Re: Myth TV? MCE? What to choose...

[Joseph Heenan <joseph-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In message <000101c61c53$a9f55a10$1801a8c0@xxxxxxx>
"Ian Lowe" <ianlowe@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Starting to think about a replacement for Tivo, especially as our is
on the
> fritz and I'm not looking forward to the hassle of getting it fixed
for what
> is (at the end of the day) a very slow, feature poor DVR.
>
> We loved the Tivo, but it's missing stuff that we would (I think)
rather
> like - watch one, record another and so on.
>
> Having a good old think about it, Sky + seems overkill - we watched
> so little Sky that we haven't had a conflict in wanting to
> see/record something in over four years - and where we have, the
> conflict has been between the Beeb and Sky One.

IMHO, nothing matches sky+ for pure ease of use. If you're already on
a sky premium channel I'd wait for sky to do it for 100 quid or so
and get it anyway :)

> So, has anyone tried something like this? Suggest any good hardware?
Would
> the nebula DVB card which can do whole multiplex recording work with
Myth TV
> for instance? Is there an RGB capture card that could work well with
the
> Digiboxes RGB output?

I've done well with myth (not tried MCE). It does take a lot of
fiddling to get going though, but is very flexible.

The hauppauge DVB cards work well in linux/myth (you need a recent
2.6 kernel for any kind of realistic DVB support). I don't believe
myth supports whole multiplex recording with any card.

I've not gone for RGB capture - sky+ has a dedicated s-video out, and
the Pace digiboxes and a few others have s-video on the scart socket,
which gives a very good picture for me. (cards with s-video in are a
good order of magnitude cheaper than anything I've seen with RGB.)

And whilst we're on subject, a wee plug:

http://www.heenan.me.uk/control-sky-from-pc/
(works great with either mythtv or MCE)

Joseph


--
Joseph Heenan, Glasgow, UK              http://www.heenan.me.uk/