I'm a little slow at posting this, because I've been really busy. Google had the video of the MythTV talk online a day after the talk, which was nice. I haven't watched it myself, but hopefully it turned out ok. The talk got a little exciting when I had to reboot one of the machines mid talk because it wasn't seated in its dock properly. Such is life I suppose. Here are the slides for the talk. Hopefully they'll help someone.
I'm giving a MythTV talk at Google in the next week (although I can't find it on the events calendar at the moment, I'll update this post when I do) so I've been playing with MythTV 0.21 a little more than I have in the past. Its pretty cool. I'm still writing the talk, so I don't know 100% what it will cover, but I'm thinking it would be good to include some of the stuff from 0.21 as a teaser. Storage groups, the flash player in MythWeb, and the tweaks to the theme system seem like good things to include. Does anyone have other things they think are really cool in 0.21? Oh, and I'll have to cover guide data for the US, so it might be time to catch up with my MythTV email backlog once again. Hopefully in you live near Silicon Valley you can come along to the talk and we can chat afterwards. Update: I found a Google blog post with the details. To quote the most important information: Like all sessions of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series, Michael's presentation will be open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 PM at…
Here is a nice video explaining the MediaMVP. I've been looking for silent ways to park MythTV front ends in the kids bedrooms for a while, and this might end up being the way to go. The xbox that Matthew uses at the moment is simply too loud for most use. I am left wondering if ad skipping works on the device though. I guess there is only one way to find out...
I just got back from a lovely four days in Tasmania, and am just now catching up with the resulting email backlog. There are some new alerts about reviews of the MythTV book in there which are worth pointing out: I'm surprised and disappointed that the installation of MythTV through pre-built packages or a CD distributions like KnoppMyth or MythDora were not covered deeper than a sentence or two in passing. This is likely to be a turn off for readers who were hoping for a quick and simple method of getting MythTV up and going. ... On the whole I consider this a good book that is excellent for the new to intermediate MythTV user, although advanced users may pick a few good pieces of information out of it as well. It was well written and covered most items at just about the right introductory (yes -- practical) level. Once it has taught you the basics, you can then go and look up more details online for features you want to get more information about. http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/books/Practical_MythTV.html Linked at: http://smart-home-blog.com/archives/670 Linked at: http://mythtvnews.com/2007/06/29/more-practical-mythtv-book-reviews/ I think the comments about installation technique are fair, although the method described in the book is…
I've been silent on the Zap2IT shutdown issue for a week or so now, mainly because of travel, and also because I was waiting for something useful to happen. I've ready literally hundreds of emails of the users mailing list -- many proposing architectures for distribution of data, or placing various demands about how much someone would be willing to pay for the data. I am yet to see someone actually sit down and write some code though. So hence this update. There isn't any useful news yet, except for a general reassurance that the developers promise that they are still working on a solution. So, keep on waiting is the plan for now...
I figured it was time for another release of MythNetTV, especially since I've fixed some bugs recently and rolled in code generously provided by George Nassas. New things in this release: Initial work on transcoding smaller files to something else Better error checking for MySQL configuration and accessibility Fixed bug where MythNetTV was unhappy if there were no channels configured in the MySQL database Found, and hopefully fixed, a bug where program dates were not always being tracked correctly. Also added a check to make sure this doesn't happen again Added --markread, which lets you mark old shows as already downloaded The code has seen a fair bit of use now, so it should be fairly stable. Let me know if you find any problems... $ ./mythnettv --statistics Programs tracked: 735 Google EngEdu: 350 Scoble Show: 85 linux.conf.au 2007: 74 Mobuzz TV: 82 dl.tv: 32 Net Cafe: 2 Foo: 1 ABC News: 2 Australia: 1 Play School: 1 Diggnation: 72 Programs still to download: 50 Google EngEdu: 49 Diggnation: 1 Data transferred: 103 gb (111017264341 bytes) Get it here if you care: http://www.stillhq.com/mythtv/mythnettv/
I guess we're at a different phase of the Zap2IT guide data thing now. The story has broken, there's been tons of email on the mythtv-users mailing list (remember, don't panic!), and now things have quietened down. I think that's probably a good thing, because it almost certainly means people are now no longer distracted from actually sitting down and working on the problem. I imagine that journalists would make up some sensational thing to say to keep the story rolling during this quiet news cycle. I can't think of any such thing to say, and it wouldn't be ethical anyway. I must say that I think coverage like this isn't always helpful.
The Zap2IT forums has a thread about the shutdown (you need to have a Zap2IT login to get to the forum). One of the posts on the thread about the shutdown expands on the reasons for the free guide data shutting down: - Continued use of the service to support commercial products, in violation of the agreement. - Commercial products continued to grow despite previous appeals that this activity stop. - There are significant changes to the supporting data structure forthcoming and we could not devote resources to the continued upkeep and enhancements of the service. - Maintenance of the service is impacting our resource pool for other projects. - We sought alternative options but were unable to find a solution. - We recognize the hardship this creates for the user community. We are open to alternative solutions and would consider proposals that met the needs of the user community and our company. - We looked into options to turn this into a paid service however we do not have the infrastructure at this time. So it seems that the folks selling MythTV based solutions which used the guide data, as well as possible other commercial uses (the was no…
(I had some spare time while waiting for the kids to finish their breakfast, so this is posted earlier than I planned). As mentioned briefly earlier today MythTVnews.com is reporting that Tribune Media Services (TMS) is turning off their free guide data service for MythTV on 1 September 2007. This is mainly because of claims of abuse -- the theory on the MythTV users mailing list is that this abuse is vendors selling pre-configured MythTV systems for profit, which use the not-for-commercial-use guide data service from Zap2IT. The announcement from TMS reads: IMPORTANT MESSAGE: For several years we have offered a free TV listings service to hobbyists for their own personal, noncommercial use. In October of 2004 we posted here an open letter saying the future of Zap2it Labs was at risk because of certain growing misuses of the Zap2it Labs data. Unfortunately this misuse has continued and grown. These misuses, combined with other business factors have led to the decision to discontinue Zap2it Labs effective September 1, 2007. We thank those users who have honoured the terms of the agreement, and we suggest you consider the many TV listings options offered by the commercial licensees of TMS TV listings…
MythTVnews.com is reporting that Tribune Media Services (TMS), the providers of the Zap2IT guide data used by MythTV in the US, will turn that guide data off on 1 September 2007. I haven't had a lot of time to look into this further, mainly because I am giving a talk this morning. I'll have a better look at lunch time (PDT) and write some more about this. I think there's no need for panic, as a new guide data source will be found, but this is unexpected.