“Just as extensions make Firefox better, so do plug-ins add extra goodness to Windows XP Media Center Edition. For the uninitiated, MCE provides DVR and other multimedia features wrapped in an attractive 10-foot interface. Armed with a couch and a remote, you can record TV shows, pause live TV, view photo slideshows, listen to your music collection, tune in FM radio stations, and so on. I am unabashedly in love with MCE. It’s the one Microsoft product I consider just about perfect, which is why it’s the heart of my home entertainment system. With these eight plugs-ins, most of which are free, you can trick out your MCE PC like never before.”
With the exception of the Yougle plugin for Google Video and YouTube watching (which I don’t think would be that hard to make) MythTV has everything that MCE has, plus more.
The one disadvantage of MythTV of course is the setup is a bit more difficult (well sometimes downright a pain in the butt) but it’s getting much easier.
MythTV on top of all the things MCE does, will also play emulators, rip DVDs, record TV shows to DVD, let you either automatically or manually flag out commercials, etc. Also you can build a MythTV box that will literally boot up in 15-10 seconds.
The one disadvantage of MythTV of course is the setup is a bit more difficult (well sometimes downright a pain in the butt) but it’s getting much easier.
thats my only complaint about MythTV. Once they get that straight then they have a winner hands down!
With the exception of the Yougle plugin for Google Video and YouTube watching (which I don’t think would be that hard to make) MythTV has everything that MCE has, plus more.
That’s great and all, but what specifically does this have to do with Media Center plugins?
I really want to switch to MythTV, but i don’t really think it is good enough yet. Sure it has a load of features, some of which i miss in MCE, but the things that are holding me back, in no particular order:
Stability, it is far too easy to crash the frontend
EPG, unable to view just one channel at a time, vertically.
No background playback, so no checking the EPG or checking the news while listening to music. This is probably my biggest complaint, i really like how MCE always keep playing whatever it is playing until you either stop it or start playing something else.
Keybindings, i found it impossible to get all buttons on the remote to work consistently.
Lots of interface problems:
It cuts off long (read: almost all) program descriptions.
If you record with all tuners and try to watch live tv you just get a message telling you to either go stop one of them or do something else (MCE more elegantly lets you watch the tuners that are recording)
And something like when i in live mode hit record i still haven’t found a way to stop the recording from live mode, without at the same time deleting the recording. (which means having to go out into the menu to stop it)
And small things, like why can it only display very short channel names in the OSD, maybe just theme problems, but a around 7 char limit before it goes out of bounds is just silly.
A thing that is probably more niche is the sub par mouse navation, which is important to me as i would really like one of these: http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc18.htm and to use the touch screen i would need to be able to do everything with a mouse. A back button would help a lot
It does have good points though, which is why i would like to use it, mainly i really like how i can actually get it to only record shows i dont already have (never could get this to work right under MCE, perhabs because i still use the pretty poor official EPG data, this probably works better for people in bigger countries) and the built in commercial detection works fairly well, and it’s search options are FAR better than those in MCE. And small things, like actually being able to rename channels (why you can’t do that is MCE is really strange) and you get more plugins than what you get with the base MCE package, where the 3rd party plugins vary a lot in quality.
And what i find really attractive is, that unlike MCE, it doesn’t feel like it was made more to please the media cartels than the consumer.
But for the time being, i just can’t see myself switching, which sucks as i would like to be windows free on all my computers.
I really want to switch to MythTV, but i don’t really think it is good enough yet
The good news is that it’s only what you think. The reality is that MythTV is far better than anything you could hope for.
Especially since most of your problems are due to lack of clue, lack of reading the perfectly fine documentation (the user one) or hardware problem.
Stability, it is far too easy to crash the frontend
It’s pretty hard actually, but it depends mostly on how robust your underlying system is.
The rare times where my wife crashed the frontend (a bug in MythTV when navigating some remove file menu), it just went back to the mythwelcome menu, where the mythfrontend is one remote button away.
Stability is actually near perfect at home, especially the important one : MythTV will consistantly switch on the box and record what I ask it to record.
So you can’t say stability is a problem with only your poor experience.
EPG, unable to view just one channel at a time, vertically
BS, there’s the search menu by channel by default.
No background playback, so no checking the EPG or checking the news while listening to music. This is probably my biggest complaint, i really like how MCE always keep playing whatever it is playing until you either stop it or start playing something else
Your biggest complaint is a minor feature request like that ? I’m amazed.
MythMusic is a plugin, it’s not even very good actually (lacks lots of features). I think it’s even clearly said that it needs work.
But given that it is a plugin (that can be removed), I have doubts they will change all MythTV architecture just for this.
Keybindings, i found it impossible to get all buttons on the remote to work consistently
You found it impossible doesn’t mean it is impossible. It is perfectly possible to get all your buttons remote to work consistently, unless your remote is a bad one.
I mean, if you can’t get all your remote buttons to work, it must be a hardware problem, it’s surely not a MythTV one.
I never have enough buttons on mine (except the Philips touchscreen one I have) to assign all the keybindings.
Lots of interface problems:
It cuts off long (read: almost all) program descriptions
It doesn’t. That depends on your screen size. Besides, you can assign a button to view the long program descriptions on any menu.
I assigned it to ‘*’, and can view every long program description. So it’s not a problem at all, it’s even the best.
If you record with all tuners and try to watch live tv you just get a message telling you to either go stop one of them or do something else (MCE more elegantly lets you watch the tuners that are recording)
BS, it tells you to do sth else or go look at the current recordings in the appropriate menu. You know, the purple ones at the top when you go in the view recordings menu. So it’s even better than MCE : it warns you that you’re not really watching the tuners, but recordings. Given what you say, MCE doesn’t.
And something like when i in live mode hit record i still haven’t found a way to stop the recording from live mode, without at the same time deleting the recording. (which means having to go out into the menu to stop it)
BS again. I do that by just pressing the record button again, and it stops, and the recordings appear in the viewing menu, and won’t be deleted for 1 day by default.
And small things, like why can it only display very short channel names in the OSD, maybe just theme problems, but a around 7 char limit before it goes out of bounds is just silly
Maybe, cause I have longer names than that. Perhaps too big fonts, or your choice of short names instead of long ones.
A thing that is probably more niche is the sub par mouse navation, which is important to me as i would really like one of these: http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc18.htm and to use the touch screen i would need to be able to do everything with a mouse. A back button would help a lot
I don’t use it, but there’s a touchscreen specific addon now IIRC.
And what i find really attractive is, that unlike MCE, it doesn’t feel like it was made more to please the media cartels than the consumer
What I find really attractive, is that only Linux machines can play all the videos I have (I’ve seen a recent illegal closed Windows product using FFMpeg though), and MythTV is the only Media Center that can do that too.
Which was one of the condition for me to have one media center (it should be able to play any media).
The good news is that it’s only what you think. The reality is that MythTV is far better than anything you could hope for.
Especially since most of your problems are due to lack of clue, lack of reading the perfectly fine documentation (the user one) or hardware problem.
The good thing about MCE is that you don’t need documentation.
The good thing about MCE is that you don’t need documentation
BS. I could say the same lie about the MythTV appliances, but that would still be a lie.
Most people need a documentation just for using the buttons on a remote, but you claim MCE, which is far more complicated, doesn’t need documentation ?
Even choosing the right hardware for MCE needs a documentation !
Some people seem to believe that MS software works like a dream everytime because of lies like that, but as soon as it breaks (which often is as soon as they try using it for more than 1 minute), the same people who told them the lie blame the user for the problem.
BTW I see this attitude everyday on Windows, and that’s one of the reasons I quit this environment.
Go see any MCE forum (even the official one) and see for yourself if MCE doesn’t need documentation.
AFAIK, you cannot buy MCE at all. MS just sells it to it’s certified OEMs. So no HW compatibility problems with MCE.
AFAIK, you cannot buy MCE at all. MS just sells it to it’s certified OEMs. So no HW compatibility problems with MCE
Which is not true at all, as I’ve seen several people with non MCE compatible hardware, some of them perhaps because they wanted a second tuner .
And they also sell MCE specific hardware that comes with a remote.
It would be nonsense and these hardware wouldn’t sell if what you say were true.
Anyway, you just prove that MCE is no comparison as you can’t even choose your base hardware on which to put it on when you buy it.
Obviously, this will change with Vista, and will be an even worse nightmare than it seems to be now.
Of course you can, if you assemble your own system you can just buy the OEM version of Windows MCE, that’s what i did.
Yeah, except when people decide they’d rather have MCE on a computer they built for a Media Center Edition instead of their Laptop (which why a Laptop would bother is beyond me), then buy a separate license for their Laptop of normal XP.
This is perfectly legal as per the license agreements, but the problem is that MCE doesn’t support that many TV tuners. MythTV supports all of the ones that Linux + V4l support, which is quite a lot of them.
I still wish though that manufacturers would start selling mini-PCI TV tuner cards. This way people could build very small HTPC computers, rather than only selling them to OEMs.
Yes, i spent a whole hour researching hardware requirements for MCE. The only reason i took so long was because i at the same time verified that it would work under Linux. (finding Linux compatible cards was much harder than finding MCE compatible cards)
And i don’t think any fairly sophisticated user will need Docs for MCE. I know i didn’t, and i wouldn’t exactly call myself a windows power user.
And nice to see you are one of those mindless windows bashers. It is because of people with that attitude that i don’t really care about the community side of linux anymore.
Yes, i spent a whole hour researching hardware requirements for MCE. The only reason i took so long was because i at the same time verified that it would work under Linux. (finding Linux compatible cards was much harder than finding MCE compatible cards)
And yet, it is right there in the main MythTV installation doc, under section 3.1, Checking prerequisites, Hardware.
And i don’t think any fairly sophisticated user will need Docs for MCE. I know i didn’t, and i wouldn’t exactly call myself a windows power user
Perhaps that’s because you only have available basic features like play and record.
When you’ll have choice of commercial removal methods, editing of videos (with a remote !) and auto archiving to DVD, automatic programmation, automatic conflicts resolve, and things like that, perhaps that will be another story.
I needed documentations to know how to use these, which was simple, but not really things you can guess. Unless you have godly minds.
And nice to see you are one of those mindless windows bashers. It is because of people with that attitude that i don’t really care about the community side of linux anymore
Rest assured that the community of Linux doesn’t care about you either. Especially since you’re one of these people that say they don’t need documentation (on Windows) and at the same time that you need documentation (on Linux to find compatible cards) in the same post.
>The reality is that MythTV is far better than
>anything you could hope for.
Oooo, i’m really convinced now! Nice that a n00b like me can learn from such an experienced guy who knows what’s best for me. I’m just a poor software developer who write software for non geeky users for a living, so i probably don’t know anything.
>Lack of reading the perfectly fine documentation
>(the user one)
First of all, i think it is a failure of the program if i have to read documentation.
Secondly, i have tried browsing and searching the docs numerous times for solutions and trying to determine if a certain feature existed or not. I must have missed the perfectly fine docs and only found the poor ones then. I have spent for too much time trying to get things to work right, if i, as a linux user since 96 and as a software developer, am having a lot of trouble getting something to work, then how on earth to you expect ordinary people to stand a chance?
> It’s pretty hard actually, but it depends mostly on how robust your underlying system is.
I guess ubuntu is not a stable underlying system then. (using the standard packages too, i’m getting too old to compile everything by hand, that was fun in the 90s)
>Your biggest complaint is a minor feature request
>like that ? I’m amazed. MythMusic is a plugin, it’s
>not even very good actually (lacks lots of features).
Maybe if you read the entire paragraph you would notice i didn’t talk about music alone, but all media types. I think this is a pretty big feature request. And the fact that MythMusic is not very good confirms my feeling that MythTV just ain’t ready, i am looking for a MEDIA center, not a MOVIE center or a PVR center. I can understand unofficial plugins having problems, but i kinda expect the official ones to be first class citizens.
>You found it impossible doesn’t mean it is
>impossible. It is perfectly possible to get all
>your buttons remote to work consistently, unless
>your remote is a bad one.
The physical buttons works fine, it is getting each button to behave the same no matter where in the system i am that sucks. There is a Windows logo on it, i guess that makes it bad. (mceusb2)
>It doesn’t. That depends on your screen size.
>Besides, you can assign a button to view the long
>program descriptions on any menu.
My screen is my TV, the computer in question does nothing but being a media center. And yeah, i can see how assigning a button on the remote just to view program info is a really great solution MCE is not perfect here either, but it gives me less trouble.
>BS again. I do that by just pressing the record
>button again, and it stops, and the recordings
>appear in the viewing menu, and won’t be deleted
>for 1 day by default.
It doesn’t appear in the view menu for me, maybe an ubuntu bug, maybe a general bug.
>Maybe, cause I have longer names than that.
>Perhaps too big fonts, or your choice of short
>names instead of long ones.
Perhaps, but this is a thing i would expect to just work. Or do you expect everyone having to tweak even the simplest of things? Or are you just generally screwed if you don’t have a computer monitor or a HDTV?.
>What I find really attractive, is that only
>Linux machines can play all the videos I have
I only have stuff i have recorded or encoded myself, so MCE does play all my media. (and i deliberately didn’t choose obscure formats because i want to be able to switch software)
First of all, i think it is a failure of the program if i have to read documentation
Not everyone has a godly knowledge as you, not even me.
Secondly, i have tried browsing and searching the docs numerous times for solutions and trying to determine if a certain feature existed or not. I must have missed the perfectly fine docs and only found the poor ones then
Granted it’s not easy to find. You go to http://www.mythtv.org, click on the Wiki link, and there, in Categories section, you will find the “User Manual”.
I have spent for too much time trying to get things to work right, if i, as a linux user since 96 and as a software developer, am having a lot of trouble getting something to work, then how on earth to you expect ordinary people to stand a chance?
I don’t. MythTV source is not a shrinkwrapped product. You would get the preinstalled appliances for ordinary people. Ordinary people won’t make their own media center anyway. I never had these expectations.
I guess ubuntu is not a stable underlying system then. (using the standard packages too, i’m getting too old to compile everything by hand, that was fun in the 90s)
I said robust, not stable. Stability is not a problem with Ubuntu, but now, I’m not sure it is tailored for a media center.
Does Ubuntu installation of MythTV creates a specific mythtv user in GDM, launched automatically at boot, that then launch mythwelcome, which itself launch the frontend automatically if the user switch the computer on ?
Or do you allow user raw write access to your firewire devices (so you can control your camcorder) ?
Basically, robust applies to the kind of configuration you put on your computer. A server conf won’t be as good as a media center or desktop.
Maybe if you read the entire paragraph you would notice i didn’t talk about music alone, but all media types
Excuse me again. What media type can you play in the background except music ?
Even playing video in the background while navigating a menu would be counterproductive.
the fact that MythMusic is not very good confirms my feeling that MythTV just ain’t ready, i am looking for a MEDIA center, not a MOVIE center or a PVR center. I can understand unofficial plugins having problems, but i kinda expect the official ones to be first class citizens
But MythTV IS a media center. MythMusic PLAYS music. It just haven’t got all the features of specialized music apps … yet.
There are no problems with MythMusic, only missing useful features.
Commercial home appliances like KiSS don’t come close to MythMusic, for example.
The physical buttons works fine, it is getting each button to behave the same no matter where in the system i am that sucks
It caused me no problem at all, so I still don’t get it. What would be the behaviour of the record button while in the main menu, for example ?
My screen is my TV, the computer in question does nothing but being a media center. And yeah, i can see how assigning a button on the remote just to view program info is a really great solution MCE is not perfect here either, but it gives me less trouble
My screen is my TV too. My wife which is computer illiterate never had any problem pressing that ‘*’ button to get the extended info.
It doesn’t appear in the view menu for me, maybe an ubuntu bug, maybe a general bug
It’s not a general bug, as I compile from the stock code source.
Perhaps, but this is a thing i would expect to just work. Or do you expect everyone having to tweak even the simplest of things? Or are you just generally screwed if you don’t have a computer monitor or a HDTV?
You have to tweak the simplest things, like you love to say. The simplest thing being what kind of display you have, what kind of inputs you have, what fonts you want, …
Basically, what kind of hardware you have ! And then, MythTV will adapt itself.
The commercial media centers don’t adapt themselves as much : you just won’t be able to use them on most configurations.
The thing is, the more the software can do, the more you will have to configure it to suit you perfectly. It won’t do that magically.
I live in France, where I have a mix of PAL and NICAM inputs and display, and also RTSP inputs, there’s just no way the program can know that if the hardware can’t tell. And the same program is used in NTSC countries, with HDTV, …
Anyway, I was talking about a robust underlying system, and your problem could just be caused by the freetype library not new enough on Ubuntu.
I evaluated Ubuntu when I made my first tests for a media center in january of this year. I quickly discarded it.
…namely MSN-TV (formerly WebTV,) that Microsoft would have gave some attention to making a web-browser plugin for WinMCE. It’s such a brain dead obvious thing to bundle with the MCE shell, I’m still struggling to understand its exclusion. Granted I’m hardly a IE fan… I’ve been decoupling the browser from my systems since 1999… but given the context of Media Center in your living room, wouldn’t it make sense to overlap into some simple surfing capabilities??
–bornagainpenguin
DVD plugin is illegal, other codecs are illegal, there’s a lot of other stuff that hasn’t been properly licensed. Are we sure MythTV isn’t infringing on any Tivo Patents?. How about Accacia Research Patents for streaming video?
You want free – fine. You want legal stick with Tivo or WMC
Good thing software patents are bogus ;-).
Yeah, it’s a damn shame that the average user isn’t going to care considering they legally paid for their DVDs, they want to be able to watch them, no one is going to understand that the dvdcss is illegal. Especially since it’s not a patent that is stopping it, it’s that the DVD consortium simply wants to be able to sell the license to the software. Guess you could really say it’s a damn shame that they were outsmarted by a 16 year old hacker.
Besides, Windows Media Center Edition will NOT play DVDs by default. You still need a decoder (Otherwise you still need to buy either PowerDVD, the nVidia PureVideo or WinDVD etc.)
Leech
You would need an mpeg2 decoder just to watch TV anyway, so basically yes MCE will play DVDs by default. Though of course in an annoying region locked, and honoring the no skip ahead flags way.
“MythTV is not legal”
… in US
DVD plugin is illegal, other codecs are illegal, there’s a lot of other stuff that hasn’t been properly licensed
You’re full of it. DVD plugin is perfectly legal everywhere, as MPEG2 codecs are legal. Even DeCSS library is legal, even in the US.
DVD Jon was trialed for it and came out free, even in the USA, so stop this stupid BS. You must be mistaken because even linking to decss code was declared illegal (more money corruption result) in the USA.
Even DMCA doesn’t prevent DeCSS, as CSS is not a copy protection scheme.
All the plugins in FFMpeg/MPlayer are perfectly legal. The only thing that could be illegal (that’s not even sure) is the binary closed codecs that you can add to FFMpeg.
Are we sure MythTV isn’t infringing on any Tivo Patents?. How about Accacia Research Patents for streaming video?
Are you a moron ? Nobody can be sure that any software doesn’t infringe on a patent. So stop these stupid red herrings.
BTW, did you stop beating your wife ? There, that’s the same kind of question you’re asking.
You want free – fine. You want legal stick with Tivo or WMC
Except that MythTV is perfectly legal, especially here in Europe where I live. You know, the new land of freedom.
That’s a bold statement….
Do you know if there is a plugin for rtsp support under Media Center ? I receive TV with this type of flows, which is, from what I know, only supported by mplayer and vlc. But my remote control doesn’t work under windows with these.
If only a plugin could mark and skip advertisements.
Plugins can never fix the problem of the software being non-free.