Hi all,

I just ordered the extra hardware I need to finally build an HTPC. I'm thinking of going with MythTV (via KnoppMyth) and I have a question for those of you who have been using MythTV for a while:

Is MythTV reliable enough to actually replace a Tivo?

I watch relatively few shows each week, but the shows that I do watch are important to me (and usually sequential), so I'd like to be confident that the shows will be recorded if I switch completely from the Tivo. Of course, the TV guide data itself must be accurate, but other than that, can I count on my new MythPC to slurp the listings, process things properly, record reliably, and all the other things I more-or-less take for granted with the Tivo?

I'll be keeping the Tivo until April (when my annual subscription runs-out), so I'll have some time to check the reliability myself, but I'd appreciate input from those of you who are experienced with using it for several months.

Thanks!
Mike

I've never had a Tivo to compare with but my boxen has been rock solid.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Well I can't say it's as reliable as a tivo even thought I've never had one yet. It may just be my odd config though

I'm hoping to get there, but it's not yet. Our Tivo ran for several years with nary a glitch. Now it's moved to a spare room and it's recording the same shows as Myth as a backup.

My wife asked for it back just after the new year. I was running R4 and something was wacky for a few days and myth kept crashing. In desparation, I updated to 0.13 with the debs, and also updated ivtv for my 250 at the same time using the instructions cesman posted. Things went to crap after that, but last Saturday I updated ivtv to the Dec 30 release (1.7?) and so far things seem great. Ran all day Saturday, Sunday, Monday not skipping a beat. I've got my fingers crossed.

Overall, Tivo is likely more reliable because the devices & hardware are fixed. My Tivo has been running nonstop (UPS attached) for years. Myth can work with a variety of hardware device combinations and hence may not be as reliable....but is far more flexible. I imagine some configs though are as reliable as Tivo (I'm new so not there yet).

My MythTV box has seemed very reliable when I had it set up correctly. I've had very few problems with it working right and have used a friend's Tivo for a few months when he was staying with me, so I have direct experience to compare.

You may want to keep your Tivo around for a while until you get MythTV running correctly with your hardware, though. It's taken me a couple weeks in spare time to get things configured to my liking and I still need to get my PVR 350 TVOut working, a bigger HDD installed, and the remote working.

One of the problems I had was that my TV listings were sometimes off by 1 hour and sometimes not. After doing "apt-get install xmltv" and installing the newer version, these problems went away, though.

MythTV kicks butt on Tivo's features, though. I love the fact that I can actually access my files and record them to disk and do what I want with them instead of only being able to "record to vcr" like Tivo does. I set up Samba so it's really easy to copy the files to any Windows box on my home network for viewing or DVD authoring.

My recommendation is that you BACK UP your Linux partition as you go, though, unless you're very familiar with Linux. I managed to really screw my configuration over when I tried installing updated drivers to get my PVR350 tvout working. I had to reinstall/reconfigure everything again after that. Now I'm backing up my Linux partition before making any major changes. I learned my lesson.

Best luck with it.

I've had a TiVo for several years, and just go my myth box going about a month ago. So far I have had no problems with it at all.

Like many have said here, there are quite a few things that can effect how reliable it its. If you are happy with your final config and dont screw around (ya right!) with features/progs/bells and wistles etc... then it should run as is for a long time sans hardware failure.

The biggest problem I see in long term reliability is XMLTV. XMLTV uses raw web page filtering to grab its guide data. If the web site changes just even a little bit, then XMLTV needs to be updated to parse the new web page format. Fortunately myth will have about 10 days of program data in memory so users can update XMLTV. This is one area where I feel myth fails a bit. I would like to see immediate OSD alerts when XMLTV fails for more then two days in a row....I have not experienced this so I am not sure if it does or not.

Myth is almost useless as a PVR without the guide data and right now we are flying under the radar because we are small user community (for now). What is going to happen when/if web page tv listings are not parsable by XMLTV anymore? A minimal fee pay service that is compatible with XMLTV would go a long way to making programs like myth more reliable options in the long run.

I am not quite ready to sell my TiVo quite yet. Right now it sits quietly on the back shelf, just in case.

-SN

It seems that zap2it.com is creating a way for XMLTV not to have to screen scrape. You can read the thread about labs.zap2it.com as it pertains to MythTV at:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/ma ... ine#115836

Details appear to be a bit sketchy at the moment, but good news nonetheless.

Ok, an update on what I wrote earlier.

I have had some problems with MythTV being reliable since I wrote that. It seems to have become much less reliable ever since I got my PVR-350 TV Out working. Driver problems, I'd guess. Maybe if I'm feeling ambitious and lucky one of these days I'll try updating IVTV drivers for it. I've heard stories of reliability improvements with some of the patches. It still works reliably most of the time, but I've got various kinds of errors such as the following:

-Recording a movie that straddled Midnight caused my guide to assign wrong priorities and it wanted to switch to record something else of lower priority at midnight even though the movie wasn't finished.

-With scheduling conflicts and using the "resolve conflicts" option to tell it which item to record doesn't always do the right thing.

-Occasional random stoppages of recording in the middle of programs (happens once for every 4 or 5 programs recorded).

-Sometimes MythTV backend stops doing its thing and recordings never start (once every 3 or 4 days).

-Some crazy errors about IRQ or DMA something that flashed in the console window in an endless loop (once in about 2 weeks).

Before enabling PVR-350 TV out I didn't encounter any significant problems, so I suspect that the PVR-350 drivers are adversely affecting system stability.

I thought I'd update since things have changed since my last post (and getting the PVR-350 TV-Out enabled.).

It seems that a lot of the stability will depend on the hardware and drivers you get installed and your configuration.

I'll update too. I've now got two pvr-250's doing business with two directv boxes and it's rock solid. Uptime is 19 days 12 hours right now without a single glitch. I love having two tuners in there, no more worrying about conflicts. I cancelled our Tivo service about a month ago.