MythTV 0.21 Released

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

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The newest version of MythTV is out for my fellow Myth users. It has a host of new features:
  • Added Watch List feature to Watch Recordings listing programs most useful to watch in order to catch up on series and shows you have fallen behind in watching.
  • Added support for QAM recording using HDHomeRun device. Requires firmware 21-09-2006 or newer (Note this was also back ported to 0.20.2).
  • New official plugins:
    • MythMovies: provides show times and cinema listings based on Zip/Post code and a given radius.
    • MythZoneMinder: ZoneMinder is a system for monitoring CCTV cameras. It uses a web interface which doesn't work very well on a MythTV only system so the plugin provides a remote friendly interface to some of the functions provided by ZM.
  • Added storage groups. This allows multiple recording directories, where each storage group is a list of directories.
  • Added auto discovery of MythTV servers/frontends
  • Reduced mythfrontend memory consumption by upto 75% depending on theme and resolution.
  • requires MySQL 5.0
  • Allows multiple recordings with one DVB/ATSC card if the channels are in the same multiplex (Multirec)
  • Enhancements for multi channel audio (up-converting stereo, re-encoding to AC3 in time stretch mode)
  • Added the ability to continue playing music in the background.
  • Added a channel icon download facility to mythtv-setup.
the one I highlighted in bold is the coolest feature, IMO. You can now record more than one program at once using a single card. Imagine that I want to be sure to get the very beginning and very end of a show. in order to compensate for slightly differing clocks at the various channels I set it to start 5 minutes before the show and end 5 minutes after. Now using Myth I can have it do that for two programs that are scheduled back-to-back on different channels. :)

it also has a munch of improvements for those people who want to connect directly to a cable or satellite box via Firewire.

The binary releases will be out later. I'll check it out when there are binaries in the Ubuntu repos. I'm going to migrate my LVM setup on the backend to the newer storage group setup. :D
 
Yes. This is rather nice. Been a while (since 0.19 i think).

Any good howtos to get this working nicely.

Would it run nicely on a Dual PIII 450 w/ 768MB?? (Possibly for playback into a modulator and piped round my house on coax?)
I've got a Saa7134 and a PVR150 and an old Brooktree bt878 card here. Also got a sempron 2300 would that be better?

Idon't have a TV aerial, so I'd need to run DVB-C or DVB-S - any info on running a DVBC card?
 
The dual P3 is a bit pokey to be watching and recording simultaneously. The RAM is fine though.

The Sempron would be better.

I use a PVR150 with mine and it's nicely supported with the ivtv driver. I son't know squat about DVB cards. :P

Remember that Myth has a client/server model. You could use either of the above machines as a backend and set up another machine as the frontend. This is what I do. I have a P3 800 MHz backend that does the SDTV encoding and contains the noisy hard disks. My frontend is diskless (well, it boots off of a CompactFlash card, but that doesn't count).
 
Yes thanks.

Yeah I have a sempron 2300 and XP1900 and the dual P3 I'm just trying to think of the best backend/front end combo to have a frontend in the living room and the bedroom and the backend in the cupboard with the noisy disks... Without whiney Harddisks in the front ends. I'm thinking usb boot or tftp boot.

You've won't be able to multirec without a DVB card as it takes advantage of the fact that multiple Digital channels get broadcast on one normal channel, so you can record at the same time only if the other channel is in the same mux. I can't remember what channels are in what mux but you can find out easy enough. AIUI

also been thinking about older laptops as a possible frontend. Nice, small, quiet fold away etc, could be good?
 
I started a MythTV project ages ago but never got round to finishing it... I wonder if now would be a good time to resurrect that. Might spec up some kit and see how much it'd set me back.
 
There's a new integrated GPu coming from AMD that is going to be the new hotness. 780G will do better hardware decoding than before. You might want to wait for that.

As it is, I'm quite happy with my integrated nVidia graphics for decoding H.264 HD content.
 
Woot, binaries are now in the main *buntu repositories. I'll try it posthaste! :)

Now, if only NFS would quit being a fussy hag I'd really be in business.
 
I've now had this working for a few days now. It continues the MythTV tradition of being simply awesome. :D

I love the new storage features that no longer make me fiddle with LVMs to use multiple smaller disks to gain more storage. The news function is great, drawing Google and YouTube videos and various video podcasts from all around the web. The internal video player used with MythVideo has played almost every code I've thrown at it, the exception being .rmvb which isn't well supported by anything that isn't the official Real player. The weather function works great and shows me the current conditions, 6-day forecast, and current radar maps for my home town. It's pretty much everything that I want in a livingroom setup!

My only beef is that MythMusic is a bit of a bear if you have a huge library unless you want to listen to the whole thing, sequentially or randomized. It could make it easier to drill down playlists or zoom to a particular song. It's got a database handy, perhaps they should implement indexed searching like AmaroK and iTunes have. It wouldn't be hard to use the remote for text entry.

Does anybody else have any impressions about this version, or any other version, of MythTV?
 
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