One nice feature of tivo (and replaytv) is that they can be set to control an external cable/satellite converter instead of using their internal tuner for everything. They come with a little ifrared LED that sticks onto the converter's IR port. The tivo/replaytv sets its own tuner to channel 4 (or uses a composite video input) and changes channels by sending remote-control commands to the converter. This way, you can record from scrambled channels and so on.
Do any of the convert-your-PC-into-a-tivo products have anything like this?
MythTV does support this via an "IR Blaster"...an IR transmitter that connects generally via a serial port. Any blaster device supported by the lirc driver will work. I've even seen schematics with RadioShack part numbers included that you can put together for a few bucks.
Some cable/satellite systems also have some sort of data port on the back of the unit, often RJ-11, but also commonly as a 9pin serial port. The unit can be controlled via this port also (well, most units anyways. The protocol varies depending on manufacturer) and more reliably than via IR.
I used MythTV pretty heavily for a while, but I currently don't have a card with TV-Out, so it became more trouble than it was worth. Watching on a 17" monitor in the computer room isn't nearly as comfortable as watching a 32" from the couch. :) I haven't used it since July (around the 0.10 release) but it was pretty rock solid back then, and it looks like a lot of new features have been added since then. Development is quite fast paced. I was using CVS and rebuilding at least a couple times a week to get the new features.
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