Media Center vs MythTV??? I find it laughable
In rebuttal to James recent post "Media Center vs MythTV"The title alone is misleading"Media Center vs MythTV" glorifies Media Center by comparing it to MythTV.
I will start by saying that MythTV has changed my TV viewing habits so drastically that I do not watch live TV or surf channels anymore, to that respect I have (I am unsure if media center has this functionality) setup my MythTV box accordingly. LiveTV is setup to take a back seat, I am still able to watch live TV but require more than the 120 seconds (waiting for the projector bulb to turn on did take most of my time) I had on new years day to stop a current recording, stop it from picking up another favourite recording, then change to a channel. In hindsight if I had scheduled the recording any time before the ball drop it would have taken less than 30 seconds.
Let me list a few of the features MythTV has.
- Standard PVR functionality
- Watch TV
- Pause, rewind, fast forward, skip ahead, skip back, stop watching in the middle of show X, go watch show Y, come back to show X and continue watching etc..
- Non standard but still basic PVR functionality
- Pictures
- Music
- Movies
- DVD playback
- DVD burning
- Interface with any television provider (Bell, Rogers, DirectTV, Starchoice, antenna, etc..)
Now the Nonstandard (special) functionality is off the chart.
I will miss functionality here, but here are some of the things that MythTV does that are special.
- automatic and manual commercial flagging
- ability to manually or automatically skip commercials
- Games (Mame, and rom organization... cool)
- DVD ripping
- CD ripping
- IMDB lookup for DVD's and CD's
- Playback of any media with codec (including rm, mov, divx, avi, xvid, wmv, anything really)
- Backend server and frontend client architecture allows for many viewers to watch TV off the backend server. (Someone upstairs and downstairs can watch the same or different shows, both pause when they want etc..)
- Intelligent scheduler to avoid conflicts.
- Configurable to work with ANY remote control signal, you can setup the power button for your TV to start playing knight rider on mythTV
- can plays recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary.
- RSS feed news reader
- Weather
- web browser
- MythWeb will allow you to control your mythtv and schedule recordings from anywhere on the Internet
-Netflix queue viewer.
- make internet phone calls
- Encode your recordings as different and configurable (space saving or higher quality) formats
And all from behind your remote control.
The system itself is fully configurable, I don't add MythPhone, cause I dont want to make internet phone calls from my remote control. Nor do I really need my TV to be a browser, or RSS reader, but I loooove automatic commercial flagging, and the intelligent scheduler.
I could get into the advantages of a free open source program here over a proprietary system like media center, but that would really change this conversation into something different, so I will just add that, security, upgrades, and price are also all better with mythTV.
Matt out.
posted by Matt @ 9:58 AM
15 Comments:
OK ok. I didn't want to list EVERY possible thing that Media Center can do, but let me assure you - it can do every one of those things you listed.
And not only that - it is fully supported by a reputable company (Microsoft) instead of some random guy living out of his parent's basement.
all I know is that you turned on MythTV and it crashed - nuff said!
Media Center does NOT flag commercials, as for letting you remotely record something I highly doubt it does that as well.
I also doubt it plays rm and mov files, as they are made by realplayer and apple, both microsoft competition.
There is a plugin you can install that allows for commerical detection and deletion.
As well, there is a service called MSN Remote Record, all you need is a MSN Passport (Hotmail or MSN account) to access it. You must, of course, leave your computer on at home so the remote access can 'talk' to your home computer.
Here is the Remote Record website, take a look, Mr. Doubty Moustafa... Simply enter your postal code and you can search through 14 days of TV listings and then select which programs you want recorded.
RM and MOV files, well no, but who really uses realplayer these days? And Apple? You can't be saying you use Apple, I mean you are Mr. Linux Redhat himself? :-)
Not only can you search the guide on that remote record website, you can also select a criteria for your search, from Movies, to Sports, and so-on, so you can filter what you are looking for.
which is more reliable? Matt is this like the time we went down to Boston and you tried to get the DVD player working on the linux laptop?
I am a linux, mac and nintendo fan boy thank you.
Also, Mac's are Unix based.
Microsoft with commercial flagging... I am impressed, I am also surprised that they would do that, I am sure they must be partnered with or own some TV network.
It seems like a conflict of interest.
I remember some PVR (Tivo?) who was talking about (or implemented) commercials IN the skipping, and or some forced portions that could not be skipped.
Joe,
I choose linux distributions that are difficult to install because they are more fun to configure.
But due to that I much more likely to run into problems on the road like an incorrectly setup DVD player.
(I think it was the sound that wasn't working, but I don't remember what happened 6 years ago.)
Linux plays DVD's just fine.
ROFL Palmers Blog
You have to search the guide and then send a msn message to record channel 3 at 3:00 for 1 hour?
To be honest, I haven't used it the remote record service. I have been able to set up my recordings from home just fine so far.
I think it works using your msn login for security purposes, you don't actually send an msn message... :-)
Somehow, using some kind of IP, it tells your home PC to schedule the recording.
Hey - I thought of another sweet thing that Media Center can do - that I bet MythTV can't:
If you choose, you can have MSN Messenger running in the background of Media Center so when someone sends you a message, you can read and reply to it, all from the comfort of your couch with the remote. Or, you can even see who's online, and send them messages. Easy Peasy.
Hey, and now my friend, Warren, who is also PRO-Media Center BTW, has pointed me to a Microsoft-recognized list of plugins for Media Center. There are some cool ones here that I haven't seen before. But on the other hand, there are a lot of useless ones too in my opinion.
So since MS is displaying these on their website, you know they will be safe for your PC.
I found specific instructions from MS on how the MSN Remote Record Service works.
Check it out if you are interesting. Included are great step-by-step instructions as well as screenshots of each process.
Post a Comment
<< Home