Open Source

MythTV

MythTV is a GPL licensed suite of programs that allow you to build the mythical home media convergence box on your own using Open Source software and operating systems. MythTV is known to work on Linux and Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel). It does not run on Windows.

MythTV has a number of capabilities. The television portion allows you to do the following:

* You may pause, fast-forward and rewind live Television.
* You may install multiple video capture cards to record more than one program at a time.
* You can have multiple servers (called "backends"), each with multiple capture cards in them. All scheduling is performed by the Master backend, which arbitrates which recording will be performed by each device. All recording requests are managed by the Master backend, so you can schedule a recording from any client.
* You can have multiple clients (called "frontends" in MythTV parlance), each with a common view of all available programs. Any client can watch any program that was recorded by any of the servers, assuming that they have the hardware capabilities to view the content; a low-powered frontend will not be able to watch HDTV, for example. Clients can be diskless and controlled entirely by a remote control.
* You may use any combination of standard analog capture card, MPEG-2, MJPEG, DVB, HDTV, USB and firewire capture devices. With appropriate hardware, MythTV can control set top boxes, often found in digital cable and satellite TV systems.
* Program Guide Data in North America is downloaded from schedulesdirect.org, a non-profit organization which has licensed data from Tribune Media Services. This service provides almost two weeks of scheduling information. Program Guide Data in other countries is obtained using XMLTV. MythTV uses this information to create a schedule that maximizes the number of programs that can be recorded if you don't have enough tuners.
* MythTV implements a UPNP server, so a UPNP client should automatically see content from your MythTV system. [edit] Less

Project Details

DEVELOPMENT STATUS : beta
LICENSE : gnu general public license (gpl)
OPERATING SYSTEM : bsd
Linux2 : posix : unix : PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE : c++
USER INTERFACE : x windows

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10 Open Source Ways to Improve Your Online Video Mojo

by Sam Dean on Jul 31, 2009

3 comments

All of us are viewing, collecting and streaming video online much more than we used to. Video content has proliferated on the web, and creating online video is no longer the work of just an isolated group of skilled technocrats. Anyone can become a video broadcaster online, and there are countless tools that can help you collect and consume video content. In this post, you'll find 10 resources for making your experience with online video better, and more efficient.

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by Sam Dean on Mar 11, 2009

4 comments

Most users of proprietary software arm themselves with arrays of digital entertainment applications, ranging from iTunes to Windows Media Player to RealPlayer. That's due to big improvements in the bandwidth everyone gets, attention from content providers, and more. The good news is that for open sourcers, digital entertainment applications have matured -- big-time -- for Windows, Linux and the Mac. Even if you use proprietary applications such as iTunes for music, or Windows Media Player for videos, there are many open source applications that can complement and add to your libraries, collections and players. You'll find 10 good roundups of open source digital entertainment resources here, and more than 50 total free applications.

Open Source Media Center Apps Are Growing Up

by Sam Dean on Mar 03, 2009

2 comments

Back in December, MediaPortal 1.0, an open source application that turns a PC/TV into a sophisticated media center and digital video recorder, arrived. Originally based on the XBMC project, version 1.0 was a nearly complete redesign, and has gotten quite a bit of notice, despite a few bugs. On March 15th, the folks behind MediaPortal plan to release a 1.0.1 version with usability improvements. Along with the Plex media center for Mac OS X (MediaPortal is Windows only), Boxee for Linux and the Mac, and MythTV for Linux, the open source community is pushing strongly into video and rich media content management. Here are some good resources if you're evaluating these media center apps.