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MythTV and TiVo Series 3 Comparison

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:36 AM EDT
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Battle of Open Source and Proprietary DVRs

After releasing the initial comparison of MythTV and TiVo Series 3, there were just a few (hundred) comments about the article complaining that the original article lacked some comparison information. Also, some comments mentioned the author was biased towards MythTV while the following comment said that TiVo Series 3 was the author's choice! Overall though, the comments were excellent and I felt like a couple reoccurring themes in the comments could be added to the article to help make someone's decision of homebrew verse Series 3 decision a little easier.

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9.1
{"commentId":584949,"authorDomain":"michaelsautter"}
Michael Sautter

So, is there a TV card that I can get for my new Ubuntu machine that works with Myth TV?

{"commentId":584949,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"michaelsautter"}
  • 1 vote
Reply#1 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:21 AM EDT
{"commentId":585070,"authorDomain":"tiller"}
Michael Tiller

I use a PVR-150 in my (Ubuntu) MythTV system for NTSC channels and an HDHomerun for ATSC. Maybe I'm not understanding your question (it seems like there must be one right...otherwise how would MythTV work?!?).

{"commentId":585070,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"tiller"}
  • 1 vote
#1.1 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:12 PM EDT
{"commentId":585082,"authorDomain":"michaelsautter"}
Michael Sautter

I was more concerned with the age of my Ubuntu box. It's a 2.7 Ghz Celeron, 40 GB HD and 756 MB RAM, could this handle a TV card and Myth TV? ('sorry if I wasn't clearer earlier.)

{"commentId":585082,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"michaelsautter"}
  • 1 vote
#1.2 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:18 PM EDT
{"commentId":585361,"authorDomain":"michaelsautter"}
Michael Sautter

Here's more info I found on MythTV, PVR-150 and Linux: PVR-150 MCE (NTSC) and MythTV .

{"commentId":585361,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"michaelsautter"}
  • 1 vote
#1.3 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:22 PM EDT
{"commentId":585738,"authorDomain":"tiller"}
Michael Tiller

I think your system should be able to handle the video capture and rendering without much difficulty. My original configuration was less powerful then what you have and it worked very well. The PVR-150 does the video encoding itself. So very little CPU is required for recording. The issue is playback but even so I can't imagine your system would have any difficulty playing a 640x480 MPEG2.

Now HD is a completely different story. Again, recording is not the issue (at least if you use something like the HDHomerun), it's the playback. That means a more powerful CPU (I use an AMD X2 3800+).

{"commentId":585738,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"tiller"}
  • 1 vote
#1.4 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:23 PM EDT
Reply
{"commentId":585032,"authorDomain":"scientificblog"}
Cash

Until one of them has the cajones to do automatic commercial skip I am keeping the Replays. I do have a Motorola HD DVR to record high definition stuff but in the other rooms it's all Replay.

{"commentId":585032,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"scientificblog"}
  • 2 votes
Reply#2 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:58 AM EDT
{"commentId":585037,"authorDomain":"scientificblog"}
Cash

Oh, it says that Myth does automatic commercial skip. I am curious how well it works now.

{"commentId":585037,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"scientificblog"}
  • 2 votes
Reply#3 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:00 PM EDT
{"commentId":585085,"authorDomain":"tiller"}
Michael Tiller

Glad you noticed that. :-) In fact, Myth can even remove the commercials altogether if you like.

I use the commercial skipping feature all the time. In fact, when my kids watch their shows (always recordings), I enable automatic commercial skipping (my daughter now gets upset when she sees a commercial...just the way I like it).

As to how well it works...quite well. There are a variety of issues that can come up. I don't recall ever having it think an actual TV show was the start of a commercial break. I have seen it where it does not recognize the the TV show has come back on so it thinks the TV show is an extension of the commercials. That happens maybe once in every 10-20 shows maybe.

Note that errors in commercial flagging are minor because of the way Myth deals with them. First, I use the commercial notify feature. So it doesn't skip the commercials...I do. Part of the notification is a message that says, effectively, "the next 2:03 is commercials". That looks reasonable so I push the commercial skip button. If it says "the next 10:22 is commercials"...I say "I don't think so" and I use the 30 second skip to manually skip the commercials (i.e. the TiVo way). Let's say it says "the next 3:13 seconds is commercials". Then I might think that is a bit long but there is really no risk in pushing the commercial skip button. Why? Because you can back up just like you go forward. So if I skip the commercials and find myself in the middle of the show I have to options: skip back in 7 second increments or skip back to the start of the commercials and manually skip forward 30 seconds.

In short, the commercial flagging is not 100% but it is nevertheless very good and even when it screws up Myth provides you with the necessary navigation options to get back on track in just a few seconds. Now even the 30 second skip of my TiVo seems primitive.

{"commentId":585085,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"tiller"}
  • 5 votes
#3.1 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:21 PM EDT
{"commentId":585112,"authorDomain":"scientificblog"}
Cash

They must use the same/similar code invented by GoVideo for VCRs back in the day that Replay put in. Replay sometimes has the same issue, like with long commercials ( like the 3 minute ones you sometimes get late at night or on BBC America ) or shows with heavy blacks right before the commercial.

I do like that commercial length notification.

{"commentId":585112,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"scientificblog"}
  • 2 votes
#3.2 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:36 PM EDT
{"commentId":585743,"authorDomain":"tiller"}
Michael Tiller

Actually, they get pretty creative. The basic approach is to look for black screens but they go way beyond that. For example, they look for those silly station logos (or lack of them). I think they may even look for resolution changes under ATSC (I certainly notice that all the time). On the mailing list they were talking about a plug-in system for commercial detection to provide flexibility and facilitate development of even better algorithms.

Overall, you can't beat the capabilities of MythTV. The only issue is the time required for setup and the subsequent "care and feeding". I'm not complaining (I love my Myth system) I just don't want to paint an overly optimistic picture.

{"commentId":585743,"threadId":"84665","contentId":"613784","authorDomain":"tiller"}
  • 1 vote
#3.3 - Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:26 PM EDT
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