[mythtv-users] Direct TV implementation?

David mythtv at morrisonthenet.com
Sun Jun 26 15:22:23 UTC 2005


Absolutely, it's a personal, subjective thing.  I love Myth and think 
it's a great thing, especially for everything non-TV related, but in my 
household I think DTivo handles the TV duties better and with less headache.

In my situation, I have 4 independant TV's that may be watched by 4 or 5 
people simulataneously.  Only two of those currently have DTivo's 
(series 2, which are much improved over series 1, especially with the 
new update that DTV just pushed down that dramatically improved 
performance).  Assuming I upgrade my two remaining standard receivers to 
DTivo's, I will have EIGHT tuners running, two in each Tivo.  To get 
this much capacity on Myth, I'd have to run eight tuner cards with eight 
DTivo receivers, doubling my monthly receiver fees and requiring one 
helluva backend (or more realistically, multiple backends).  With DTivo 
it's all seamless and uber-reliable.  I've never had a DTivo crash, the 
uptime is 24/7 on these things.

I do give Myth props over DTivo in a couple of areas.  Drive space is 
one -- upgrading DTivo drives is possible but it's a PITA and you can 
only have two drives at most.  I have two drives in an LVM group in my 
Myth box, to hold our entire audio collection and DVD rips, so adding 
additional space is trivial.  Also, DirecTV refuses to enable the USB 
ports and streaming ability that the stand-alone Tivo Home Networking 
option gives you.  It can be hacked into DTivo but I have no real 
interest in doing that with my legitimately subscribed boxes, for fear 
that DirecTV could detect it and potentially shut them down or get me in 
trouble for some license/policy violation (another prop to MythTV there).

If I had only one or two TV's, Myth + DirecTV would make more sense for 
me.  But with everybody in the house now used to watching one show on 
the DTivo while recording another, plus the fact that it works seamless 
and everybody understands it (as opposed to Myth), I just couldn't get 
away with it.

As to remotes, I tend to prefer to use the Tivo remote for Tivo 
watching, but I have centralized all HT remotes into one 
JP1-programmable O4A 8810uw learning remote.  All of my equpment 
profiles are stored on the PC and downloaded to the remote, including 
the LiteOn IR keyboard that controls my Myth box, so no lirc is needed.  
With this one remote I can control my TV, HT teceiver, Tivo, VCR, and 
Myth box (including Xine for DVD playback).  This remote cost $18 at 
Wal-Mart, the JP1 cable kit I ordered for like $20, and the software to 
program the remote is free.  So it CAN all be done from single remote, 
and inexpensively too.  :)

David

Gavin Haslett wrote:

>On Fri, 2005-06-24 at 14:17 -0400, David Morris wrote:
>  
>
>>DirecTivo works so well that I don't use Myth's TV functionality at all 
>>-- the Myth box is strictly a video/DVD/audio convergence appliance for 
>>me, which it does very well.  Our DirectTivo's  (I have two, and am 
>>looking at maybe 2 more to replace my other two DTV receivers) handles 
>>all the timeshifting and scheduled recordings on our house, because 
>>frankly Tivo is hard to beat for what it does.
>>    
>>
>
>This really comes down to a personal feeling. I have a DirecTivo as
>well, series 1. I must admit that I agree, it worked damned well, but to
>me the Myth box made more sense. There was more I wanted to do with my
>entertainment center (including a very nice audio setup) than just watch
>TV, so the convergence made sense. Add to that the fact that I wanted to
>reduce the number of remotes in my setup rather than increase and the
>Myth box made a lot more sense. As it was before, my DirecTivo had
>problems with volume control, so I used three remotes; one for the
>receiver, one for the DirecTivo and one for the TV (for picture
>adjustment that my DTivo didn't like doing either). As it is I now have
>one remote that does everything... well except turning the TV on and
>off, but I can always hit the button when I walk past the TV.
>
>It comes down to what you NEED out of these kind of systems. Sure,
>DirecTivo did the job perfectly adequately, but adequate wasn't enough
>for my tastes. My DirecTivo is now gathering dust in my basement.
>Considered putting it in my master bedroom, but decided I'd probably
>rather install a frontend up there. Cat 5 is cheap (and I have a 1000
>foot spool here with 600 feet left!)
>  
>
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