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- incongruity, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27What the poster failed to mention is that this is solely a battle for the reviewer's AV setup -- the reviewer is so self interested that this cannot be seen as an article targeted at a wider audience. Example:
" Since I use a Logitech Harmony remote and not a standard universal or even the TiVo remote, the debate over remote control operation does not matter to me; however, if you do not have such a remote, TiVo has an easy to use remote.
There are several times where more than one show is on at a time that I need to record. In rare instances I have wanted to record as many as three shows at one time."
Wow. What amazing reviewing there -- basically, the reviewer completely ignores what can be a major issue for tivo and mythtv owners... the remote. Why? because it doesn't matter to *him*. Great. Bravo. - comand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24This is such a non-comparison... Most of the downsides to MythTV are whitewashed. For instance, the assertion that if you have some old hardware "lying around", the cost of having a MythTV box is the cost of the tuner card. Well, if I have a TiVo "lying around" I don't have to pay much either. The cost of a system that is capable of the same recording functionality as a Series 3 is probably on par with the cost of the Series 3. Of course, if you don't want to manage multiple HD-capable tuners, you can get away with less hardware for Myth, but, you can also get a Series 2, which are dirt cheap now.
The facts are these:
1) If you're not an engineer of some sort, or a hard core enthusiast, the amount of work it takes to set up Myth and keep it current is prohibitive. Watching TV is typically a passive activity, and most people don't want to mess with anything once it's set up. TiVo wins here hands down, as it requires *zero* maintenance after it is set up.
2) If you want to record HD, and possibly take advantage of some real television, like HBO or other premium channels, MythTV won't cut it. If you're happy watching HD over the air, and you have HD tuner cards in your box, and you have a system that can handle the recording task, and you qualify for (1) above, then you can get away with MythTV. Otherwise, until someone comes out with a CableCard capable HD tuner card, which will probably be a long time if it ever happens, due to the restrictions on such devices by CableLabs, your best bet for time shifted, engaging (e.g. not local news) programming is a TiVo Series 3.
For the record, I *am* an engineer -- I've built many custom systems, and have been using Linux for a long time. I do have a home theater PC, with output to my HDTV, which I use exclusively for gaming. I also own a TiVo Series 1, 2, and 3, simply because (a) I have never wanted to mess with a PC just to watch a TV program, and (b) the other people in my house are *not* engineers, and expect things to just work with minimal effort. I *could* be running Myth, and in fact, I did research it before I purchased my Series 3, but my requirements for ease of use and technical capability all pointed to TiVo. - shaft63, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24Yeah, this is hardly an unbiased comparison.
The reviewer would be better off comparing the Tivo series 2 to a MythTV setup because the benefits of the cable card and HD recording are pretty much ignored.
He also left out a discussion of commercial skipping and post processing on Myth that make it clearly better than Tivo. - crmaykish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Why is everything a battle?
- Trention, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18The problem with an open source solution is that they cannot work with cablecards, and that leaves a lot of people out on the cold. It sucks.
- wicketr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Extremely biased. It should have been called "Why I think MythTV is better than TIVO for the computer geek with time to spare"
Ignores any faults with the MythTV and then goes on about features the TIVO doesn't have.
- Doesn't compare HD recording
- Doesn't compare the remotes
- Doesn't compare comparable products
- Doesn't compare the interfaces and ease of use
- Doesn't compare the software feature set - twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12This was clearly an article/author who was biased to begin with, and wrote the article with the intent of showing that MythTV would win. Early on, he completely guts MythTV with the (IMHO) two statements in the article that kills MythTV and causes Tivo to win hands down.
First being, setting up Tivo takes about an hour.
Second, that for the "average user" MythTV and Linux plus more than a day "building and tweaking" you system, makes MythTv a daunting task.
That's really the crux of the biscuit, isn't it? The "average user?" The average user IS the majority of the consumers we/he is actually talking about. The folks who buy stuff and make companies successful? If Joe Consumer is going to get a HDDVR, and Mythtv-linux-buildabox is too daunting for him, he'll just whip out "Mr. Credit" and purchase Tivo or get a DVR from the Cable provider. It doesn't matter how easy or exciting AFTER the install is, if you can't build a race car, you ain't driving it Friday night. (I remember Betamax)
No matter how flexible it is after you get it built, if you can't or don't have time/resources to build it, you're going to buy a ready-made or do with out. The article totally ends up bypassing the initial logic to arrive at a predetermined and bogus conclusion based on pretzel logic. - Rapax, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15If you just want to try out MythTV, go take a look at KnoppMyth.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Yeah. If he wants to write a glowing "MythTV is great" article, more power to him. But to pretend this is some unbiased product comparison is a bit silly.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"commercial skipping and post processing on Myth that make it clearly better than Tivo"
I agree with your statement about comparing MythTV to the Series 2 Tivo. MythTV may have many more options and features, but until it gets cable card support (if ever), you can not really compare MythTV to a Series 3 Tivo, because when it comes to recording encrypted HD signals then Tivo S3 is clearly better than MythTV. - KIERANMULLEN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10It would be nice if the article was ON ONE PAGE and had a comparison grid at the end.
KM - InsaneGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Now that's a crappy article, they do no real comparison of the two (also it's very obvious that the writer has a bias against one). The comparison could have been between the Series 2 and the Myth box. There is one reason and one reason alone to get a series 3, hi-def programming period. Mythtv doesn't support cable card, or other encrypted content. Without that, there is absolutely no reason for this comparison document, compare the Gen2 against the Myth box and you'd have a more reasonable comparison platform.
I ran a myth box for quite sometime using firewire HD input from my cable box, it's now useless as the year before last they encrypted the premium channels (HBO, etc) and last year they encrypted all the others that weren't national broadcast (Comedy Central, BBC, History, etc). It's nice to record off Lost, etc every so often in HD but it wasn't worth keeping it up and going just for that. - RandyF, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I have a Series3 and I get 20+ channels of HD programming though my cable provider. Most of the stuff that I record would never come Over-The-Air. Besides, I live in a condo, and even with rabbit-ears I can only sporadically get 3 HD channels.
It took me 20 minutes to set up my Series 3 including the 5 minutes on hold with my cable provider to get the CableCards synched (I had picked up the cards at their office the day before). I tend to think of myself as a "grown up geek", I have no ambition to build a computer, install an OS, configure Myth, AND THEN teach my wife and family how to use the new system. We've had TiVo for 6+ years now, and we're very invested in the interface and operation; I ordered my Series3 the first hour that they were available and have no regrets. - ateoto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I just wish I could throw a couple of CableCards into a MythTV box. I'm a sucker for HD programming and OTA doesn't cut it for me, I might have to bite the bullet and get a Series3. The only thing holding me back is the hope that I could buy a Pre-built Vista Media Center with Dual-CableCards and then install Linux and MythTV on it. If its a simple driver issue than I'm sure it will be out soon after the CableCard Media Centers start showing up, if its more due to that whole "Protected Path" ***** then I guess its a Series3 for me.
- fatlard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Uh.. hello did they forget to compare power consumption in terms of watts?
Your Tivo Series 3.... is pretty low compared to a PC/HD/TV Tuner.
My Tivo was like 23 watts
my mythtv was like 110 watts....
electricity cost money especially if your computer was running 24/7 - tcquad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6That's what the article should have said. The actual article is something closer to "MythTV FTW!"
- asraniel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6the day i can install mythtv on my ubuntu installation and it WORKS, i will be happy to use it. sadly i never could get it to work.
Dont misunderstand me, i life linux only at home and i love opensource, but mythtv just never worked for me - roleary, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Point #2 of the above post is the most important. Unless you get Over The Air HD signals, MythTV just won't work. Even then, my "premium" HD channels from my cable provider (Discovery, ESPN, ESPN2, MTV, InHD, etc) won't be available on a MythTV box. But with Tivo, I can get a CableCard and get access to all those channels.
I'd love to have the freedom that Myth offers, but since I can't even get half the content onto a Myth box, it would be useless. - dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Or MythDora. Similar Concept (Pre-setup MythTV), but based on Fedora Core. I couldn't get KnoppMyth to boot (Not sure why, probably due to the machine's fairly random hardware), but MythDora loaded perfectly
It's installer seems more "reliable" - It's a slightly-modified version of the normal Fedora Core installer, which has worked on every machine I've ever tried it on, including a ~10ish year old Pentium 2 computer that was lying in a damp basement for years - I've never had much luck with Live-CD installers.
I'd post a link to their site, but my internet is being ridiculously unstable/slow just now - but should take very little searching to find..
- Ben - Jumangi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I can sum up the article in one sentence.
You get what you pay for... - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Well since no one is actually going to be able to look at the site for the next few hours, what is the actual conclusion?
- rudesgeiger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I am sure that MythTV works great but, at the end of the day there is truly no such thing as a free puppy. Tivo may have a monthly cost but, you can still hack it. I have two boxes which are both DirecTV branded series 2 Tivo boxes. I bought them on Craigslist for about 30 dollars each. I didn't have to build a new machine nor do I have to entertain questions, comments or complaints from my wife regarding how it works. Tivo simply works; I will gladly pay $5.99 for the convenience factor every month. My time and sanity which sometimes pays the price for home brew hybrids is worth more than a mere $5.99. I am sure many will argue that the MythTV is that is easy and trouble free.
I would take MythTV over Media Edition Windows any day. Bill Gates can suck it! I would like to see nothing more than the bubble that is Vista pop and leave a big sticky mess. - RandyF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@ aantix
No, you are not. Most (all?) premium HD cable channels come encrypted and use CableCards supplied by your cable provider to decrypt them. Currently there are no CableCard-based PC tuner interfaces, and the way the CableLabs does certification, there will NEVER be one*. TiVo Series3 has two CableCard slots, so can record two premium HD shows at once.
* CableLabs is funded by a consortium of all of the cable providers in the US. Their interest in certifying CableCard capable devices lies in proof that the premium HD content can NEVER be moved off of the devices and shared with other people (or at least it must have reasonable measures in place to block casual piracy). TiVo Series3 is currently "crippled" in that TiVoToGo, the TiVo-to-PC transfer that is available in the Series2, is not enabled because CableLabs would not certify the device with the current TiVoToGo implementation (which is a pretty basic TiVo DRM model). CableLabs would never certify a device that would record a raw, unencrypted HD stream to a hard drive that could potentially be "traded with friends", and that's exactly the type of device that MythTV needs to support premium HD content. - jtown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6What a stupid comparison. Show me how to record HBO in HD with myth. Go on, show me. I dare you. Discovery-HD? ESPN-HD? I'm waiting... Don't care about HD? Then why spend $600-800 on Tivo's HD product when they have a dual-tuner analog SD box for a fraction of the cost?
- aantix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5So, you're not able to watch premium cable channels in high def with MythTV (e.g. HBO, Showtime, etc)?
- Aero1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8im with you jayscot, mythTV are for people who have no lives and have the time to build such a ***** application that looks like ***** and works the same. I built one, to try out the "holy grail" of DVR's and got it working perfectly. but its just crap. it doesnt respond like a tivo/MCE, not as friendly as tivo/MCE......and god forbid you want to install an add on. Its a great free application....but its not the second coming like you Linux dorks make it seem.
- gameboyhippo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Reliability of proprietary? Come again?
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Of course, iNSANEqEEK, if he used a Series 2 he couldn't use the whole price comparison thing to make MythTV look like an even better deal :p
- shuffle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Or the fact that GB is not open source.
- krinthekuz, on 09/16/2008, -0/+4solid installation for ubuntu edgy right here:
http://www.djlosch.com/article_How-to%3A_Ubuntu_Edgy_and_MythTV_and_Hauppauge_PVR-150
a lot of the new guides out are for DVB which is designed for the UK. IVTV is designed for international use, but you need to use xmltv instead of zap2it for your listing service. - Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5That the author is biased towards MythTV and should have compared MythTV to a Tivo Series 2 and not a Series 3.
- jayscot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If you like spending hours browsing through message boards and fiddling with console commands trying to get the @#$&ing wifi working or your audio/video widescreen resolution...etc, then try linux/mythTV.
I gave it my best shot (spent a week fooling with it after work). I guess I'm just not smart/patient enough to get linux/myth going. I ended up using media center....i feel dirty, but it works pretty well. - Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Agreed. The statement "So basically, both MythTV and TiVo Series 3 accomplish the same task that basic DVRs perform, but that is where the similarities end." misses the major point of the S3--recording encrypted digital signals from your cable provider via cable card support. The author really should have emphasized *basically* because basic cable is the only thing you are going to record (unless you have a digital STB feeding your MythTV box, but then you lack the ability to record encrypted HD content (I know that there are component video input cards for the PC that cost ~$1500, has anyone tried those with a MythTV setup?)
- FishyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The installation comparison in this review is horrible. He completely whitewashes the setup, which is probably one of the bigger differentiators between the products. Why does he compare the setup for a CableCard HD Tivo system to a regular analog system for the MythTV?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The server seems to be running slow, so I'll just put this here in case.
http://www.dvrplayground.com.nyud.net:8090/article/14261/MythTV-and-TiVo-Series-3-Comparison--Battle-of-Open-Source-and-Proprietary-DVRs/?src=110
The duggmirror link is pointless, because it only catches the first page which is the intro. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MythTV will always be the solution for smart people. As a result, it will never have more than 3% market share.
- naich, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Quite. What you have here is two different products serving two different sectors of the market.
- FishyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's right, without CableCard, you cannot record HD content from cable. Not only are there no linux drivers for CableCard, but the cable company will only install them into authorized systems.
- NoUse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I use MythTV but for more of an link to my TV for my digital video library than anything else. I wish MythTV would spend just a little more time looking at IPTV etc. Currently there is no way to give it a feed such as DL.TV or Diggnation and have the MythTV box automatically download and show the content. I have to do it on my desktop and stream it over.
Tivo is already looking past broadcast television from what I understand. Why doesn't MythTV do the same? - DarkDonnie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was so jealous when I read Randyf's reply. I went through such a nightmare to get cable cards. The woman on the phone didn't know how to place them in an order. The day before the installer came I called to ask them to bring extra cable cards. They ended up bringing zero. They said another installer would bring some later that day. He never showed up. Two days later I finally was able to get some.
Ironically it took ten minutes to set up the cable cards with my Series 3 Tivo. It was worth all of the pain though. :-) - mohaine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4
"You get the reliability and support of a proprietary software "
Astroturf much?
After looking at their website, it looks like SageTVs support is all online, and just like MythTV they suggest you use their FAQ and web forums to solve your problems. They do have email support, but it is the last thing they suggest using. - diecastbeatdown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4ive spent a lot of time on making my own dvr over the years and gbpvr wins. im a linux veteran and a gentoo desktop user but when it comes to my htpc i've used it all. guess it really all boils down to opinion/taste as someone always seems to love mythtv, but not me. gbpvr is more than just simple to use it is stylish and has a ton of support and plugins.
- t0ny, on 10/12/2007, -11/+14Tivo is good, but mythtv is better! :)
The day I tried mythtv I fell is love with it. Tivo is nice and stable ( most of the time ) and mythtv is not as stable but I think my cheap ass capture card has to do with that. But the thing I love the most about mythtv is that it is open I can add plugins too it as I want, I can write my own plugins. But tivo's java plugins. Well,... I can listen to podcasts, radio ( when it works ), I can view photos and a few other worthless yahoo related things. With tivo I can send video to my laptop!... Oh but they have drm and cant be played on Linux. But with mythtv I can save the files to whatever the hell I want to. No drm! If I'm on the news I can record it then email it to all my friends ( like they care )! With tivo for software updates and tv guide data I have to pay $9 ( they raised it sense I stopped their service ). The Tivo updates, well... They are very little and happen every few months. The mythtv updates? They have a lot of new fixes and features. And the guide data? Its free.
The point of my random story Tivo closed, mythtv open. - SupaFupa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Unbiased huh? He says theres no reason to get a series 3 if you don't have an HDTV, but fails to mention MythTVs HD shortcomings. And what if you have a box from your cable company, which is the only way to get their digital or HD programming? It has macrovision. How are you going to record that?
- nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Because capitalist markets are competitive.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Completely OT, but how do you like the Sonos system? Do you use your own speakers or the Sonos ones? Do you use a sub with the system if you use the Sonos speakers (I've read that their speakers have no low end range, but I've never heard them).
- boyasunder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I actually expected to go through holy hell to get the cable cards, after all the horror stories I'd read online about cable companies denying them to customers and whatnot. And then when I call, surprise surprise, Comcast is totally "Ok, that's great. We can send someone to install them on Thursday." Yes, it was annoying to have to have a dude come over to "install" the cards, but compared to the unending-wave-of-***** that Comcast likes to call "customer support" I was happy that for once something was done with a minimum of fuss.
- Surreal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is a really bad comparison, and not only that horribly organized. No digg.
- Fratz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Currently there is no way to give it a feed such as DL.TV or Diggnation and have the MythTV box automatically download and show the content.'
In KnoppMyth R5E50 and later, Democracy Player is included and can be launched from within the MythTV menus. I've used it for rocketboom and various Revision3 shows. It isn't the same as being an integral part of MythTV, though, but it's a step in the right direction. - Navykel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, from experience, with what you've said. I am also an engineer and build software for a living. I have been playing with Mythtv for over 2 years. I recently went to KnoppMyth because it seemed to just work without tweaking this or that. I have DirecTV for SD and OTA HD. For some reason my SD card keeps crashing. I'm looking at lest 4 - 8 hours work to either find out what is wrong or go back to a FC install setup. A FC install for a frontend, backend is at lest 10 hours, at lest. Then configuration, testing then move it to the front room, test, then wait for something to go wrong. If someone likes this, then they have no problems with it. I like it, but I also like watching TV....
Navykel -
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