In my defense I haven’t been reading the MythTV mailing list in a few days. I know, I’m a slacker. For those of you that don’t know, MythTV is a an open source software Personal Video Recorder project. It lets you build a box similar to a TiVo or ReplayTV, but much more powerful – and more easily modified. It is ideally suited to allow you to ditch that piece of … DVR from your cable company.
I’ve been using MythTV in one form or another for the better part of two years and I have been nothing but pleased. Granted you have to be semi decent at Linux and have the time to tweak the system but, if you do, you’ll be more then happy. I use it for whole house media distribution.
Basically a MythTV system consists of a backend server that holds the TV tuners and records the programs to disk and one or more frontend systems that play those recordings back. This design allows me to access any program, DVD, or music CD from any room in my house. Nice.
Anyway it has been awhile since the last release so there are a number of new features. The highlights are:
- autodiscovery (less manual configuration of new frontends)
- storage groups (no need for LVM/etc)
- support for multiple recordings on one DVB/ATSC multiplex
- a couple new plugins
- new deinterlacing/video display options
Hit the MythTV project wiki to get up to speed.
I know where my weekend just went.
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