a geek (and often times a glutton for punishment) I plan to play with Windows Media Center on Windows 7 as well as EyeTV on the Mac and will share my findings.

Geek out,

Sherm

She said:

A *free DVR (TiVo)? When Kelly first starting playing with the Myth TV (not meth, I've had to clarify that a few times), I didn't understand the benefit. This was when TiVo was either non-existent or just unheard of to most people. Essentially, what Kelly was doing, was using the computer to record tv shows, for later playback.

What made it different from a VCR (closest comparison at that time)? Well, we could record multiple shows at the same time on different channels, while watching live tv. The bigger benefit though was that you set the schedule once, through the web application. So, I named a show I like to watch but never get to see. Kelly would locate it in the schedule through the Myth web interface and click 'record'. No setting times and channels, no tapes to mess with, and it recorded that show every time it came on.

Now, it wasn't always roses. The 'Frankenstein' Kelly mentioned - he was using the old, crappy computer parts that weren't cutting it in other machines. This resulted in a lot of system failures and rebuilding work. Imagine building your house on sand, and you'll understand the difficulty this created.

As the Myth software became more sophisticated, we decided it was worth the investment of better hardware. Over the years, Myth has become an expectation in our home.

Of course - if you know anything about Kelly, you know that he's not satisfied with things working and running smoothly. He's continued to push the envelope with Myth. He set up a commercial skip method, where the system would id the commercial breaks and automatically skip them. This wasn't always perfect, there were times when we would miss some of the show as well. He has worked it to a science now and I haven't watched a commercial (outside of the Super Bowl) in two years.

Where does that bring us now? This year Kelly has been dabbling with other tv offerings, including Boxee and Hulu. For the past several months, we haven't watched tv from a tv - all from the computer to a wide screen computer monitor mounted in our bedroom. We use the apple remote (or iPod Touch) to select the show we want to watch and click play. This set up brings with it all the expected features of a dvr (Digital Video Recorder), with pausing, replaying, etc.

Kelly is now working on building our home theater PC set up (HTPC), and leveraging our dvr recordings as well as web based media such as Netflix streaming, Boxee and Hulu. The newest set up allows us to record up to 4 shows at once, in HD quality. I personally think this goal came from my challenge - "Why do we need a HD TV when everything we watch comes from Myth - which is all compressed video quality**?" Now the video quality is clear enough to project onto our 9' movie screen in the basement, with no pixalation.

To me - the absolute best part of this is the freedom to live our busy life, and watch the TV shows we actually enjoy, on our schedule. As a result, we, and our children, watch a lot less TV (and no commercials, not even to skip through them).

Stay tuned as Kelly continues to change and build this system as I point out opportunities for improvement.

*Free - we don't pay for any services,software or subscriptions, only the hardware of the machine. Plus, the time to tinker. (Geed Edit: We do pay about $20 a year for the TV listings and then there is that pesky monthly cable fee...)

**think of the fuzzy picture from trying to make a small picture into a poster

Wendi (Wifey)