[mythtv-users] Sell mythtv "set-top" boxes

Ben Bucksch linux.news at bucksch.org
Thu May 15 19:50:34 EDT 2003


Joseph A. Caputo wrote:

>Unless you're prepared to give *lots* of support (costing you *lots* of time) to your customers, it won't work.
>
Unless you're able to decline any support. Not sure, if that's legal or 
feasible.

>Even assuming that Myth itself was rock-solid stable (in a perfect world needing no support), the big issue (the real killer as far as I'm concerned) is TV listing data.
>
If the current grabber breaks and you can't write a new one in time, 
you'd have to pay a few bucks for that data, I guess.

>That's 20 customers with (virtually) useless Myth boxes, all waiting for you to come and install a new version of XMLTV (assuming there is one!)
>
eh, there is no need to "come". You can remote-administrate the boxes 
(if you told your customers!) or better yet auto-update the boxes with 
apt-get or whatever, with one "source" being your server. Just upload a 
new package to your server, the boxes grab it and install it 
automatically, and that's it. Unless you messed it up.

>Or worse yet, what if Zap2It went away, and the XMLTV project was 'down' for a while trying to find another source?
>
You have a few days to write a new grabber, because it always grabs a 
whole week. If there are 2-3 days missing at the end 1-2 times a year, 
that's tolerable IMHO.

>How much would you be willing to pay for that?
>
Even if MythTV is not suitable for a mass market (I think it may), it's 
still for a niche market: for those who

    * want to archive their recordings (!) on CD or huge harddrives in a
      common format
    * can't place new cables and have to use wireless LAN (from backend
      to frontend or from satelite dish to apartment). Even if they
      *can* place cables, that's often several hundred dollars when done
      by a professional, and that easily eats up the cost difference.
    * dislike commercial control like ads, forced recordings etc.
    * want to have quality otherwise not found in commercial products:
          o absolutely silent (no fan, no disk, because of separate backend)
          o custom design case
          o high quality video/audio compression
          o DVB (or later HDTV) for best TV quality, incl. recordings
          o a music archive with high end quality and without CD
            changing (usually perfect reading with cdparanoia, lossless
            compression with flac, digital out for external DA) (This
            last feature alone might be a reason for some high end
            freaks to shell out 1000 bucks, if you can convince them of
            the (factual) quality)
    * Several frontends accessing the same data
    * Tons of other reasons, see previous threads why people don't use
      TiVo or ReplayTV. BTW: I don't think they are available in Europe
      at all. At least I haven't seen them here, IIRC. IIRC, I have seen
      similar products, starting at 400 Euro, though.





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