Why MythTV?

I've been doing some more reading, and it seems that MythTV is a logical choice for the Home Theatre PC I want to put together. Here are some of the features offered by MythTV:

• Basic 'live-tv' functionality. Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind "live" TV.
• Support for multiple tuner cards and multiple simultaneous recordings.
• Distributed architecture allowing multiple recording machines and multiple playback machines on the same network, completely transparent to the user.
• Compresses video in software using rtjpeg (from Nuppelvideo) or mpeg4 (from libavcodec). Full support for Hardware MPEG-2 encoder cards (Hauppauge PVR-250 / PVR-350). Preliminary support for DVB cards and the new pcHDTV tuner card.
• Support for the (very nice looking) hardware MPEG-2 decoder and TV out present on the Hauppauge PVR-350.
• Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping
• Grabs program information using xmltv.
• A fully themeable menu to tie it all together.

Here's what it looks like (the above info and the below screenshot are taken from the MythTV website):


All in all, this looks like a pretty good system. Of course, my wife will insist that it's aesthetically pleasing as well, and that could be more of a challenge...

DIY Home Theater

Last night I realized that I am using a VCR that is older than my oldest child, and she hits the double digits next year.

I'm getting old.

Rather than wallow in self pity, though, I decided to focus my energy into something productive. It's time to do away with the elderly analog VCR and try building a Home Theater PC. I've been thinking about this for quite some time, and believe it's time to give it a go.

Although I don't have the specifics worked out, I am certain that MythTV will be a component of the final mix. This is a free, Tivo-like package that does not require a subscription.

Besides, I think that getting my Asterisk system working is going to take awhile. I need to have a success of some sort in the meantime.