This is a really nice summary for any tivo user who's thinking about
switching, or cohabiting with a Myth box. I'm just waiting for
Tive-to-go plugin for Myth and I'll be doing back flips. I built my
Myth box 2 months ago. I feel like I climbed Everest to get where I am
today, but I love it. Whever said it's not the end result, it's the
getting there was wrong. There is less and less I miss about tivo as I
iron out issues here and there. Tivo's tight GUI is the only thing
that I still like. I would say some of the things you mention as gaps
are not if you dig around the archives, e.g. the recording light.
Thanks for sharing.
Gary
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:07:19 -0500, Ben Giddings
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi list!
>
> I've just finished installing MythTV and started using it, and I
> thought I'd post some comments on how a long-time TiVo user.
>
> Even though there are some things I like better about how my TiVo
> works, I'm not just writing to complain. I'm interested to hear if
> other people agree that parts of MythTV could be improved. If other
> people agree, I may even want to work on some of these deficiencies.
>
> On with the review.
>
> When I first fired up the MythTV interface, I was immediately
> impressed. The GUI is really beautiful. I'm not used to seeing such
> great interfaces in Open Source projects. It was also really
> responsive. I was amazed with all the options, I had installed the
> MythGallery, MythMusic, MythVideo, MythGame, MythWeather... well pretty
> much everything except MythPhone.
>
> With no pictures, music, videos or TV recordings, I naturally tried out
> live TV first. TV is TV, but the OSDs are another matter. (The
> initial OSD I had was blueosd and it was kinda ugly, but when I
> switched to Titivillus-OSD that was just as nice as the TiVo one.)
> After going to Live TV I tried out the guide, and again, I was amazed
> at how beautiful and functional MythTV was. The guide was really
> responsive, the shows were colour coded, and it was generally far
> better than I was used to from my TiVo. I picked a few programs to
> record, then went to play with the rest of MythTV.
>
> Still, with no music, videos, recordings, or games, I turned to
> MythWeather. Holy crap is that good! It was so well designed, with
> all the info at a glance, beautiful icons, a weather map, and even my
> choice of Farenheit or Celsius.
>
> Eventually I had a couple of recordings to watch so I started one up.
> That wasn't too different until I got to a commercial. Mmmmm....
> commercial skipping is great! When it was on auto-skip mode, I almost
> didn't notice that a commercial had been skipped. I also tried
> adjusting playback speed. Wow. I couldn't believe how well that
> worked. I may even start using it regularly for certain types of
> programs. Combining commercial auto skipping and faster playback, Iron
> Chef was over in 32 minutes, not 60.
>
> Once my wonder over MythTV wore off though, I started missing a few
> TiVo things. Most of them are pretty minor, but a few I think are big
> enough that I really think they're worth adding to Myth.
>
> The biggest thing I missed was the tightness of the TiVo remote. The
> TiVo has no keyboard, obviously, so everything can be controlled by the
> remote control. I think they did an amazing job laying out the TiVo
> remote control, and I still haven't gotten to the stage where I have as
> much control with Myth. An example of how well the TiVo remote is set
> up is the channel up/down buttons. When you're watching live TV,
> they're channel buttons. When you're in a list in the UI ("Now
> Playing" i.e. recorded showings for example) they scroll a page at a
> time. Hitting the TiVo button from anywhere in the UI will bring you
> back to the main menu. In Myth, I don't think you can do this.
> Although I mapped the "Go/Home" button on my Silver Hauppauge remote to
> go to the TV recordings screen, it didn't work when I was in a setup
> screen. Finally, it was nice to be able to decide for myself what the
> remote buttons did, but the means of doing that was really awful. I
> either had to use the web interface to change the key bindings, or I
> had to use MySQL. Then I had to edit the lircrc text file to map
> remote control keypresses to keyboard keys. Ugh.
>
> I'm new to lirc, but one of the test programs I ran across was 'irw'.
> It simply told you what remote control key you were pressing and how
> long you had held it down. It seems to me that in theory MythTV could
> use something like this to monitor lirc directly and not have to map
> remote control keypresses to keyboard keys. Either way, I think it
> would be great if there were something in Myth itself that worked like
> most games do for binding keys. Choose a function, then hit the key
> you want to be bound to that function, voila.
>
> A second thing I missed from TiVo was the UI beeps and checkmarks. I
> think they're useful on the TiVo for two reasons. One is that the UI
> is slow on the underpowered TiVo processor, so you get immediate
> feedback when you do something. This isn't as important with MythTV
> and it's vastly more powerful processor. The other reason this is
> useful with the TiVo is that unlike a keyboard or mouse, you don't
> always know if the device received the keypress. I could see this
> being useful for Myth too.
>
> Another minor thing I miss from my TiVo is the "screensaver". If you
> didn't hit a button for a while on the TiVo it would by default go back
> to monitoring Live TV after a while. I know that burn-in isn't a big
> deal on computer screens or on standard TV sets, however projection TVs
> are another matter. I think it would be a good idea for Myth to do
> something if keys haven't been hit in a while. Maybe go to a
> "dashboard" type screen that showed things like what's currently being
> recorded, some stats on how many programs are available to watch, etc,
> and have enough movement and changes that it could work as a
> screensaver too.
>
> Finally, the only other thing I can think of that I really miss from my
> TiVo is the red light that tells me it's recording. It's nice to have
> some easy reassurance that your favourite show is really being
> recorded. I know that Myth isn't quite as flexible because this is a
> hardware thing, but some quick confirmation it's recording would be
> really handy.
>
> None of these is a showstopper at all, and although right now I have my
> MythTV box and TiVo running side by side, I'm pretty sure that
> eventually the Myth box will completely replace the TiVo even if none
> of these issues are addressed. The things Myth does well just blow the
> TiVo away. I just think there are still a few weaknesses in Myth.
>
> In a few weeks I might have a chance to look into some of these things
> myself. First, I have to fix a few other Mythbox related issues
> (prebuffering pause, no volume control, just mute/unmute, DVD drive not
> detected, image not filling the TV screen, etc.) I also have a few
> other projects underway. But, I'm excited that with Myth, if I get the
> time and it bugs me enough, I can fix these things myself.
>
> Thanks for a really, really great bit of software Isaac and everyone
> else,
>
> Ben
>
>
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>
>
--
Gary M
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