MythTV News

KnoppMyth is going through some big changes. The next release, R6, will be unveiled at SCALE 7x.

KnoppMyth R6 will change name to LinHES (Linux Home Entertainment System) and also it will no longer be based on Knoppix and Debian, but instead be based on Arch Linux.

You should read this interview with Cecil Watson, to get all the details.

Filed under: KnoppMyth, MythDora, MythTV | No Comments »

I have been informed by Jason Roysdon that Mythdora 10.21 was released on January 7th.

It is based on Fedora 10 and includes MythTV 0.21-fixes.

From the release notes:

There are some major changes for us in this release. We’ve moved away from the Xdialog installer and into a single firefox configuration for the initial system setup. This same setup can be called via the MythDora Tools menu for a variety of features and for further maintenance as you use your system.

Details:

• kernel-2.6.27.9-159.fc10
• i386, x86_64 DVD and LiveCD versions available
• LiveCD can be used as mythfrontend to existing MythDora 5.0 installation
• Latest nVidia & nVidia Legacy drivers.
• Latest OpenChrome video drivers.
• Latest ivtv drivers, including X driver for the PVR-350.

Get Mythdora 10.21 here.

Filed under: MythDora, MythTV | No Comments »

The official mythtv.org usually doesn’t see a lot of updates, except for the wiki of course. But a few days ago the site was changed completely. It looks much better, and navigates better too.

It has been a long time coming as you can see from this old post.

Anyway - check it out.

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This is based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope alpha 3. This means that it is kernel 2.6.28 and Xorg server 1.6.

Also it includes MythTV 0.21-fixes.

Ubuntu 9.04 is slated for release on April 23rd 2009 and Mythbuntu usually comes out a few days after that.

There is a long list of known issues - after all, this is alpha software. A lot of those issues are regarding graphics drivers, so be sure to check the known issues before you start the install.

Read the release note here.

Filed under: MythTV, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu | No Comments »

“Practical MythTV” was published back in May 2007. It was written by Michael Still and Steward Smith.

Things change, and quickly in the world of technology. So of course such a book cannot stay up-to-date. That’s why the authors have decided to update the book and to do it online as a wiki.

You can read the announcement here and read the first chapter here.

If you want to help out, there is a request for help page you should read.

This looks like a really good thing for the MythTV community. What I have read so far seems very well written and it is especially helpful for the MythTV beginner, since every term is clearly explained.

Filed under: Book, Howto, MythTV | No Comments »

Schedules Direct is the company which was formed about 18 months ago to step in and supply US and Canadian MythTV users with schedule data after Tribune Media Services announced that they would be shutting down their free service.

Now Schedules Direct is looking into expanding the service to Europe and/or Latin America.

But sensibly, first they want to see if there is any interest in this.

So if you live outside North America and Canada and would like Schedules Direct to supply schedule data for your part of the world, then head to the survey which has been put up.

Filed under: MythTV, Schedules Direct | 2 Comments »

I have no idea when MythTV 0.22 is coming out, but I know that there are at least three very nice features coming in that next release.

1. MythUI. The UI in MythTV 0.22 will be based on QT4 and MythUI and will allow for much more advanced themes with transitions and translucence.
2. Hauppauge HD-PVR support. If you want to record HD from cable, then you need this hardware. And with 0.22 it will be supported. You will need some beefy hardware to play back these recordings, if it wasn’t for…
3. VDPAU support. This is the video hardware decoding by NVidia which will allow for HD playback on very limited hardware.

To can read more about MythTV 0.22 in this post:
Why MythTV 0.22 Will Rock You

Filed under: HDTV, Hardware, MythTV, MythUI, NVIDIA, Theme, VDPAU | 3 Comments »

Lifehacker is running a poll on the best DVR application. Of course MythTV is listed and among the competition is TiVo, GB-PVR, BeyondTV, SageTV and Windows Media Center.

Now, go and vote!

Filed under: MythTV, Vista Media Center | 1 Comment »

Changes (directly from the changelog):

• tv_grab_be: removed due to source site blocking
• tv_grab_eu_epgdata: should now work on win32
• tv_grab_id: add 3 more backends
• tv_grab_na_dd: add Movie and Sports category
• tv_grab_uk_rt: add support for Sky Arts 2
• tv_check: add –season-reset switch to change everything to ‘title-only’
• And of some bugfixes and polish.

Here is the release note and here is the release itself.

Filed under: MythTV, XMLTV | No Comments »

This is exciting for those people who are already running the combination of a GeForce 8+ card with MythTV SVN/Trunk and 180.06 or 180.08 Nvidia drivers. Those are the components needed to get completely GPU hardware accelerated H.264 video playback.
Now there is a new version of the driver from NVidia and with some interesting changes:

• Improved VDPAU error detection and reporting.
• Improved VDPAU support for some video bitstreams.

Exactly what bitsreams they are talking about is unknown.

Additional changes:

• Added support for the following new GPUs:
  • GeForce 9400M
• Fixed font corruption on GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs when the GlyphCache setting is enabled.
• Fixed a memory leak problem when the GlyphCache setting is enabled.
• Added support for GVO full-range color.
• Fixed a problem parsing the monitor sync range X config file options.

It is nice to see the quick pace at which NVidia is working on this driver.

The driver can be downloaded here.

Filed under: HDTV, Hardware, Linux, MythTV, NVIDIA, VDPAU | No Comments »