On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 23:51 -0400, FoulDragon@aol.com wrote:
> 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?
----
The user interface is quite good. It also does things like music and
games in addition to tv.

The ability to record is linked to the schedule which will be blank but
selectable if you know what you want I would suppose but it is sort of
dumb not to have it. For example, if you want to record Simpsons, it
would know when to record and which channel simply by parsing the
database and not require any other intervention.

The front end and back end can be the same system or separate systems -
it was quite forward thinking to have the ability to split the
functionality.

Again, I think that looking at it as a cheap alternative to a very cheap
VCR somewhat deprives mythtv of its most impressive abilities - starting
with the choice of a tv card without hardware compression which pretty
much is gonna squash the concept of recording one thing and watching
another, etc.

You know you're gonna try to do this anyway, why not go for it?

Craig


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