On 11/08/08 11:14, Sean Cavanaugh wrote: >> >> Has anyone done this with FreeBSD and open source >> software, and has recommendations on what hardware to get >o> and what software works with it? > > Look up MythTV. it's the opensource alternative to Windows Media Center > and has a lot of nice functionality. It is in FreeBSD ports too.
Although MythTV is available in ports, there are significant disadvantages to running MythTV on FreeBSD. First, most TV tuner cards don't have corresponding FreeBSD kernel modules. Second, MythTV uses the Video4Linux API, which of course doesn't exist on FreeBSD -- instead, you hack the kernel to emulate V4L. Third, there is terribly limited LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control) support, and most people will want to use their remotes with their MythTV installations. I love FreeBSD, but running a PVR solution that is so closely tied to Linux (V4L, LIRC) is a bit of a hack. Don't get me wrong -- I tried it and discovered that the community has made significant progress towards getting it to work. But at the end of the day, I wanted a fully-functional PVR, not months of writing drivers and hacking V4L into the FreeBSD kernel. That's why I eventually made the decision to run MythTV on Linux, even though I'd *much* rather administer a machine running FreeBSD. -- Benjamin Lee
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