“A year ago, Linux seemed poised to take on the living room, in the form of home media center PCs and systems. But last year’s product announcements have not materialized into this year’s Linux-based consumer systems. Before losing her job at the helm of Hewlett-Packard, CEO Carly Fiorina peppered a Consumer Electronics Show keynote with word of HP’s coming Media Hub, a machine capable of television and display-centric computing that ran on Linux. The machine, announced alongside the company’s latest PC-centric Digital Entertainment Center systems running Windows XP Media Center, was promised by fall of 2005. Today, it is nowhere to be found.”
I spent a week trying to set one up, hacking config files with vi, and it still didn’t work right. Then I saw a Media Center PC at Compusa. Linux is just so far behind in this department it’s scary, and I hate MS.
First of all you don’t need to use vi to edit files in linux. Secondly, there wouldn’t be much need to configure anything if PCs came setup with Linux/MythTV. The only thing holding Linux Media Center PCs back is support for all the devices out there. Windows has the upper hand there and unfortunately there is not much anyone but hardware vendors can do about it.
How much demand is there for a device designed for that specific purpose? I use my old powerbook to handle the few tasks i need for entertainment outside of my home theatre system.
Edited 2005-12-29 16:26
Same here.
I have already invested a lot in my home theatre setup, and don’t really need to replace my HDD recorder/RAM drive with a noisy, expensive PC running an operating system that crashes and software that you need to think about to use.
The only “home entertainment” device that I want tied to my PC is my Sonos system – http://www.sonos.com/products/?tref=ghome
http://www.mythtv.org/
great distro, but for a media centre for the living-room, whose customers are likely scared of Windows (isn’t that to do with computers?), never mind Linux (lin-what??) it’s not exactly user-friendly, is it.
>it’s not exactly user-friendly, is it.
No, probably not.
But MythTV is out there, anyone can package it and brand it. Its not being forced on manufacturers, or consumers, but its free, themable and very featureful.
It might get easier to install as time goes on, but, you know, take it or leave it.
What Ever Happened to Linux Media Center PCs?
-Its ready now, waiting for somebody to use it.
Yeah. I agree, now, but can’t you see the fear in the heart of a prospective manufacturer. The fear? – fear that the day before the product he has spent time, money, resources on will suddenly (probably on the day before launch) be rendered obsolete by some new wonder proprietary format/codec fresh from the mills of MicroWood that Linux doesn’t get access to.
Can’t really blame him – obviously this scenario is laughably unlikely 😉 – but??!!
Edited 2005-12-29 17:16
That new codec could be implemented by hiring a developer to write it and if necessary licensing it to avoid patent problems. I’m assuming all PVRs can be updated somehow, otherwise what do the Windows media centre PCs do when a new codec or format becomes popular?
MythTV is not a distro. It is actually rather easy to use. Friends of mine are using it and they actually like it better than windows media center and it is OSS.
Intel and Hollywood created HDCP DRM, Intel won’t share with IBM or AMD so IBM sold it’s PC division, got out of the computer chip buisness and focused on processors that don’t need Hollywood content.
Apple switched to the DRM strict Intel chips instead of AMD’s to stay in the game.
All future software will be locked to hardware like Mac OS X86 will be.
DRM killed innovation. Content is king. Linux is out of touch with consumers and is just a geeks OS being slowly hobbled.
Crack HDCP please DVDJohn fast!
Ironic, isn’t it, when Hollywood uses Linux so much on the production/FX side of things?
Ironic, isn’t it, when Hollywood uses Linux so much on the production/FX side of things?
It’s used as a lightweight, featureless, customiziable, scalable OS to proccess images in renderfarms, not for protecting content from less scupulous consumers.
Linux will never make it to the consumer desktop now without HDCP and other DRM schemes.
DRM is killing Linux on the desktop for general consumers.
Linux is fine for the back office, or for rendering, where you don’t have to interact with it.
Utter bullshit! Get the facts straight first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP
Just because Linux people think all should be free for them doesn’t mean it harms anything.
How do you figure that?
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP
“It is rumored that HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc players will only output full-resolution signals using HDCP. If such a player is connected to a non-HDCP-enabled television set, the player will either output a downsampled 480p signal or nothing at all. Since few HDCP-capable television sets are in use, this effectively negates the purpose of HD-DVD and Blu-ray.”
It says it’s rumor, but I recall this being announced by the movie industry. Did you notice the part about low quality if you don’t use a compatible device? What about the possibility of complete denial of service?
And what is the point to high definition if you’re only going to get lower definition without the necessary and initially expensive hardware required to play such media. Where is the free market if everyone needs to be running Intel + Microsoft or Apple in order to get good quality out of “high definition” media?
I like this part of the article though:
“By 2005, devices were developed and freely sold in countries without restrictions on copyright circumvention. Those usually take the form of filters that have to be installed in the signal path between the movie player or decoder and the TV and strip any HDCP protection out of the video signal, leaving the movie to play on unprotected displays.”
If I ever wind up on one of those countries I’m going to buy one of those things, I’m not going to let any greedy faceless corporations legislate away my rights to the content I payed for that easily.
IBM sold its PC division because of HDCP and Hollywood?
What crap!
They sold it because it wasn’t making money for them, and they decided to get out of that area of the computer business. They also wanted to get a better foothold into the Chinese market. They now have a closer relationship with the Chinese government than any other computer company, partly because of this deal.
And if you think that the main reason Apple switched, you’re dreaming.
Linux is a problem child, though.
I’m not scared of Windows. I’ve been a Systems Analyst since the mid ’80s and am pretty good at supporting Windows. But just like my car, I’d rather be doing other things with my computer other than doing maintenance 50% of the time. Which is why I like LinSpire and Macs.
TiVo is great and it runs on Linux. Windows HAS to be rebooted at least once a month. Linux doesn’t. Why would anyone use Windows for something you don’t want hassles with?
Windows HAS to be rebooted at least once a month.
Lie.
I think he’s referring to the fact that monthly updates usually necessitate a reboot. In that respect, he has a point, though it’s somewhat misleading. I’ve run WindowsXP for several months straight when there have been no patches requiring restart.
more like once a day
http://www.abarbaccia.com/component/option,com_phpshop/page,shop.br…
or http://www.abarbaccia.com if the above does not work.
I bought my Myth box, preconfigured and in a nice box that looks good, especcaly compared to the PVR my cable company uses. Granted, it is not as smooth and polished as Tivo, but then Myth is Linux compatable whereas Tivo Desktop is Windows ony. I transefered over some .avi’s and now I can watch them on my big screen without haveing to transfer them to the laptop and hook that up to the TV.
Last update to MythTV was in May. Almost 7 months ago.
MythTV and Freevo are pretty useless if they don’t work with Digital Cable or Satellite TV.
Pretty soon they’ll be worse off if they don’t support (meaning, get hardware manufacturers besides Hauppage) HDTV.
Just look at the price difference between MythTV and Tivo. A free software solution isn’t better if it requires the end user to have expensive and specific hardware compared to a closed-source competition. The additional features that MythTV can support are illegal in the US due to DMCA– ripping DVDs, playing emulated console systems (dont tell me you have a stack of arcade PCBs at home.) The gray market is their market.
I could see a mediaplayer PC being made out of a modded XBOX, but that too is illegal in the US, just buying the damn modchips is illegal.
You can’t form a business with products that are illegal by design in the US, unless you’re based out of Hong Kong or China or Russia.
Proof that MythTV supports HDTV: http://mythic.tv/dragon_FAQ.php
While it may be true that many of the MythTV features are illegal in the US, a bill before the US congress right now would also make use of current generation PVRs (Tivo/DirectTV), camcorders, and DVD recorders a felony in the US.
I don’t think it will be an issue. The age of recording TV (HD or otherwise) is coming to an end. Whether or not traditional TV itself, as a broadcast medium, is going away may also be a good question.
I’d point out that MythTV works fine with HDTV (provided you have an HDTV tuner card, not many of those today) and DirectTV. I don’t imagine you’ll see much in the way of next-generation computer-tuner cards available to the public for legal reasons (in the US, at least).
The whole point is:
Forget being OSS as a benefit, no TV watcher gives a damn about a software license, they care less than even business users, and no he’s not going to read the source code.
If you want to setup a PVR business how exactly are you supposed to compete with TiVo or ReplayTV or the proprietary ones that cable companies sell? The best features of MythTV are illegal in the US, so if you advertise them, you face the risk of being brought down like Kazaa was–encouraging end-users to violate copyright even though youre equipment/service is capable of non-copyright violating uses. You now can only advertise that you don’t have a monthly fee—BUT TIVO HAS A LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION FOR $300.
So with feature parity, atleast right now, all you can do is compete on price. Lots of people have heard of Tivo, not too many know MythTV even exists. Hell for that matter, not too many people know FLOSS PBX’s ala Astarix exist, and it’s the interest of the companies that sell equipment and services based off it not to advertise what software platform they run to avoid competition.
Business based off of an Open Source product is difficult to setup and maintain, unless it’s strictly services based.
“MythTV and Freevo are pretty useless if they don’t work with Digital Cable or Satellite TV.”
That’s funny, mythtv seems to be working just fine with my directv satellite dish. You must have one of those funny steam powered satellite boxes. When oh when will linux learn to support all steam powered electronics.
Pretty soon they’ll be worse off if they don’t support (meaning, get hardware manufacturers besides Hauppage) HDTV.
There is an HD card out there made specifically for Linux/MythTV.
http://www.pchdtv.com/
mmm proof indeed…
“We don’t have an article called “HDCPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP“
* Start this article
Search for “HDCPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP“ in…
* …other Wikipedia articles
* …Wiktionary (our sister dictionary)
* …the Commons (images, music, sound, and video)
Wrote an article that isn’t appearing? Wikipedia may have a delay, or it might have been deleted. Wait a few minutes, or check the deletion log.”
The parent made a mistake. Look at your post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hdcp
It’s not overly difficult if you took two seconds to check the URL before attacking the person.
Sheesh.
My MythTV box is alive and well. Thank you for asking!
I’ve used a bunch of “media center” software, myth-tv, freevo, gbpvr, mce 2005, mediaportal, meedio, etc… And the best programs are definately in windows. Most likely due to the community support, but still, they are most definately windows based softare. UI Wise MCE just works, and works well. GBPVR is really good for a small community. MediaPortal looks like it will be the next big player being open source, and totally customizable, unfortunately it’s really buggy still, and performance isn’t there yet. For the linux side of things, everything is unpolished and performance is lacking. I personally have gone to using MCE for my living room and still compile MediaPortal on occasion to see how it’s progressing. I gave up on MythTV since Development stopped and Freevo I never really liked. I do think linux has an issue entering this market though. Look at MCE, setup is simple, really simple. Sure it isn’t very customizable, but it works and does most everything people want it to. Now look at media portal. Tons of options are available, which is great for customizing, but stick 95 percent of users with those options and they’ll never see TV on the screen. Now these options are placed in pleasant GUI’s and such, but they’re still all there, and many are needed to operate. Now the finally, let’s think of linux. Take all those options, remove the GUI, stick some compilation in there, and you’ve got nearly everyone confused. Even the best of the best computer users will still fuss around for hours getting a linux media center running right.
knoppmyth is incredibly easy to install. It has progressed nicely, and recognized all the hardware on my system. All I had to do was download a script to control my directv box. Google for directv.pl.
Pop in cd.
Reboot
Answer some questions.
Reboot
Download directv.pl.
Setup card & channels
Record, watch tv.
Took about 1 hour. Mostly just waiting for files to copy. About 15minutes of interaction on my part.
“I gave up on MythTV since Development stopped”
When did development stop? There’s a quite active project going on with two defined milestone releases: http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/roadmap
This factual error, plus the pro-MCE ranting in your post makes me wonder about your other statements. The fact is, both KnoppMyth and MythTV are progressing by leaps and bounds in terms of usability and hardware support.
FUD. No one is bundling a linux box with the service like tivo and directtv. Kind of like when no one would sell you a box with linux on it without a win license, oh wait that still continues.
We’ve got a bit luckier in the uk – Novatech, one of the bigger internet computer traders here, list all their boxes as available without OS, with XPhome, or with XPpro – you’ve got to put your own Linux (or whatever) on, but the price diff is about £95(pro) – $150ish, or about £55(home) – nearly $100. Worth saving.
isnt tivo linux based?
It doesn’t matter, it’s still proprietary.
Built with Linux isn’t Linux.
That’s like saying that a program written in “C++” IS “C++”. It isn’t.
The big reason you don’t see “Linux Media Center PCs” is the same reason you don’t see many “Whatever Media Center PCs”. It’s not because MythTV is particularly hard to deploy/maintain (for mass market, you need only one config of hardware and software; and MythTV can be configured to EXACTLY mimic MS’ product or the other PVR software out there).
The reason is simply lack of demand. Not for Linux MCPCs, but for MCPCs in general. Even Microsoft recognizes a dismal demand for the product (Xbox 360 is being considered a possible replacement to WMCE units). There are already a number of PVR units out there, from Linux-based Tivo to set-top PVRs provided by cable and satellite providers (some of which run Linux, others Windows MCE, and still others with other OSs). While people like them, the allure is not strong enough yet to make them “must haves” for the general populace. And even for those, most people seem satisfied with the current crop.
Making a unit as cheap as a VCR takes a considerable capital outlay and, today, is a huge risk. There are all sorts of patent issues, government interference on behalf of big media, evolving standards for TV itself. Where are you going to get the money? Will you target DTV or analog? If DTV, are you going to need to build your own tuners and such too? HDTV? If HD or DTV, how do you plan to implement the arbitrary copy protection schemes that are promised but non-existant?
Linux Media Center PCs don’t exist yet because trying to commercially produce any Media Center PC right now would be stupid unless it’s an exercise from a large company to bolster their image as “innovative” at considerable expense.
Utter bullshit! Get the facts straight first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP
——————–
Haha! Wikipedia is the last place I would go if I wanted accurate information.
That was a bad link. Try this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP and it should work.
I spent a week trying to set one up, hacking config files with vi, and it still didn’t work right.
I believe the idea was that you’d buy one that’s already set up.
[quote]Haha! Wikipedia is the last place I would go if I wanted accurate information.[/quote]
Oh really. Not so long ago their was a research which compared Britannica to wikipedia in mistakes. And wikipedia did have only a little more mistakes while it’s articles are also double as long in many cases.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/12/15/wikipedia.ap/
Wikipedia has lot’s of problems.
It isn’t that its definitions are so obviously wrong. It’s that they are incomplete. That makes many of them misleading.
Sometimes the people who send the definitions in, hedge, as in this one, because they themselves aren’t sure of what they are saying.
It’s better to get information from the source.
In this case, the web sites of the two HD groups.
Yes, continue using Wikipedia as a reference when even it’s founder and maintainer claims it has serious quality issues.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/
But atleast YOU trust it.
Well no, I don’t trust wikipedia. I just remembered this newsheadline about britannica vs wikipedia. I never bothered to look any deeper, if I’d do that for every newsline I’d have a full time job at it.
But yea, after looking at what theregister had to say about it. Wikipedia doesn’t seem that great in being correct.
Whatever is correct, I don’t know. I just believe what feels right to me. Obviously I’m very subjective, I don’t believe objectivity exists.
And it’s right, I should get the information from the source. That’s what’s best, and if I can’t get something from the source I could just as well not believe it for that matter.
So to conclude I’d better not look at osnews to absorb these newslines without much investigation on my part. Because it just creates a false reality, doesn’t it?
I guess that’s true for all news media.
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ontopic:
I think these so called multimedia centers are not taking off because they are too complicated.
Here at home I even find it difficult to navigate trough tv channels and switch to the dvdplayer with the 3 remotecontrols the TV has…
It would be simpler to sell TV’s which have these functions included, so you can have 1 remote and 1 device to turn on.
But I still wouldn’t buy that because I don’t need it.
TiVO isn’t just “built with Linux”, it runs on Linux. It is a Linux-based embedded device.
Monkey see, Monkey Do…
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
Might be a bit easier than vi
Admittedly, I have never used it, but I saw them set this up in a systm episode(http://revision3.com/systm/) and it seemed easy enough.
Well, the Wife changed the case to fit into the rest of the furniture so it’s a bit hard to notice. It’s that black box under the vcr, see? Humming along quite nice with dvb and mythtv 🙂
The Telly PVR system is a preconfigured Linux-based PVR by a company called InteractTV. It looks good, is open architecture so you can add or replace your own hardware components, and is web-enabled so you can program it to record from afar, similar to MythTV’s web interface. A little pricier than I’d like to see but a nice looking box.
http://www.interact-tv.com/mc1200.php
Ironic, isn’t it, when Hollywood uses Linux so much on the production/FX side of things?
By that thinking everyone should’ve had an SGI workstation under their TVs in the ’90s. Your statement is patently absurd. There’s no corelation whatsoever between a good OS for entertainment production and a good OS for easy-to-use home media operations.
Irony | I”ron*y | 1. Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist. 1913 Webster
It’s obviously worked on you, hasn’t it?