[mythtv-users] Considering MythTV, curious about relative WAF.

Darren Richards darren.richards at gmail.com
Fri Jun 10 01:44:41 UTC 2005


On 6/9/05, David Asher <david.asher at caviumnetworks.com> wrote:
> Our household is currently all DirecTivos (2 series 1, 1 HDTivo).
> 
> My wife LOVES her/our tivos.  (As do I)
> 
> Unfortunately, DirecTV ticked me off recently with the NFL Sunday Ticket
> pricing, and I've always loved the convergence possiblities (realities?)
> of MythTV, so I'm thinking of using it as an opportunity to bring in MythTV.
> 
> Once MythTV is working, is it as stable as the tivos?  Is it as
> trustworthy as the tivos?  I haven't had a chance to play with it yet,
> is it as easy to use as the tivos?  I know it can do things that the
> tivos can't, but I'm not sure my wife will be interested in those things.
> 
> Anyone with experience using both directivos and MythTV please chime
> in.  I really,really,REALLY don't want to lose the WAF of the Tivos.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> David.

Your mileage may vary, but I have a friend with a DirectTV Tivo, and
he has to reboot his Tivo more often than I have to reboot mythtv.  No
offense to my wife, but she is quite computer illiterate, and has no
problem navigating the menus, setting up recordings, watching recorded
shows, watching movies, listening to music, browsing photos, etc... 
Everything can be done with the remote, so she has never had to touch
the keyboard.  She really can't live without it.  I've had it set up
for about 18 months now, and despite my occasional tweaking and
hardware upgrades, it has been *rock* solid.  The WAF really couldn't
be higher.

About the *only* advantage the DirectTivo has over Mythtv is I believe
it records the actual digital stream straight from the satellite. 
With Myth, you'll have to convert it to analog, capture it with a
capture card which converts it back to digital, then re-convert it to
analog to send it to your TV.  The extra digital to analog probably
results in some signal loss, but my picture quality is still
excellent.  I can't distinguish between the feed directly from my Dish
receiver and what I get through mythtv.  Dish and DirectTV compress
their signal way too much in the first place anyway, but there's not
much we can do about that...

-darren


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