[mythtv] MythTV vs. Vista MCE: First Impressions (Looong!)

[Stuart Morgan]

On Monday 04 June 2007 19:02:25 Jean-Philippe Steinmetz wrote:
> I have to agree with Colin on many counts here. Turning a blind eye to
> constructive criticism about something you are working on is foolish, not
> because the project is trying to gain market share, but because people
> won't take the project seriously otherwise. I've used several PVR systems
> including Myth, MCE, Vista MCE, MediaPortal, ReplayTV, TiVo, etc and the
> number one reason why a person will choose product X over Y is because it
> is simpler to use and still gives them the features they want. The Myth UI
> is cumbersome and not entirely intuitive.

No-one is turning a blind eye, we are all well aware of the limitations and 
problems of the UI. However few of the people who criticise the UI have 
supplied any patches to fix it. 

If all people ever do is moan how someone else hasn't written the code, then 
why should we do anything but ignore them? The developers don't work for any 
of these users, they don't get a paycheck or any rewards for the time they 
spend on Mythtv. This may come as a shock to some, but the developers are 
just users exactly like them, who decided they would contribute instead of 
complaining.

Every single person reading this could be a developer. It just means changing 
your attitude from "this sucks" to "I could change this".

> I would be more than happy to take put in some time to re-develop the UI to
> be more fluid, user friendly and overall more efficient because it would
> help me every day when I use it.

That is all it takes.

> I also think it would be hugely 
> advantageous if the frontend ran on multiple platforms using the same
> codebase. Often times I like to be able to watch shows from my main desktop
> or laptop but can't because I do not run Linux on these machines as
> dual-booting is just a big hassle.

People have made an effort to get mythfrontend running under cygwin, but again 
without the patches it won't happen.
-- 
Stuart Morgan