MythTV

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MythTV

A screenshot of MythTV's main menu, in the formerly-default blue theme
Developer:	open source community
Latest release:	0.20 / September 11, 2006
OS:	Linux, Mac OS X
Use:	Personal video recorder
License:	GPL
Website:	www.mythtv.org

MythTV is a Linux application that turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or Home Theater Personal Computer. MythTV is free software licensed under the GPL.

1 History
2 Features
3 Internals
4 See also
5 Competing software
6 External links

[edit] History

The MythTV project was started in April 2002 by Isaac Richards. Richards explained his motivation:

“

I got tired of the rather low quality cable box that AT&T Broadband provides with their digital cable service. It's slow to change channels, ridden with ads, and the program guide is a joke. So, I figured it'd be fun to try and build a replacement. Yes, I could have just bought a TiVo, but I wanted to have more than just a PVR — I want a web browser built in, a mail client, maybe some games. Basically, I want the mythical convergence box that's been talked about for a few years now.

”

MythTV development is coordinated on a publicly accessible SVN server. Several unofficial active IRC channels and mailing lists permit communication between developers, and support for users.

[edit] Features

MythTV features:

A backend server and frontend client architecture, allowing multiple frontend client machines to be remotely served content from one or more backend servers. A single computer can perform as both the frontend client as well as performing as the backend server.
Analyzes recorded shows for optional commercial skipping
Plays recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary.
Intelligently schedules recordings to avoid conflicts.
Interfaces with free TV listing data (in the United States and Canada, donated by Tribune Media Services), with support for XMLTV listings in most other countries.
Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows.
Schedule and administer various system functions using a web browser-based interface.
Supports both ATSC, QAM, and DVB high-definition television.
Controls a decoder/STB using an infrared remote (Irblaster).

The MythTV software supports TV tuner cards fully compatible with Video4Linux or Video4Linux2 kernel drivers. Using drivers from the IVTV project, (currently under heavy development), MythTV supports Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150/250/350/500 PCI and similar tuner cards incorporating iTVC15/16 hardware MPEG-2 compression processors. DVB and pcHDTV cards with Video4Linux drivers are supported. MythTV also supports program capture via FireWire from digital set-top boxes.

KnoppMyth is a bootCD derivative of Knoppix. Its MythTV frontend can be run from the CD. An entire installation to the hard disk can take place in minutes.

MythTV's add-on modules (plugins) include:

MythVideo: plays various video file formats.
MythMusic: A music player, jukebox, collection manager, and CD ripper.
MythDVD: DVD manager and ripper.
MythGallery: Online photo gallery manager.
MythNews: RSS feed news reader.
MythWeather: fetches weather forecasts from the net.
MythBrowser: small web browser.
MythGame: Frontend for game console emulators.
MythWeb: Controls MythTV from a remote web browser
MythPhone: Internet telephony from your TV via SIP.
MythFlix: Netflix queue viewer.
MythArchive: DVD burner
MythStreamTV: Allows for placeshifting, similar to a Slingbox.
UPnP AV MediaServer v1.0 compliant server: Share media files with UPnP-clients

The base system integrates well with its modules. A system can be controlled with an infrared remote control using LIRC, or radio remote control using kernel modules.

[edit] Internals

The default file format for software encoding is a RTJPEG or MPEG-4 video stored in a slightly-modified version of Roman Hochleitner's NuppelVideo (.nuv) container. NUV files are also playable in VLC media player and MPlayer, but can occasionally exhibit problems in A/V synchronization due to the MythTV-specific modifications. It also appears that MythTV is now the single authority on the NuppelVideo file format, since the original author's website now appears to have been deleted.

MythTV can also record via hardware-encoder cards and other sources of MPEG-2 digital TV streams like DVB, ATSC and Firewire (from HDTV cable boxes in the US), so many users of MythTV rarely see NuppleVideo files unless they choose to transcode their files to NuppleVideo to save disk space.