In a message dated 10/22/2005 8:35:10 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
craigwhite@azapple.com writes:

>to me the thing that makes it most usable is the ability to network and
>get the schedules automatically as the myth controls give you a
>selection guide - somewhat like channel 62 on Cox but this allows you to
>easily select what to record

I don't have cable or satellite, so I'm not chasing a show across 500 
channels.  I don't need to stream shows over a network.  All I need is minimal 
VCR-style functionality.

Basically, there are three PVR-specific features I like:
-No rewinds
-Store a lot on the drive without having to replace tapes
-Saves money over buying another VCR, which will only be made like crap and 
not last anyway (my last one lasted barely two years)

>Personally - I think that using a back end without hardware processing
>is a very low performance thing and likely to cause disenchantment but
>it does work, it just consumes the processing power

I've done it before, as mentioned, under Windows.  The reason I'm looking to 
Linux is that the Windows-based solution the cards come with is more of a 
"passive" thing... it sits in the bottom of the screen and you have to bring its 
menu up to schedule recordings or watch them.  It's therefore too complicated 
for the USER.  I also hoped that it might add a bit of performance, enough to 
push from "80 percent reliable" to 100 percent reliable recordings.

>I'm not aware of it, you could possibly do this with a front end but it
>would seem impossible to do as a backend system.

Uggh.  I think the whole front-end back-end thing is a way of saying "mythtv 
is massive overkill for a single-station system with low needs."  It seems 
like I'm supposed to build a "TV server" which does the recording and streaming 
to front ends located elsewhere.

If there were a shell around the simplistic scheduler app that came with the 
card, I'd use that.

>not foolproof - lots of help from list and some good guides

I meant the user interface, is it beyond the comprehension of nontechnical 
users?
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