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by allenbina 1225 days ago
I tried to get this to work multiple times around 2004. This might be where I first dove into linux. I gave up every time. I ended up using windows media center which worked flawlessly for years. I moved on to plex and a hdtvhomerun when they released it (it handles deleting old series, etc). About a year ago I realized I don't really watch live TV anymore and unplugged it.
4 comments
matthewmcg 1225 days ago
Similar for me, except I got it working after tens of hours invested. After wasting time with nonstandard hardware, I got a Hauppauge PVR series capture card with hardware MPEG2 encoding. That made all the difference.

I was in college at the time and had free HBO on the dorm cable network, plus completely unfiltered 100mbps ethernet throughout the campus. It was fun to have a "DIY Tivo" server that could automatically remove commercials and make my library available to my suitemates.

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matthewmcg 1225 days ago
In case this resonates with anyone else's nostalgia, the highlight of my time with MythTV was setting up a system to automatically transcode episodes of selected shows to 320x250 for my iPod video which I could then sync and watch on a plane. Heady stuff for 2005-2006.
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nerdix 1225 days ago
Similar for me but I never made a serious attempt at MythTV because I never had dedicated hardware in those days. So I ended up installing XP MCE on my main machine (you could minimize/exit Media Center and it was just plain Windows underneath).

Used that for a while then went down the XBMC path (for windows..pre-Kodi for a while). Ended up with a Boxee Box (first real dedicated hardware). Then moved to Plex hosted on a Windows Home Server with various clients over the years (Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV, OG Chromecast, Nexus Player, one of the older FireTVs, Chromecast Ultra).

The Home Server died so I moved to UnRaid with containerized Plex. Had a HDHomeRun Prime integrated with Plex for a bit. But dropped cable in favor of streaming TV services. That's the closest I ever got to a MythTV setup.

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ericflo 1225 days ago
I learned most of what I know about Linux trying over years to set up and maintain a MythBuntu box
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deepspace 1225 days ago
Same here. Tried multiple times, but it was just too rough.

I ended up creating a barebones DVR from scratch in FreeBSD, which I was more familiar with than Linux. I kept adding incremental features over the next few years, until it was a very usable system, and exactly suitable for my needs.

Then the internet became fast enough to stream and download content, and the old workhorse ended up in a closet somewhere.

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