MythTV.....Why?

[ffixcollector]

I have been gaining interest in MytTV, but what is its full functionality? From what I can tell MythTV can play and record standard US analog and digital stations (depending on the capture card).
Can it replace cable DVR, Direct TV DVR, or dish-network DVR?
What is the full functionality of MythTV?

[issih]

I will stay away from commenting on the specifics of how it works with cable/direc/dish tv as I'm not american, and such things work differently over here.

The basic functionality though I can whitter on about.

As a basic proposition Myth gives you a TV viewer/recorder which can pause live tv. You get an EPG (grabbed either from xmltv grabbers or direct from the tv card if the service you use supports it).

You get a DVR, where you can schedule recordings from the EPG, with a variety of options for finding future recordings from the same series.

The system can record as many channels as you have tv cards, and in the case of DVB broadcasts multiple channels per card (provided the channels are transmitted in the same transport stream).

That is the basic system. You can then expand in all sorts of ways from there. You can have multiple frontends (viewers) on different computers on the lan, and they will all be able to view tv as long as they have network access to the machine with the tv cards in it. There are myriad plugins to view IPTV, stream recordings over the web, deal with music, dvds, display weather info, etc.

Its a hugely versatile system.

Hope that helps

[ffixcollector]

is it possible to hock up to cable/direc/dish if you have the subscription?

[Dr_Willis]

Main reason i used MythTV.. i could record my shows and auto-zap out the commercials. :) Its a very powerfull tool that can do some amazing things.

With the new digital tv standard, and amount of 'extra' set top box's required by many cable companies. I found it harder and harder to actually use. But it does have features other then just watching tv. The wife uses it has her main movie player on the laptop.