A year or so ago when I first decided to install a PC-based DVR or PVR in our living room (since dubbed “Pivo”), it was running Windows XP and GB-PVR. At the time I had several people question me why I didn’t put up a Linux box. The fact of the matter was, I didn’t know Linux well enough to even attempt it. Fast forward a year — I’ve been playing with Ubuntu Linux for a few months now, and while I am no expert, I can get around the system’s GUI well enough and am just starting to familiarize myself with a few of the command line commands. Last week Pivo died — this time due to a hardware failure — so with a reload looming anyway, I decided to go with MythTV, a Linux-based PVR package. This meant reloading Pivo with Ubuntu, and then installing MythTV. How has this weekend adventure gone? Read on, if you dare/care.
Over the past three days I’ve spent countless hours loading, reloading, and configuring Ubuntu — and more specifically, MythBuntu, a flavor (distro?) of Ubuntu that comes with MythTV pre-bundled. The first day of this project was spent loading and patching Ubuntu (my install immediately insisted on downloading and installing 129 additional patches). After spending several hours patching, configuring and tweaking my install, I discovered that this was not the operating system I was looking for. On to MythBuntu.
MythBuntu is very slick and very simple to install. It also has some unique quirks. For example, when I loaded MythBuntu with a network cable installed, it decided for me that I wanted a DHCP IP address. When I changed the setting to static and changed to a new IP address, I completely broke everything. I found myself in a maze of command lines and config files trying to change IP settings, and lacking the access to do so because of the IP change. Time for another reload. One thing I can definitely say; by the end of the project, I got really good at reloading Ubuntu/MythBuntu. MythBuntu also automatically detected my video capture card, incorrectly. It took me forever just to figure out why I could not get a television signal.
Frustrations mounted as I found myself having to Google every single thing I wanted to do. The problem I ran into was every flavor of Linux and even different versions of the same flavor seemed to have different problems and offer different solutions. My patience came to an end after spending over an hour trying to get my D: drive to mount and stay mounted. It’s something I could do in Windows in a matter of seconds, and I suspect with the right knowledge I could have done the same thing in Ubuntu in a matter of seconds as well.
Most of the things I’ve done with Ubuntu to date have involved playing with the programs it comes packaged with. I have no doubt that with enough time and persistance I could have got Ubuntu/MuthTV/MythBuntu to work, but the fact of the matter is, I can reload XP/GB-PVR a dozen times faster than I can learn an entire operating system. I’m going to keep playing with (and reading about) Ubuntu because I really want to make a place in my home for it, but as for this project, this is not the time.
Bring on the comments, fanboys. My personal firewall has been enabled.
You’ll just keep coming home to XP. :)
There’s a MythTV-enabled version of Knoppix also, which may do a better job of detecting your hardware. I’ve really been thinking about trying to build something like this myself, but the question is what TV cards will work with over-the-air digital, since I don’t have cable TV now and don’t intend to get it after the pointless and unnecessary analog phase-out either.
One thing I like about MythTV, as opposed to most Windows-based options, is that it allows you to exercise your Fair Use rights to store digital copies of your DVDs on the hard drive and keep the originals in a safe place. With kid-oriented DVDs especially, that’s an important feature. It also pays no attention to the Broadcast Flag, which networks aren’t supposed to be using, but as we found out a few months ago, sometimes they do.
To me that’s the biggest advantage of open source vs. commercial software for DVR purposes. Open source authors couldn’t care less about what the content producers want consumers to be able to do and not do.
Don’t worry about flames–exotic hardware is rarely easy to get going under Linux. And it could be that they want it to be a little bit difficult. If any regular joe could slap a $139 TV card into an old PC, drop in a CD that works perfectly and automagically, and end up with a full-blown DVR that ignores everything Hollywood thinks it ought to be able to do, somebody probably would get sued.