Brian Hartsock’s Blog

I downloaded Amazon’s Unbox this weekend to watch some BSG (yes I am a nerd). Unbox is Amazon’s video download service. I say service because it is much more than just another download. Amazon allows me to re-download videos or transfer them to multiple machines. Obviously, the Unbox player doesn’t allow burning to DVD, but I am over my purist-open-world days.

As with any service, there is room for vast improvements. The software is slow and buggy, but not bad enough to piss me off, which means it is still very usable. Also, the software only works on Windows XP or Vista, which is annoying for me because I run Ubuntu and Windows. In the future, software for linux that could be integrated with MythTV would be stellar-sweet. (Something tells me the suits are worried about the ability to rip the videos easier in linux).

All things considered, it is exactly what I wanted when my craving for season 4 of BSG got the best of me. I can’t compare it to similar services, but it is worth trying if you don’t care to hook your laptop up to your TV and pay $1.89 an episode.

A few months ago, it occurred to me that I am no longer a college student, I am an adult. That being said, I realized I should start acting like one. While transforming into an adult, I began to understand there is really only one major change, high-definition TVs. I researched TVs for weeks, until I finally chose a Samsung 1080p 40″ LCD which I will blog about in the coming weeks. Then, as most of you probably gathered from a previous post, I got a satellite with HD programming. Needless to say, it has been an exciting time, but in a weird way a sad time.

As some of you might know, HD channels are compressed, mostly into the MPEG2 format, although a push towards MPEG4 is occurring. Anyways, satellite and cable providers go a step further and encrypt the compressed MPEG2’s. This is where the problem lies. While MythTV has the capability of ripping over-the-air (OTA) HD channels from an antenna, it can’t rip from a satellite or cable signal. The cable and satellite providers obviously want users to use their hardware, and not 3rd party hardware. While this sucks, it is understandable on many levels. I think that there should be some way to get the compressed MPEG2’s from the receiver, but currently there isn’t.

Some of you out there might be thinking, “Why can’t you just rip the digital signal on the DVI/HDMI cable?”. That’s what I thought at first, but that is too much data. Since that data is uncompressed, it is just too much for a computer to handle quickly, like MythTV needs to be able to do. Wikipedia gives the follow explanation:

A HDTV camera generates a raw video stream of more than one billion bits per second. This stream must be compressed if digital TV is to fit in the bandwidth of available TV channels and if movies are to fit on DVDs.

Without further ado, I announce that I have deleted all my MythTV recordings and reformatted the box. I love MythTV and will always enjoy the year I spent with it, but it can’t compete in the HD age. I really hope that one day, with technology advances, or new laws, MythTV + HD will be possible. Unfortunately, I can’t wait until then and will gladly use Dish Network’s HD-DVR, even though I will always know MythTV is a better product. I still plan on completing my MythTV guide on my blog, but its priority has taken a dive.

Well, I tried to upgrade some packages on Myth, and the machine crashed.  Not too bad, just wireless and X.  Guess I will spend this beautiful Friday evening installing Fiesty.

I have decided to create a MythTV page on my site, not only to help everyone out there with their own setups, but to help me remember when everything crashes.

Since MythTV is one of my favorite hobby projects, I figured I should start blogging about it. I started building my Myth box over the summer of 2006 with MythTV 0.19 and Ubuntu Dapper Drake. Since Dapper had no built in package support for MythTV, everything had to be compiled, including MythTV, IVTV, and LIRC. Edgy Eft has a MythTV package and it makes installing a lot easier.

The newest release of MythTV, 0.20, has many new features over 0.19, but only one stands out to me. MythTV’s internal DVD player is awesome compared to Xine. It is definitely the biggest improvement to Myth. MythArchive is also new and promising, but I haven’t used it so I can’t really comment. Once I get an HD card, I see myself using archiving much more. Its hard to waste a DVD on low quality shows.

Now that I have filled you in on my history with Myth and its newest features, I figure I should tell you what some of my favorite things about Myth are.

• MythTV recordings are near perfect, I haven’t missed any of my favorite shows in months.
• Transcoding compresses recordings to about 70% their original size, with very little quality loss
• MythDVD
• MythMusic + SSHFS to my desktop is amazing

Even though I love my MythTV box, Myth has many shortcomings. Here are a few of my least favorite things about MythTV:

• MythDVD doesn’t allow ripping of entire DVD’s, just the main movie. I use K9Copy to backup my DVDs.
• MythDVD digital audio pass through doesn’t work (I have an awesome home theater so this is really annoying)
• MythDVD autoplay doesn’t work
• Setting HELL
  • Transcoding/Post recording processing is a pain
  • Audio configuration is horrific
  • XV vs. XVMC
  • And 1000 other things that I barely understand
• Transcoding: Can’t make it happen by default
• MythBrowser never works good
• MythWeb is buggy

I will continue to keep everyone posted on my MythBreakthroughs and eventually I hope to post a script that will basically install MythTV on any Ubuntu system.

(Oh yea, Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn supposidly includes an IVTV package, awesome)