Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC

Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC

By Stewart Smith, Michael Still,

Publisher: Apress
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2007-05-07
Sales Rank: 49428
ISBN / ASIN: 1590597796
EAN: 9781590597798
Binding: Paperback
Manufacturer: Apress
Studio: Apress
Average Rating: 5

MythTV is a powerful open source personal video recorder (PVR) application that runs on Linux. Developed for several years by volunteers, it offers a stable and extensible platform for automating all of the things you would expect from a PVR, and much more.

Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC takes a project-based approach to implementing your own MythTV setup. You get to pick and choose the functionality you want to install for your PVR, and will learn the details of everything from selecting hardware to advanced customization.

You will learn how to record your favorite television shows, store your DVDs for later playback, create a music library out of your CD collection, and even use your PVR for Voice over IP. Your PVR wouldn't be complete without a remote control or the ability to play back content to other TVs in your home. You'll learn how to do both of these things in this book. You'll even learn to how to utilize your Xbox as a remote front end to play back content.

Beyond these basics, you will learn advanced techniques like commercial detection and skipping, auto-expiring content, creating your own themes for MythTV, and utilizing plug-ins to do things like display weather conditions, RSS feeds, and photo slide shows.

Review:

Great book - Buy It !

This book should be renamed "the MythTV / PVR Bible". It has everything you need to know about creating your own PVR using MythTV.

Ideally you should have a working knowledge of Unix to get the most out of the book. While the authors have included step-by-step instructions for installing Ubuntu, if you haven't used Linux before, most of it will be "over your head". However, the good news is that there are tonnes of gold nuggets to be found - even in the first two chapters. As such, the Microsoft "point and click" people should buy the book purely on the basis of a good sanity check - eg: have you considered all the available options relating to hardware?

Something that most authors leave out of books is the setup they use at home. Stewart and Michael (the authors) include their own hardware and cover in detail why they use it. If you combine this information with the lists of recommended hardware, you will avoid the most common mistakes that people make when creating a PVR.

While I've done a lot of research into building PVR's and have a Unix background, I managed to get a lot out of it. Expert users will find the information relating to plug-ins, advanced TV recording and expanding MythTV worth the read.

If you are thinking about building a PVR, do yourself a favor - stop everything you are doing and buy this book first.

Review:

Great overview

I had been playing with Knoppmyth already to get a feel for MythTV and see if I wanted to use it to replace my TIVO. There are so many options and features that I was looking for a good book to cover an overview of MythTV and talk about install options/pitfalls etc. in more detail from a practical standpoint.

This book addressed many of my concerns and questions I had going into reading the book and helped me follow through and a make a fully educated decision in moving forward with building and installing my new MythTV box.

For anyone considering MythTV or looking for a good guide to get it up and running, I highly recommend this book.

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