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

Kelly navykel at gmail.com
Sat Jun 11 15:47:14 UTC 2005


On 6/11/05, Gavin Haslett <gavin at nodecaf.net> wrote:
> 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.
> 
> You know, I think a lot of the reliability of MythTV comes from the components you use, how good you are at integrating them and so forth. I have a box I built from older but good quality components, and my reliability is excellent. About the only time it actually breaks is when I fiddle with it and break it!
> 
> There are a few annoyances; I still have random failures of the mythbackend service for no obvious reason... but I implemented a little script that checks if mythbackend is running once a minute and restarts it if not. Usually a minor inconvenience since it only fails every few days if at all.
> 
> I have a Series I DirecTivo as well... the Tivo is probably a little more "reliable" since it's truly dedicated hardware designed for a specific purpose. No matter how good the Myth software, it's still a general-purpose PC being used for one specific purpose and therefore not as "efficient" as the DirecTivo. However, the fact that said DTV now sits in my study disconnected and unused tells you how much I prefer Myth. Besides, the flexibility of the MythTV box is significantly better. The ability to get weather in realtime, read news, browse my sizeable MP3 and Picture collection on my TV and all with a single IR remote that closely resembles the one from the Tivo is incredible. Add the expandability (I recently traded out my single 60Gb drive for a pair of 160Gb in a mirror for my recordings in about an hour and a half) and I think Myth makes a better solution.
> 
> Of course, YMMV... but my experience has been extremely positive to the point that my family and myself don't really even think about the fact that the Myth box is a "hobbyist" project.


Well I must be the only dumbass in the group. I've had a Series 2 Tivo
since 2001. My wife loves Tivo. When I upgraded to HDTV and started
getting OTA I missed Tivo. About 3 months ago I started building a
Mythtv system. I it have in my front room now completely stable.
However, my wife has a way of breaking anything she touches and I have
had a 60% failure when she is using it. Mythtv is stable if you do
what your supposed to do but if you stray from the path, BANG! It is
not forgiving if you hit keys on the remote your not supposed to. She
has crashed the frontend and backend. She watches it after I go to bed
and I've had to turn on the TV to see if she has crashed it before
going to work or her soaps will not record. Tivo is a rock solid
consumer product. Mythtv is a project for people like me who like to
tinker and build our own. Reading the replies I'm scratching my head
and wondering what I did wrong. Perhaps I got the wrong Motherboard? I
have not created a script to check if it is running every minute, that
sounds like a good idea. I'll search the posts to see if anyone has
talked about that. I'm not sure if I have to check if the backend is
running first then the frontend.

Overall my wife is marginally happy. She is terrified to touch it
because it crashes every time, well almost every time. So for me it is
going to take time to get her more confident using it. Again, I must
be the only dumbass on the list.

kel


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list