[mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

[Greg Woods]

On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 22:01 -0600, Reynolds, Brian wrote:

> Man, I'm here asking for reasons to use Myth, and you guys keep giving
> me reasons NOT to. 

There *are* reasons not to. You are just getting honest answers. Most of
us here have weighed the options for ourselves and chosen Myth, but that
doesn't mean that we believe Myth is for everybody. Myth is NOT a
drop-in, turn-key, maintenance-free solution. It is a geek hobby. If you
do have some technical skill, and you enjoy being able to use it to
produce something that is way better than the crappy DVR you could rent
from the cable company, then Myth may be for you. I have no experience
with WMC, but from what I am hearing, it is probably in between Myth and
a rented DVR: more features than the rented one, less than Myth. Is it
good enough for you? Obviously, only you can decide that. Personally, I
hate Microsoft and will not support them except where I really have no
alternative.

Features that I like about Myth that no other DVR has to my knowledge:

1) Automatic commercial skip with a single button press (don't have to
fast forward through them)
2) Time stretch. It is especially valuable (to me) during baseball and
football season, where I can watch a game with 30% speedup as well as
commercial skip, and watch the game in half the time it takes to see it
live and not miss any of it.
3) Advanced scheduling. Despite complaints about the scheduler that you
could find in this mailing list's archives, I've seen TiVo, I've seen
cable company DVR's, and nothing else even comes close to what Myth can
do in this area.


> I haven't tried out Hulu yet, but I'm told that it
> adds a bunch of HD content... and if I remember correctly (don't count
> on my memory) even recent airings of broadcast TV.

There is a guy at work who swears by Hulu. I don't think it can do
nearly what Myth can do, but it delivers a lot of the content that some
of us subscribe to cable for, such as sporting events.

I get movies from Netflix, but I still use DVD's. I am unwilling to set
up and run a Windows virtual machine on my TV computer just to get the
convenience of streaming vs. mailing DVDs back and forth. But that is my
preference. As has been noted previously, the reason Myth doesn't
support Netflix is that Netflix won't allow it (and that is probably
because the copyright owners of the content they are streaming won't
allow it). Ditto for Hulu.

In the end, what we want to watch, how much technical skill we have, and
how much of our own time we are willing to put into it all go into
deciding what is the best PVR solution for each of us.

I do hear the people who say "screw the cable company, OTA only for me".
I love the attitude, but it doesn't work for us sports fans. Virtually
all of my local team's games are on non-OTA channels (the NFL is the one
major exception). My HDHR sits largely idle outside of football season
when it is used heavily. Most everything else my wife and I like to
watch is not available OTA and requires an HD-PVR and a matching rented
set-top box. To each their own.

--Greg