Sage2 vs MythTV

[CHING2201]

I have both sage and myth, I currently use mythtv as my main pvr app....I have one myth backend box in the basement and a few frontend box's in other rooms of the house. sage is ok, I'm really waiting until version 2, version one doesnt have the wife approval factor. Mythtv, once it's setup, does have a great wife approval factor, it's very pretty and also tells the weather. You can also share pics and schedule stuff over the net if you forget.
sage has been fun to play with, the setup is very easy. I'm hoping version 2 looks and plays up to the hype and I'll switch. Otherwise, myth is awesome..If you can set it up there is a release out there called "knoppmyth", it basically set's up myth for you.

[krutaw]

Originally posted by CHING2201
If you can set it up there is a release out there called "knoppmyth", it basically set's up myth for you.

Yeah, I've been playing with Myth as well, and while it's very impressive, I too am hoping that Sage v2 will be better. What I can say for Myth is that it's way easy to get installed, and pretty simple to configure for the system. And while I do like the weather functionality it provides I think I can live without that until Narflex puts it into Sage.

The only reason I've even played with Myth is due to the price. Hard to beat free. hehehe

Also, it's a breeze to boot linux from a usb pen drive, and it boots *SOOOOOOOOOOOOO* much faster than on a hard drive that way. Getting Windows to do the same thing takes a small fortune to purchase a pen drive big enough.

So, for now, I stick with Sage and wait for the price on pen drives to drop. hehe

[JasonJoel]

That is odd... On an *identical* linux install, it always boots faster fro the HD for me. ALWAYS. I have tested this a number of times for some things we are doing at work.

USB drives are a lot slower than a HD... Even USB 2.0 thumb drives.

Unless you are not comparing identical installations.

Jason

Originally posted by krutaw
Yeah, I've been playing with Myth as well, and while it's very impressive, I too am hoping that Sage v2 will be better. What I can say for Myth is that it's way easy to get installed, and pretty simple to configure for the system. And while I do like the weather functionality it provides I think I can live without that until Narflex puts it into Sage.

The only reason I've even played with Myth is due to the price. Hard to beat free. hehehe

Also, it's a breeze to boot linux from a usb pen drive, and it boots *SOOOOOOOOOOOOO* much faster than on a hard drive that way. Getting Windows to do the same thing takes a small fortune to purchase a pen drive big enough.

So, for now, I stick with Sage and wait for the price on pen drives to drop. hehe

[CaptSammy]

You can install Linux and Myth on a pen drive, like a jumpdrive? Would that allow the HD to be used for content storage only and eleviate the burden of OS functions from running from the same drive? Sounds sweet, where can I find more info on this?

[mikesm]

You wouldn't want to run Myth off a jumpdrive. Performance would be much worse. Linux isn't as bloated an OS as some - it won't bog down the hardrive for media use, though i would recommend keeping a seperate partition for media so it doesn't overflow and cause the system to run out of space.

Thanks,
Mike

[CaptSammy]

I was thinking of starting a Gentoo build to give Myth a try. Tried the knoppmyth, but was lost without a desktop. Also didnt like the "non-standard" builds of myth and other items that make upgrading difficult. LOVED what I saw of the myth front end, although I never got it working. I have administered a few Linux servers (Netcool, Sendmail, Apache, etc) but setting up a desktop for user functionality is more daunting than I expected. Thanks for the reply,
CaptSammy

[mlar]

The main reason why I haven't even bothered installing MythTV is the lack of good EPG data. AFAIK, MythTV uses XMLTV data, and the only grabbers I know of produce terrible EPG data. I heard rumors about a commercial XMLTV service a while back, but I don't know if they are true. How do people solve the EPG problem with MyhTV? xmltv_grabber_na just doesn't cut it.

What makes MythTV/Linux so tempting to me is the PVR-350 output support (including framebuffer for X), but I don't think I can live without decent EPG data...

Also the fact that I could remove the harddisk from my client machine and boot Linux over NFS doesn't hurt either..

[CHING2201]

for a desktop in knoppmyth you can use "apt-get to update/install software. Other it uses fvwm as it's window manager and you can install others. I have kde running for mine. it's really not a "non-standard" install of myth, it basically just does the installation for you. It's a debian distro as well so if your familiar with debian or linux in general you are really good to go..... cant wait until sage 2 comes out, so I can put it online along with my myth machine and compare. I took 1.4 off my other machine and made it into a myth frontend until the new beta comes out.


jl

[CaptSammy]

From posts on the knoppmyth forum I was under the impression that the myth it installs is non standard .deb and you couldnt just run an apt-get to upgrade to .13, same for ivy. I want to use my pvr350, so both latest versions are high on my list. Love to find working config files for pvr350 tvout and X framebuffer to shorten the setup/tweak process.....

[AJ Bertelson]

I just use myHTPC for the front end stuff and Sagetv for my PVR capabilities and tv watching.

I need to get girder to have sage go to livetv when sage starts up though.

[exdirtfarmer]

Originally posted by CaptSammy
I want to use my pvr350, so both latest versions are high on my list. Love to find working config files for pvr350 tvout and X framebuffer to shorten the setup/tweak process.....

The developers of knoppmyth are both working hard to have the 350's tv-out working in the next version, I think the ivtv 350 tvo support is still being actively developed. I'm very happy with my knoppmyth server but the pq of my nvidia tv-out sucks. I'm going to wait and see which product's 350 tv-out implimentation fits my needs best. I'm leaning towards sage because of the mature drivers for controlling the dual-head modes in windows. Linux can be quite a challenge for all but the advanced users when configuring kernels/ drivers/ xf86. BTW knoppmyth does not have DVD ripping available as a feature, it must added later.
:cheers:
Alan

[badllama77]

I started out using myth as just a quick way to rip transcode and watch dvd's, and to rip and play my cds. Then I decided to consider pvr. I checked out the posts and lists for ivtv and it looked that they were making headway on the hauppauge 150 so I figured I would pick one up on sale and be all set. It has been about five months and I got tired of waiting so I unloaded linux (which is a big deal for me as I have been a linux user for a great while) and installed 2k on my desktop. That was a week ago and I am up running and loving it. The features I enjoyed in myth are nearly all there. I loaded up cayars stv, a few tweaks and there is weather, mp3 (would like to see ripping), dvd's, ripped dvd's (am happy with the dvddecoder, but would like a command line app),transcode,commercial skip (not always accurate but getting better), an rss reader, imdb lookup (would like to be able to save movie poster etc locally), and my favorite is that I have set up several games in the menu (sleep -> run game -> wake up) which is possible in linux but not quite as simple. Mythtv setup is a snap and so is sage, but it is really nice to have drivers from manufacturer for this. For those who know about the ivtv project it is kinda in a strange state since the founder left. The sourceforge page, website, wiki, aren't maintained so you have to search the dev list for answers. They are working on it but with two new cards and the 350 still getting tweaked unless you have a 250 it is a chore to get running, Someday when they get it all settled I will probably go back to mythtv, unless sage really surpasses it, but I still have to wait for the ivtv to get to the 150 or shell out some more dough for the 250. I think with the advent of the studio program I have read about for users to create stv's there will be a lot of new features coming.

[Crashless]

WOW, talk about ressurrecting an old thread.

Glad to have you on the 'dark' side.

[src666]

As long as it has been resurrected, might as well put $.02 more in the kitty. I started building my new home media infrastructure early this year, focusing on Myth. I figured it would be fun to learn Linux (used to do a lot of Unix work way back when), and hey, you can't beat free, right? Wrong.

First off, there is no comprehensive "Do this, and it will work" guide. Everything depended. It depended on your linux distribution, what version of the kernel you were running (which, by the way, is entirely driven by what drivers you can find for your hardware), etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

I'm no technical slouch - I've been building systems from the ground up for almost 20 years. I am a professional software developer. I do _everything_, from networking to home automation (from the wiring to the programming). NOTHING I have done in the past 10 years even approached the difficulties I had with Myth. I bought new hardware to match recommendations, I started from scratch at least a dozen times using different distributions, builds, kernels, etc.

And when I needed help, there was no one who I could count on. I posted on forums and mailing lists all over the place, and any response depended totally on the right person reading the right post and being in the right mood to answer (read: none). I was actually told (to paraphrase) "If you want help from us, you should contribute to the development." In other words, if you aren't willing to become a myth developer or documentor, don't expect a lot of sympathy or help. And linux fanatics really can't understand why the rest of us stick to Windows?

Every time I ran into a problem, I would spend hours googling, searching forums, searching newsgroups, whatever. It was an absolute nightmare. Finally after 4 weeks, I decided to try something else. I downloaded Sage on Sunday morning. I had the system set up by Sunday night, and the only reason it took so long was I had to go through the Windows NT install on both boxes, format some very large drives, eat, etc., etc.

When I did have Myth mostly working (that's 15% of the effort, by the way - the last 85% is what kills you), it seemed very nice. But the problems it had were pretty annoying. Skipping/fast forwarding always landed on I-Frames, so the screen dissolved into a mass of MPEG blocks that had to be rebuilt, etc., etc.. There was always something that didn't work, or used to work, or suddenly works now, but dies later.

I'm sure if you have an easy install, Myth could be very nice. But my time is too valuable to spend dealing with the morass of issues and problems that seem to cling to Myth/Linux.

I suppose the good thing is that I can now build and configure a linux box pretty quickly, including such arcane issues as joining an Active Directory domain using Kerberos. But really, is that something someone should have to learn just to set up a PVR?

Thanks Sage!

[flagg0204]

Originally Posted by src666

As long as it has been resurrected, might as well put $.02 more in the kitty. I started building my new home media infrastructure early this year, focusing on Myth. I figured it would be fun to learn Linux (used to do a lot of Unix work way back when), and hey, you can't beat free, right? Wrong.

First off, there is no comprehensive "Do this, and it will work" guide. Everything depended. It depended on your linux distribution, what version of the kernel you were running (which, by the way, is entirely driven by what drivers you can find for your hardware), etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

I'm no technical slouch - I've been building systems from the ground up for almost 20 years. I am a professional software developer. I do _everything_, from networking to home automation (from the wiring to the programming). NOTHING I have done in the past 10 years even approached the difficulties I had with Myth. I bought new hardware to match recommendations, I started from scratch at least a dozen times using different distributions, builds, kernels, etc.

And when I needed help, there was no one who I could count on. I posted on forums and mailing lists all over the place, and any response depended totally on the right person reading the right post and being in the right mood to answer (read: none). I was actually told (to paraphrase) "If you want help from us, you should contribute to the development." In other words, if you aren't willing to become a myth developer or documentor, don't expect a lot of sympathy or help. And linux fanatics really can't understand why the rest of us stick to Windows?

Every time I ran into a problem, I would spend hours googling, searching forums, searching newsgroups, whatever. It was an absolute nightmare. Finally after 4 weeks, I decided to try something else. I downloaded Sage on Sunday morning. I had the system set up by Sunday night, and the only reason it took so long was I had to go through the Windows NT install on both boxes, format some very large drives, eat, etc., etc.

When I did have Myth mostly working (that's 15% of the effort, by the way - the last 85% is what kills you), it seemed very nice. But the problems it had were pretty annoying. Skipping/fast forwarding always landed on I-Frames, so the screen dissolved into a mass of MPEG blocks that had to be rebuilt, etc., etc.. There was always something that didn't work, or used to work, or suddenly works now, but dies later.

I'm sure if you have an easy install, Myth could be very nice. But my time is too valuable to spend dealing with the morass of issues and problems that seem to cling to Myth/Linux.

I suppose the good thing is that I can now build and configure a linux box pretty quickly, including such arcane issues as joining an Active Directory domain using Kerberos. But really, is that something someone should have to learn just to set up a PVR?

Thanks Sage!

KnopMyth is great. Drop CD in and install/and let it roll......almost. KnoppMyth is still a ways behind the current release of Myth. I have installed it both ways, with KnoppMyth and with compiling by source. Installing is simple enough its the little tweaks that are a major pain. With as much time and effor as I put into getting myth working I could have a Sage w/custom STV installed and fully configured in half the time. I like myth, but I like sages simplicity more.

[src666]

I started with KnoppMyth, and it was a total zero for me. Never really came up right to begin with, and an endless week of tweaking didn't help. Tried Debian, RedHat FC2, and one other (can't remember off the top of my head) before it was all said and done. FC2 was the best, but I could still never get all the drivers working for my system.

[Antacus]

I tried the KnoppMyth and it installed no problems. Worked just like it was supposted to. But the video quality was poor. I am in the same boat as src666 but don't know enough about Linux to fix that.

There are 2-3 GOOD guides on getting MythTV working but in the end I gave up and jsut loaded Windoz and got Sage. Easy as pie, just lacking the HD support and I bought a pcHDTV card just for HD. Which ends up not a windoz card, but I knew that when i bought it.

[src666]

I also bought the pcHDTV because of Myth. They accepted the return with no issues and a full refund. Of course, I never even installed the card - it shipped back to them the day after I got it.