What is MythTV?
MythTV is a GPL open source application for Linux designed to allow any computer (that meets the specified minimum requirements) to function as a personal video recorder. The project was started in April 2002 by Isaac Richards.
MythTV has become a very mature project. As of May 2005, the project was in a very usable state at version 0.18.1. Development is coordinated on a publicly accessible SVN server. Several active IRC channels and mailing lists permit communication between developers, and support for users.
As a personal video recorder (PVR), MythTV provides the ability to:
- Watch, pause, fast forward and rewind 'live' TV
- Set recordings from a program guide
- Listen to music
- Play all kinds of real arcade games
- Watch DVDs
- Get weather and news from the Internet
Some interesting features that MythTV boasts include:
- The separate "Frontend/Backend" architecture which allows multiple machines to remotely serve content from a single server.
- The ability to analyze recorded shows for commercials and give users the option of skipping commercials during playback.
- The ability to watch recordings at an accelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary.
- The ability to intelligently schedule recordings and avoid conflicts as needed.
- The availability of free guide data for TV listings.
- The ability to pause, skip, and rewind live TV.
- The ability to schedule, administer, or list many functions of the system via web-based interface.
- The ability to timeshift high-definition television with current DTV cards such as the pchdtv 3000 or the Air2PC card.
MythTV Modules
Over time MythTV's architecture has allowed it to evolve into multi-functional home entertainment center. MythTV is extensible with add-on modules (plugins), which include:
- MythVideo: video management module
- MythMusic: music player and music collection manager
- MythDVD: DVD management add-on
- MythGallery: image gallery management module
- MythNews: RSS feed news reader
- MythWeather: weather forecast
- MythBrowser: a small web browser for a living room
- MythGame: frontend to games
- MythWeb: web interface for MythTV
- MythPhone: SIP phone add-on module
Links to MythTV sites
MythTV:
http://www.mythtv.org/
