From the Mythtv mailing list. John C. Dvorak's article from the latest PC Magazine:


Message: 2
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 00:39:13 -0600
From: Andy Long
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users]Article on MythTV in the latest PC
Magazine - Article included

To: Discussion about mythtv


I disagree with your assessment of Dvorak's article. I sometimes
disagree with him, but I really don't think he paints MythTV in a
negative light whatsoever. This is posted for the purposes of
academic discussion about the article and its implications.

------BEGIN ARTICLE-------

While you have surely read about HP Media Centers and new DVRs from
cable providers, the real action is underground: a slow and steady
invasion of incredible products created by slick young coders who are
sick of products designed not to make life easier but to appease a
Hollywood preoccupied with digital rights management. The leader in
this effort is MythTV, perhaps the most powerful DVR yet devised.

MythTV is all the rage among high-level engineering types in Silicon
Valley. It's the brainchild of 26-year-old Isaac Richards, who told me
he started it two and a half years ago because he "was bored." MythTV
is a free software system written in C++ that, when combined with
various TV tuner, audio, and other cards, will turn a small computer
into a slick, powerful, feature-rich DVR. Do you hate commercials? You
can set it up so that it doesn't just skip commercials in playback but
never records them in the first place, so there's nothing to skip.

The software also incorporates MP3/Ogg features, along with slide
shows and everything else you can imagine, including WebTV-like
functionality for the TV set. While Richards has carefully avoided
adding any illegal features, such as DeCSS for ripping DVDs, the
architecture of the product works with plug-ins. In no time, someone
anonymously threw a plug-in into the ether that allows a MythTV box to
rip DVDs and strip out both CSS and Macrovision code so the material
can be transcoded. This means that MPEG-2 DVDs can easily be turned
into MPEG-4 files and watched on a laptop or even passed around
trading networks. Worried about country codes? Forget it, they're
gone.

Richards is working on the 17th version of the software and has about
15 coders working with the source code, adding features, debugging,
and tweaking.

What do the MythTV folks get out of all this, besides praise? If you
listen to them (and the users), they get TV the way they want it.

This movement doesn't stop here. MythTV is just the tip of a
multimedia iceberg that has managed to float under the radar so far.
For example, at CES, as far as I could tell only Transmeta was showing
a MythTV lash-up. Few showgoers had a clue as to what they were
looking at.

MythTV is a Linux-based system and requires some knowledge to set up.
Windows users are seeing a similar effort called myHTPC (my Home
Theater Personal Computer), a much looser initiative that first
appeared in detail in 2002. myHTPC is not a wide-open architecture
like MythTV, and it seems to emphasize quality imagery, especially by
incorporating various line doublers and other tweaks that are out
there if you look hard enough.

Probably the most interesting of these is DScaler, found at
http://www.dscaler.com www.dscaler.com . According to its Web site,
the project has a simple goal: "The DScaler project is an ongoing
attempt to get the best video quality possible from a Windows PC."
Like the MythTV team, these folks are essentially using the
open-source approach to public development. Headed by deinterlacing
expert John Adcock, they're producing code that gives you the
image-improvement power that was once the domain of Faroudja, whose
line doublers used to cost thousands of dollars.

All this activity within the video-image realm is a result of needing
to find a purpose for the wasted power of today's processors. We've
been waiting for a jazzy new direction in personal computing, and this
appears to be it. This is the real convergence we've been told about.
And what's interesting is, yet again, it's the small shops with the
smart young coders doing all the heavy lifting.

Everyone I know who has ever seen or played with MythTV wants it, but
it's a do-it-yourself project and not for the timid. Eventually that
will change as packagers appear and bundle prebuilt systems together.
There are other implications of all this. In a changing universe,
technologists will refuse to be hemmed in by artificial roadblocks
created for the purpose of maintaining the status quo. Microsoft and
Hollywood and whoever else can create all the DRM schemes they want;
they can sue college kids for trading songs, block trading networks,
shut down BitTorrent systems-but it won't do them any good. The forces
of "We want it our way" will overpower them again and again, because
that's the way technology works.

And this will all be shared. In a networked, computer-based world, the
sense of community breeds a socialistic desire to share, not covet.
This mentality is at the root of all the open-source activity and
cannot be ignored or denied. I want my MythTV.

------END ARTICLE-------

I love my MythTV. I use KnoppMyth as the basis for my box. It lets me record Smurfs and The National, and watch them back to back for a surreal experience.