Installing MythTV My AV system has evolved (devolved?) from a DirecTV system, to a FiOS TV system with DVR, to augmenting that by streaming from my PC to my XBox using DLNA, to a Logitech Revue Google TV solution, and now to a MythTV solution. I’m a cord cutter, a NetFlix subscriber, an Amazon Prime subscriber, and I have an extensive DVD collection on my server’s hard drive. This is my story. 1. Services I’m a cord-cutter. One of those people the cable companies like to pretend don’t exist. I pay exactly $0 a month for traditional TV services because I’ve found that my previous bill in excess of $100/month tended to be wasted on channels I don’t watch. A pay-per-show solution was a much better fit for me, and this is a list of the services I’ve found to be useful. Some shows I get to watch in near realtime on Hulu. I appreciate Hulu enough that I was going to be a Hulu Plus customer, even when I heard the interesting decision to supply older content to the Hulu Plus customers rather than delaying the new stuff for free customers. Still, extra content is nice and the ability to discover a new series and watch it from the beginning is a good thing. However, they’re not just charging for content. They’re charging for what you watch your content on. The idea of restricting mobile viewing to Plus customers is repugnant - I refuse to support this sort of behavior. Ironically, if they simply made the content available on any system, effectively removing value from the Plus service, I would likely subscribe. Despite wrongthink on device-specific viewing, with shows frequently showing up the day after they’re aired Hulu is a nice way to see mostly up-to-date shows as a cloud-based DVR system. NetFlix is another heavy hitter, mostly because of their near-ubiquitous apps. They’re easy to navigate, not the best for browsing but I tend to populate my queue with what I want to watch from my PC. The downside here is that they not only don’t have a Linux client, but they intentionally break clients that would work just fine on Linux (no, it’s not a SilverLight issue - otherwise the Ubuntu-based ChromeOS wouldn’t have a plugin and the myriad of embedded devices wouldn’t work). I have absolutely no desire to steal content I can stream, in fact if I were of the mindset to steal content their DVD library is a much easier target. Still, given the size of their library and how well-designed their apps are they are a hard one to give up. NetFlix is also easy to navigate on most devices and their queue allows you to add movies before they’re in theaters so you don’t have to worry about when they’re released on DVD. However, they don’t have a good notification method like Hulu does. If they’d add a "subscription" method to things like series so I can get an email when there are new episodes on Instant View things would be much nicer. I’m also an Amazon Prime customer. Their business model is interesting, get people hooked on their free 1 Installing MythTV library and they’re much more willing to spend money on their non-free rentals/purchases. Two things hold me back: 1) their free library doesn’t have a lot of what I want and 2) they have no apps which makes navigation from a couch very difficult. These two combined make me lean towards NetFlix more than I’d like, but Amazon has the benefit of running perfectly fine in a Linux browser. Or on Android or Google TV’s browser for that matter. I have a fairly large DVD collection. Many moons ago I used DVDFab to convert them to WMV format, WMV being the only format my XBox 360 can play with 5.1 audio. Since then I’ve used MakeMKV (https://www.ebower.com/docs/ubuntu-bluray/#MakeMKV) to rip my latest acquisitions to MKV format. This has the benefit of being higher quality, having subtitles, and I’m no longer limited by the 360’s limited codec support. These files sit on a server in my basement backed up across two hard drives. Non-location-specific storage is critical for me even with a one-TV household - I don’t want to have to rearchitect everything to allow for playing my content on a second TV or other device. I’ll give an honorable mention to PlayOn (http://www.playon.tv/playon). They have a decent solution for streaming your media to any device you want, but there are limitations. PlayOn has a frontend plugin for Hulu, Amazon VOD, NetFlix and a slew of other Internet video as well as the ability to stream from a local filesystem. They then transcode this into a common video format and stream it to various devices. They use DLNA as a base solution which buys them a lot of compatibility, but also limits the scope of their project. This means that fast-forward and rewind are a bit restrictive and subtitle support is pretty much nil, and browsing is more like navigating a directory tree than a set of cover art tiles. What really hurts them in my setup is that they’re Windows-only - my one Windows XP VM takes up more resources than the three Linux VMs. Worse, the fact that it’s a VM means I can’t use GPU acceleration effectively. All that we can fight with more server-side horsepower or even a dedicated native Windows machine. However, Hulu support stopped working for me some time back and I haven’t had the time to troubleshoot it. Their DLNA server also doesn’t have codecs that my Google TV likes nor does their Google TV solution (go to http://g.playon.tv/ via the web browser) doesn’t support keypress navigation (you can’t use the arrow keys to select anything, you need to pull out a touchpad or mouse). Despite the limitations, it’s still worth a look - especially if you’ve got a spare Windows box to run it on. PlayOn was the application that allowed me to cut the cord, I’ve saved several thousand dollars because of it. 2 Installing MythTV 2. MythTV vs. Google TV I wanted to love Google TV. I really did. I’m a big Android fan, I thought Google TV was a natural evolution from the horrid Yahoo! widgets, and as a cord cutter I’m a prime candidate for everything Internet video has to offer. But I just couldn’t get into it. Part of the problem is that when my TV died the only Google TV games in town were Sony (who I refuse to purchase anything from for a variety of reasons) and Logitech. The Revue seemed like it could be the "Nexus of Google TV" since it was a standalone box whose sole purpose is to provide Google TV services. But I forgot, Logitech viewed the box as a means to sell accessories like cameras and keyboards. So the Revue was destined to be a second class product, unable to live up to Logitech’s dreams. There are a lot of things it does really well. The idea that you can search for a show and it will tell you it found it and then show you options to view on NetFlix, Amazon, or other sites is great. The browser works well with the keyboard/touchpad combo. The idea that some apps on my phonecan run on my TV is also fantastic. And, of course, setting it up is as simple as plugging in power and HDMI and you’re off and running. Even setting up the Android-powered remote software just popped up a Bluetooth-style PIN entry on the TV and it worked just fine. I think the focus on search is also their downfall for me. I rarely browse for video, I want to find a TV show or movie rather than click through dozens of YouTube videos. Google TV makes it easy to find things that are out there, but that’s all wasted on me since all I need is to be told that there’s a new episode available for me. Google TV handles some of my services well. NetFlix runs on pretty much anything known to man, except for the previously mentioned NetFlix War on Linux, and their UI on Google TV works fine. It’s admittedly tough to browse, but I usually use my PC to actually search for video - which reminds me to check out Amazon’s selection as well so I can watch it on Linux. Speaking of Amazon, the Revue plays that admirably as well despite Amazon’s lack of an app. 3 Installing MythTV Hulu is a bit more troublesome due to Hulu’s device restrictions. I’m sure the Hulu Plus app works fine, but I refuse to subsidize a service that requires it. Hard to blame Google TV for this. PlayOn is an option for this, but they have a mouse-driven interface which doesn’t work well on a TV since I need to pull out a big keyboard or switch my phone to a touchpad mode instead of the precision of big up/down buttons and preset play/pause keys rather than scrolling to a VCR button pop-up.