Notices

Whenever MythTV gets to a point where I can install it and it works immediately, I'm in. Right now, taking a week to set up isn't ideal for me. I'm uninstalling and reinstalling OSes too much for that mess.

I once had a MythTV setup running, it took me a while to figure out how to use it but in the end I got rid of it since I used my computer to much as a computer so there was no point in having a fancy front end when I could just play files normally. I think in the future when I build another desktop I might turn my current one into a backend server.

i hope this gets done for Maemo 5!

Me too! This would be great.

Once you get the hang of it, installing is easy. The first time might take a week. Once you know what you are doing it will only take a few minutes. I've installed it a few dozen times now. The first time I tried, I could not even get it to work. The last install was just easy (because I learned how to do all the settings).

I'm not satisfied with the supported video cards issue. Some say my card is supported, other no. I'm using a Falcon Conexant card with Asus chips, if that helps. Got any experience with those?

Did you check here? http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Video_capture_card

Get the full details of your card (chipset, etc.)and check the above site. That will give you an answer. Depending on what operating system you use (Linux Mint?), you can check that the kernel sees your card with lspci. Look for an entry labeled "Multimedia video controller". To get more detailed information about the card, use lspci -v or lspci -vv

Been there done that MountainX. It claims to support it, but it just didn't work. With Media Center so simple to setup, it got kicked to the curb. They need to get their stuff together then call me. If they can get Linux to install and "just work", they can do it for Myth, too. I'm too busy to waste another two days researching that setup.

You don't need to spend loads of time researching. For playback use Nvidia video cards for the best result, and for video capure you cannot go far wrong with Hauppauge tv cards. There is a list on the Video4Linux wiki.

That's why it took me months to get around to setting up MythTV. I just didn't have time. I set up SageTV on Linux in a few minutes and I was done. MythTV sat on the backburner for almost a year. But recently I had time to play with it and I got it set up. I have to say that I love it. It was worth the effort.

And you could probably solve your video capture card problem with an investment of under 30 minutes. Just find out which driver to select in MythTV backend setup and I would guess that will solve your problem (if your card is supported, as you say).

I consider things like the time I invested in setting up MythTV to be part of my Linux education. When I started doing Windows server admin years ago, I had to invest a lot of time. Then, when I started Linux a couple years ago, the same. I have not invested nearly as much time in learning Linux yet, but every time I spend a little time on something like MythTV, my overall Linux skills grow.

In general, I find that Windows is only easier because it is what people are used to. Now that I use Linux every day (and never touch Windows), when my Mom asks me to fix her computer I find it maddening. Windows makes it so much harder to do almost everything. I would never want to go back to that way of living (computing).

That said, I can certainly understand if you do not have time to learn MythTV right now. But as the poster above said, setting up MythTV with a PVR-X50 card is pretty trivial. Select the IVTV MPEG driver and it will work.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_PVR-150