[mythtv-users] Overkill...

[Steve Adeff]

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 06:39, CascadeHush wrote:
> The main reason I continue to use XP on one of my PCs is my Hauppage
> 150 TV Tuner card, which I use to record TV according to a schedule I
> have set up.  This particular PC is my main file server, as well as
> being a digital VCR (I don't want to say PVR, because that implies
> certain types of functionality, most of which I find pretty
> useless).  I'd prefer to switch this machine over to linux, if I can
> get the same functionality.

so far yes!

> I've had a look at MythTV, and whilst it's all very impressive, it is
> overkill for what I want.  I just want a way to schedule TV
> recordings.  I don't want a fancy front end, I don't want an
> electronic program guide... I'm not looking to build a media box.  I
> just want something totally anonymous, that sits on my network and
> records TV programs to a HD.  And then, when I want to watch them, it
> will be in whatever program, on whatever platform I happen to be
> using at the time, and when I do, I will open the file directly as I
> would open any other file.

Yes, Myth is really made up of two parts, the backend and the frontend. You 
can run just the backend which does all the recording and scheduling type 
stuff. You can then just run the frontend to set these schedules or even use 
MythWeb to do the schedule setting. The files are recorded with a obtuse 
naming scheme (channel-datetime.ext kinda thing), but there are included 
scripts that will rename these files according to the show name title, etc. 
making it easy to playback anywhere you want over the network. You can even 
have Myth transcode the recording from its original format (mpg in the case 
of your PVR150) to something else, like xvid/mpeg4, etc.

Not that I'm trying to discourage use of the myth frontend. It does quite well 
at playing back Myth recordings and with the MythVideo plugin (which can use 
mplayer as its video player) can play just about any type of video media you 
can throw at it. Oh, and the MythTV frontend can even do commercial skipping 
for shows its recorded!

-- 
Steve