[mythtv-users] My experience with MythTV's greatness (and Intel-based Macs)

[Yeechang Lee]

(This is part of an occasional series on how I've successfully [or
unsuccessfully] accomplished something in MythTV on my Fedora Core
4-based frontend/backend system using the ATrpms packages. I will
assume that readers can do basic Linux tasks, such as install RPMs,
edit /etc files, and generate xorg.conf. I hope to cover the mystery
areas where others may most often fall astray in.)

Two small examples of why MythTV is so great:

* People often ask on alt.tv.tech.hdtv how to record HD streams. A
recent example is
<URL:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.tech.hdtv/msg/8556fff7f545b007>.
Whenever I read such threads, and the several laborious and manual
steps people need to take in order to maybe, possibly complete a
single recording, I would have to--as Oscar Wilde said of a death
scene in a certain Dickens novel--have a heart of stone not to
laugh. See
<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/208553#208553>
for more on how in my experience MythTV, in the phrase people often
associate with OS X, "just works."

(Yes, yes, one might ask "What about Beyond TV or SageTV? They run on
Windows, and work pretty well [Or so I'm told, having never seen
either in action]! And for Mac owners there's EyeTV." Read on.)

* Speaking of OS X, soon after getting my MythTV frontend/backend
running seven months ago, I installed a mythfrontend binary on my
iBook but only tried it once or twice. After obtaining a new MacBook a
couple of weeks ago to replace the by-then-dead iBook, I installed
Matt Mead's precompiled Intel binary of mythfrontend from
<URL:http://collectivity.goof.com/articles/2006/07/11/mythfrontend-for-mac-os-x-intel-w-remote-patch>.
At the time it remained a mere curiosity because, well, as nice as
802.11g and the MacBook's 13" 720p LCD panel are, they're no
comparison to gigabit Ethernet and a Westinghouse 37" 1080p LCD
panel. I briefly amused myself by playing the same HD recording
simultaneously on both frontends, then again promptly forgot about it.

However, on Thursday I sold my 37" panel on Craigslist for a good
price as I've ordered the just-out Westinghouse 47" panel ($2480 at
Crutchfield, with free shipping, "white glove" delivery, and no sales
tax!!!). Unfortunately, it won't arrive until Monday or Tuesday. Enter
the understudy, also known as the MacBook mythfrontend. As I type
this, I simply can Alt-Tab to mythfrontend, which is running full
screen on another virtual desktop (thanks to VirtueDesktops). Another
Alt-Tab flips me back to FireFox, iTerm, or to whatever else I'm using
on the previous desktop.

Mythfrontend's performance on the MacBook's 1.83GHz Core Duo processor
is excellent. After some fiddling with my wireless router's settings
(in particular, changing the channel to something not used by any of
the dozen or so other wireless signals my neighbors emit), I've
significantly minimized bandwidth-related skips in the video and
sound. It's hard to believe that the first Intel-based Macs only
debuted six months ago and that as recently as four months ago people
still had issues with getting mythfrontend running right (see
<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/190285#190285>
for an example). Other than missing the various plugins the ATrpms
version of MythTV comes with, the Retro theme (I've substituted the
quite nice MythCenter theme), for some reason the keybinding-editing
function, and of course the inability to use my nice universal remote
(I could use the Front Row remote, but in this case the keyboard is of
course much more convenient), the experience is *exactly* like using
my primary frontend.

None of this would be possible, of course, without MythTV developers'
farsighted ambition early on to use a client-server architecture. This
meant that, despite my frontend/backend being headless for the time
being, I had to do *absolutely nothing* on the backend for the MacBook
frontend to near-seamlessly fill in. Now, *that*'s something beyond
the Beyond TVs (never mind SageTV and EyeTVs) of the world, eh?

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US