Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
We have a DLNA server at home that talks to our BluRay player. Sadly the first DLNA server we tried was not seen by the BluRay player. The second one is seen but won't see new content unless we rebuild the Db from scratch. Our setup is a little strange in that the DLNA server is running on a NetBSD box running or freeNAS server. Part of the reason why new content is not seen is that NetBSD and Linux have different approaches to noticing a filesystem has changed. Chuck made it all work, perhaps he will chime in. -Bill On 12/5/11 9:06 PM, Rich Braun ri...@pioneer.ci.net wrote: Thanks for all the comments! One direction I've thought of going is DLNA front-end hardware to replace my somewhat-old Acer Revo front-ends. Now that those can be had in the $100 price range (and the functionality is increasingly getting built into TVs and BluRay players), it's only a matter of time before one of those products becomes more compelling than the d.i.y. Linux solutions. It looks to me like Freevo is suffering a fate similar to MythTV. These software packages don't age well as hardware platforms (and the required device drivers) surge ahead year by year. So I guess what I'm thinking of is a DLNA hardware solution for playback of networked DVD images, and some independent solution for PVR. Off-the-shelf products like TiVo are too limited: ever since the days of VHS, I've been collecting broadcast videos (mainly news coverage of historic events, sometimes other things). MythTV doesn't directly support PVR archival through its UI, but at least it's easy enough to 'mv' the files from its temp storage into a separate archival volume where it can be played through any other software. Wikipedia's list of PVR software for Linux also includes DVB Vulture, Tvheadend: really slim pickings. UPnP/DLNA server software that I've identified are MediaTomb, Rygel, Twonky; VLC is the most advanced client; alas, none of those has any support for TV tuners and/or schedules. The most comprehensive list of PVR software seems to be located at this URL: http://www.schedulesdirect.org/approvedsoftware It's hard to make sense of all this: maybe if someone put up $50 million into funding an open-source startup, we could put meaningful muscle into solving the problem. But alas there's no business model for repaying the investment. *Sigh*. -rich ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
Hey, Bill, Bill Cattey w...@mit.edu writes: We have a DLNA server at home that talks to our BluRay player. Sadly the first DLNA server we tried was not seen by the BluRay player. The second one is seen but won't see new content unless we rebuild the Db from scratch. Our setup is a little strange in that the DLNA server is running on a NetBSD box running or freeNAS server. Part of the reason why new content is not seen is that NetBSD and Linux have different approaches to noticing a filesystem has changed. Chuck made it all work, perhaps he will chime in. So what you are saying is that if you were using a Linux server then the DLNA server would have noticed new content properly? ;) Could one use DLNA for MythTV recorded content? Which DLNA server(s) have you tried/used? -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH warl...@mit.eduPGP key available ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
I wrote: MythTV doesn't directly support PVR archival through its UI David Kramer da...@thekramers.net argues: Sure it does! It even has an archive export that throws the metadata in XML files, so when you want to import them again you don't lose anything. I've done this. Hmm, I wonder if we're talking about the same thing? If it does have support for this, then help me understand where to look in its UI. The PVR function has been embedded in the main app, and archival playback (DVD iso, home videos, other recordings) has been a separate plugin (mythvideo), up until the next rev 0.25 which has been delayed more than year. (Currently I am running 0.24.1, as distributed on the Packman repo.) Hence moving things from the main app into the video storage (both disk directory and database meta data) has not been readily possible. What I find myself doing is disabling auto-expire within the PVR menu, and after a year or so of doing that I run low on storage and have to move those videos into the long-term (6TB+) archive from the short-term PVR (400GB) menu. When I do that, the metadata sits in the PVR database but you have to switch over to the Watch Videos menu instead of Watch Recordings. So yeah, if there's a better way to do this (that would transfer metadata from PVR to mythvideo storage) in 0.24.1 then I'm all ears. The whole UI in 0.24.1 is begging for a complete rewrite from top to bottom, in addition to about 20 urgent-priority bug fixes. I suppose this is all in progress in 0.25 but the wait is agonizing. -rich ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On Wed, Dec 07, 2011 at 10:38:04AM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote: Hey, Bill, Bill Cattey w...@mit.edu writes: We have a DLNA server at home that talks to our BluRay player. Sadly the first DLNA server we tried was not seen by the BluRay player. The second one is seen but won't see new content unless we rebuild the Db from scratch. Our setup is a little strange in that the DLNA server is running on a NetBSD box running or freeNAS server. Part of the reason why new content is not seen is that NetBSD and Linux have different approaches to noticing a filesystem has changed. Chuck made it all work, perhaps he will chime in. So what you are saying is that if you were using a Linux server then the DLNA server would have noticed new content properly? ;) The server is actually running on Linux, but the media files are stored on the FreeNAS (FreeBSD) box which is mounted over NFS to the Linux box. The DLNA server uses inotify to notice changes in the media store in order to update the DB on the fly, but that doesn't work over NFS, hence the need to stop the server, delete the entire database, and restart the server to add even a single new file. Could one use DLNA for MythTV recorded content? I don't know. Which DLNA server(s) have you tried/used? Minidlna is the one that works at all with a Sony Blu-Ray player. It can also transcode content using mencoder or ffmpeg to one that the player supports. I also tried fuppes and one other I can't remember the name of at the moment. All of it is crapware. Minidlna in particular is a bunch of spaghetti C code with special quirks and workarounds to special-case various DLNA clients sprinkled throughout. I'm seriously considering writing a new DLNA server from scratch, even if it only supports the devices I care about, and transcodes all content to a /single/ output format rather than relying on the DLNA client's support for various different media types. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Gregory Boyce gbo...@badbelly.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:51 PM, Derek Martin inva...@pizzashack.org wrote: On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 01:59:04PM -0500, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote: On 12/5/2011 11:08 AM, Derek Martin wrote: On Sun, Dec 04, 2011 at 09:40:50PM -0500, Rich Braun wrote: What direction should I take now that I've really finally had *enough* of MythTV? TiVo. It just bloody works, and very well at that, and I can say without reservation I've been a happy TiVo user for about 10 years or so. Yeah, you have to pay a subscription fee, but time is money, and all that time you spent messing with MythTV is worth something, too... TiVo won't do everything he wants. He also wants to be able to play his backups of DVDs; TiVo won't do that. Sure it will. You can use TiVo Desktop to copy the backups back to TiVo. They do need to be in a supported format, so you may need to transcode them, and yes you do need to copy them, but it can be done. pyTivo. It will serve the files to your Tivo, transcoding your content on the fly. http://pytivo.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/PyTivo ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss I used PyTivo for many years and loved it. The only draw back is my server is an old P4 so it took awhile to transfer enough of the the show to fast forward. It could play anything ffmpeg could re-encode so it handled everything I threw at it. I never used the metadata features because I was too lazy to populate it. And I don't recall it having the TivoGo features in the version I used. But then I think I downloaded a copy 5 years ago, added some daemon options and never touched it again. I really do miss my Tivo. I used MythTV for a couple of years before moving over to the tivo because of hardware issues and I was tired of fixing things all the time. I had Tivo for close to 5 years before dropping Cable and picking up U-Verse which is ok but I still liked the Tivo a lot more. I think they own the patent on pretty DVR interfaces because no one else seems to be able to copy them. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
Since no one else mentioned this option I'll mention Boxee. It's basically a polished fork of XBMC. So no PVR functionality but it's other functionality is pretty slick. They do have something for watching live over the air HD in the works. I don't know if that will ever morph into PVR functionality but that would be nice. I too used to run MythTV but when we made the move to HD I didn't feel like re-investing money into HD tuners that would have limited access to programming. So now we just have a HD DVR from DirectTV which is pretty nice. The one feature I really miss from MythTV though is it's ability to flag and auto skip commercials. -- David ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On Sun, Dec 04, 2011 at 09:40:50PM -0500, Rich Braun wrote: What direction should I take now that I've really finally had *enough* of MythTV? TiVo. It just bloody works, and very well at that, and I can say without reservation I've been a happy TiVo user for about 10 years or so. Yeah, you have to pay a subscription fee, but time is money, and all that time you spent messing with MythTV is worth something, too... -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Mark Komarinski mkomarin...@wayga.orgwrote: Tivo plus xbmc does it for me. I encoded all my DVDs to MKV due to space reasons. Oh, and Netflix on the tivo. All I need now is an easy way to play Amazon Prime. ^^ There are ways to put Netflix on XBMC as well. (XBMC Flicks) http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/43724/how-to-view-netflix-watch-instantly-in-xbmc/ Its probably not as clean as TiVo though. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
Yes, this is true. Forgot that linux doesn't have silverlight. On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Ben Eisenbraun b...@klatsch.org wrote: On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 02:09:09PM -0500, Kyle Leslie wrote: ^^ There are ways to put Netflix on XBMC as well. (XBMC Flicks) http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/43724/how-to-view-netflix-watch-instantly-in-xbmc/ That only works on OS X and Windows unfortunately. -ben -- the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. aristotle ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On 12/5/2011 2:51 PM, Derek Martin wrote: Sure it will. You can use TiVo Desktop to copy the backups back to TiVo. They do need to be in a supported format, so you may need to transcode them, and yes you do need to copy them, but it can be done. I think the original poster mentioned .ISO images of DVDs. TiVo certainly won't play those without transcoding. I don't think it will play directories containing the files from a DVD (the other common way of backing up DVDs) either; MythTV will, as will other computer applications such as VLC. So you can get there from here, but not without some work. TiVo would also be an awkward solution if your high-resolution display device is a computer monitor rather than a TV set, though there are workarounds. Not so sure about that either. TiVo supports both HDMI and composite connections to my TV... and so does my computer monitor. Though it has no speakers, but I believe it's possible to connect some. On that point I'd need to double-check. But TiVo also has standard RCA out, so ultimately this shouldn't be a problem. A cheap RCA-to-1/8-inch adapter or cable (or whatever your speakers take) will solve it. The inputs to a typical desktop monitor are VGA and DVI. TiVo doesn't have either of those outputs though a DVI to HDMI adapter will take care of that. Some newer monitors have HDMI inputs. The audio situation I was thinking of is where all you have is a set of computer speakers connected to the computer that is currently being used for MythTV playback. If you're still going to be using that computer for some other purposes, you'll need a way to switch the speakers between the computer and the TiVo. Aside from that you're fine unless your computer has USB speakers (rare). The HDMI output from TiVo carries audio (which is handy if you're using a new home theater receiver with HDMI switching) but the computer and monitor in the MythTV setup are unlikely to be able to take advantage of that. So perhaps no showstoppers (I might consider the need to recode a stored DVD collection to be one) but certainly some stuff to deal with. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
Thanks for all the comments! One direction I've thought of going is DLNA front-end hardware to replace my somewhat-old Acer Revo front-ends. Now that those can be had in the $100 price range (and the functionality is increasingly getting built into TVs and BluRay players), it's only a matter of time before one of those products becomes more compelling than the d.i.y. Linux solutions. It looks to me like Freevo is suffering a fate similar to MythTV. These software packages don't age well as hardware platforms (and the required device drivers) surge ahead year by year. So I guess what I'm thinking of is a DLNA hardware solution for playback of networked DVD images, and some independent solution for PVR. Off-the-shelf products like TiVo are too limited: ever since the days of VHS, I've been collecting broadcast videos (mainly news coverage of historic events, sometimes other things). MythTV doesn't directly support PVR archival through its UI, but at least it's easy enough to 'mv' the files from its temp storage into a separate archival volume where it can be played through any other software. Wikipedia's list of PVR software for Linux also includes DVB Vulture, Tvheadend: really slim pickings. UPnP/DLNA server software that I've identified are MediaTomb, Rygel, Twonky; VLC is the most advanced client; alas, none of those has any support for TV tuners and/or schedules. The most comprehensive list of PVR software seems to be located at this URL: http://www.schedulesdirect.org/approvedsoftware It's hard to make sense of all this: maybe if someone put up $50 million into funding an open-source startup, we could put meaningful muscle into solving the problem. But alas there's no business model for repaying the investment. *Sigh*. -rich ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On 12/05/2011 09:06 PM, Rich Braun wrote: sometimes other things). MythTV doesn't directly support PVR archival through its UI, but at least it's easy enough to 'mv' the files from its temp storage into a separate archival volume where it can be played through any other software. Sure it does! It even has an archive export that throws the metadata in XML files, so when you want to import them again you don't lose anything. I've done this. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
I've almost gotten to the point of ripping out MythTV. The project is falling over under its own weight (millions of lines of code abruptly added the past couple of years), the last major version is riddled with bugs, and developers seem unconcerned about the user community's desire for releases/bug fixes more often than once every couple of years. What's got me ticked off tonight is a bug summed up at this URL: http://answerpot.com/showthread.php?2677877-Ticket+%239834%3A+Mythvideo+scan+lost+all+metadata If you're on a frontend box which fails to properly mount the backend's video volumes, you get no warning upon scan for changes. The net effect is to truncate all video data, forcing you to revert to a MySQL database backup (presuming you have one). Fortunately my backups are frequent, but the developer's response in closing this bug report as not a bug belongs back in the 1980s. What direction should I take now that I've really finally had *enough* of MythTV? I want to reformat the hard drives of all my frontends and start over fresh. The goal is to be able to scroll through a couple thousand DVD ISO images, with meta data/cover art, and from the same user interface have a reasonably easy to use PVR system that records/plays back Boston's over-the-air channels. Doesn't need to do a whole lot more than that. -rich ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?
On 12/04/2011 09:40 PM, Rich Braun wrote: I've almost gotten to the point of ripping out MythTV. The project is falling over under its own weight (millions of lines of code abruptly added the past couple of years), the last major version is riddled with bugs, and developers seem unconcerned about the user community's desire for releases/bug fixes more often than once every couple of years. What's got me ticked off tonight is a bug summed up at this URL: http://answerpot.com/showthread.php?2677877-Ticket+%239834%3A+Mythvideo+scan+lost+all+metadata If you're on a frontend box which fails to properly mount the backend's video volumes, you get no warning upon scan for changes. The net effect is to truncate all video data, forcing you to revert to a MySQL database backup (presuming you have one). Fortunately my backups are frequent, but the developer's response in closing this bug report as not a bug belongs back in the 1980s. Wow. That's... impressive. And representative of what I see on the mailing list frequently. I can understand how the change in architecture could prevent a warning dialog are you sure? dialog box, but surely the back end can return a status code, so it could check whether the recordings are there and refuse to run if not, reporting the condition to the front end. What direction should I take now that I've really finally had *enough* of MythTV? I want to reformat the hard drives of all my frontends and start over fresh. The goal is to be able to scroll through a couple thousand DVD ISO images, with meta data/cover art, and from the same user interface have a reasonably easy to use PVR system that records/plays back Boston's over-the-air channels. Doesn't need to do a whole lot more than that. Doesn't need to do a whole lot more than that is a whole lot. I don't know of anything else that has MythTV's PVR functionality, which is what it was really designed for. If I were you I would consider completely different solutions for PVR and DVD if you're unhappy with the way MythTV deals with that. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
