is a
Linux application that turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a
Digital Video Recorder , a
Digital Multimedia Home Entertainment System , or
Home Theater Personal Computer . MythTV is free software licensed under the
GPL . It can be considered as an alternative to
Windows Media Center , although MythTV predates Windows Media Center.
The MythTV project was started in April 2002 by
Isaac Richards . Richards explained his motivation:
MythTV development is coordinated on a publicly accessible
SVN server. Several official and unofficial active
IRC channels and
Mailing List s permit communication between developers, and support for users. In early 2007, Apress published a
book on the program and its installation entitled 'Practical MythTV'.
KnoppMyth is a
BootCD derivative of
Knoppix . Its MythTV frontend can be run from the CD. An entire installation to the hard disk can take place in minutes.
MythTV features:
- A backend server and frontend client architecture, allowing multiple frontend client machines to be remotely served content from one or more backend servers. A single computer can perform as both the frontend client as well as performing as the backend server.
- Analyzes recorded shows for optional commercial skipping
- Plays recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary.
- Intelligently schedules recordings to avoid conflicts.
- Interfaces with free TV listing data (in the United States and Canada , donated by Tribune Media Services ), with support for XMLTV or EIT listings in most other countries.
- --- In June 2007, Tribune Media announced that they would discontinue this service "due to abuse" on 2007-Sep-1.
- --- Schedules Direct is now providing listings to replace those no longer available from Tribune Media.
- Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows.
- Schedule and administer various system functions using a web browser-based interface.
- Supports ATSC , QAM , and DVB High-definition Television .
- Controls a decoder/STB using an infrared remote ( Irblaster ).
The MythTV software supports TV tuner cards fully compatible with
Video4Linux or Video4Linux2
Kernel drivers. Using drivers from the
IVTV Project , (currently under heavy development), MythTV supports
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150/250/350/500 PCI and similar tuner cards incorporating iTVC15/16 hardware
MPEG-2 compression processors.
DVB and
PcHDTV cards with Video4Linux drivers are supported.
MythTV also supports program capture via
FireWire from digital
Set-top Box es.
MythTV's add-on modules (plugins) include:
- MythVideo: plays various video file formats.
- MythMusic: A music player, Jukebox , collection manager, and CD ripper.
- MythDVD: DVD manager and ripper.
- MythGallery: Online photo gallery manager.
- MythNews: RSS feed news reader.
- MythWeather: fetches Weather Forecast s from the net.
- MythBrowser: small Web Browser .
- MythGame: Frontend for game console emulators.
- MythWeb: Controls MythTV from a remote web browser
- MythPhone: Internet Telephony from your TV via SIP .
- MythFlix: Netflix queue viewer.
- MythArchive: DVD burner
- MythStreamTV: Allows for placeshifting, similar to a Slingbox .
- UPnP AV MediaServer v1.0 compliant server: Share media files with UPnP-clients
The base system integrates well with its modules. A system can be controlled with an infrared remote control using
LIRC , or radio remote control using
Kernel Modules .
The default file format for software encoding is a
RTJPEG or
MPEG-4 video stored in a slightly-modified version of Roman Hochleitner's NuppelVideo (.nuv) container. NUV files are also playable in
VLC Media Player and
MPlayer , but can occasionally exhibit problems in A/V synchronization due to the MythTV-specific modifications. It also appears that MythTV is now the single authority on the NuppelVideo file format, since the original author's website now appears to have been deleted.
MythTV can also record via hardware-encoder cards and other sources of
MPEG-2 digital TV streams like
DVB ,
ATSC and
Firewire (from
HDTV cable boxes in the
US ), so many users of MythTV rarely see NuppelVideo files unless they choose to
Transcode their files to NuppelVideo to save disk space.
