Choosing VDR versus MythTV

[rnmixon]

Just wanted to make sure I am understanding the discussions I am seeing.

In general those of us in the USA should be using MythTV, otherwise VDR has some advantages, especially for supporting DVB cards.

In particular, I have a core/hybrid Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard, AMD 64 x2 4400 with 1GB RAM, a Hauppage PVR-500 connected to my cable box and a HDHomeRun for two independent sources of OTA TV. Using 704, MythTv would freeze often usually after 15 or 20 seconds of viewing. Will MythTV work "better" in 710b3, or would VDR offer any advantages?

Thanks!

I'm still waiting impatiently for my 710b3 DVD ISO for AMD64 to download - Its taken over a day and is only 75% complete. At least I've uploaded as much as I've downloaded 

[tkmedia]

Just wanted to make sure I am understanding the discussions I am seeing.

In general those of us in the USA should be using MythTV, otherwise VDR has some advantages, especially for supporting DVB cards.

In particular, I have a core/hybrid Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard, AMD 64 x2 4400 with 1GB RAM, a Hauppage PVR-500 connected to my cable box and a HDHomeRun for two independent sources of OTA TV. Using 704, MythTv would freeze often usually after 15 or 20 seconds of viewing. Will MythTV work "better" in 710b3, or would VDR offer any advantages?

Thanks!

I have a very similar setup
I would also like to know.


BTW you do know you can get clear qam channels on HDHomerun by connecting your cable tv cable to one of your HD Homerun inputs.

[rnmixon]

Actually I have Qwest ChoiceTV (Scottsdale, AZ), its not really "cable" in the sense that there is no cable modem with coax input. A single twisted pair provides phone, TV and internet via a special set top box - a Motorola (aka Next Level Communications) RG2xxx. It that provides cable-equivalent programming to three different TV's. No coax really, so I don't believe the QAM channels would apply, at least any way I can figure.

Thanks though. I think I'm good with the PVR-500 and using the HDHomeRun for OTA.

[totallymaxed]

Just wanted to make sure I am understanding the discussions I am seeing.

In general those of us in the USA should be using MythTV, otherwise VDR has some advantages, especially for supporting DVB cards.

In particular, I have a core/hybrid Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard, AMD 64 x2 4400 with 1GB RAM, a Hauppage PVR-500 connected to my cable box and a HDHomeRun for two independent sources of OTA TV. Using 704, MythTv would freeze often usually after 15 or 20 seconds of viewing. Will MythTV work "better" in 710b3, or would VDR offer any advantages?

Thanks!

I'm still waiting impatiently for my 710b3 DVD ISO for AMD64 to download - Its taken over a day and is only 75% complete. At least I've uploaded as much as I've downloaded 

ok... lets clear this confusion up;

vdr can only be used in beta3 (and this will be true of the release version too) with DVB transmissions (DVB-T = Terestrial from an aerial, DVB-S = Satellite & DVB-C = Cable). Therefore you must be able to receive a DVB signal in your region via your aerial, Satellite or Cable and have a DVB card (or possibly usb dongle) in your Core. VDR will not work with a PVR-150, 250, 500 etc etc.

At present once you choose VDR or MythTV in the setup Wizard during the initial install you cannot change your mind afterwards (or at least it is very complex to do so!). This will be fixed in a later beta or the release.

[rnmixon]

OK, thanks for the confirmation. MythTV it is then, I'm hopeful it will work much better.

[Hipper]

vdr can only be used ... with DVB transmissions Therefore you must be able to receive a DVB signal in your region via your aerial, Satellite or Cable and have a DVB card

Now that it's clear what hardware and signal sources are needed for VDR and MythTV which should one choose?

Let's say I have all the needed signals and want to buy hardware for my Core what are the pros and cons of each, from a standpoint of software and/or hardware?

Also, would it be possible to hand build a core and MD's with both, assuming that they are built from source not using the standard installs?

[totallymaxed]

vdr can only be used ... with DVB transmissions Therefore you must be able to receive a DVB signal in your region via your aerial, Satellite or Cable and have a DVB card

Now that it's clear what hardware and signal sources are needed for VDR and MythTV which should one choose?

Let's say I have all the needed signals and want to buy hardware for my Core what are the pros and cons of each, from a standpoint of software and/or hardware?

Also, would it be possible to hand build a core and MD's with both, assuming that they are built from source not using the standard installs?

Ok... well which you choose, vdr or MythTV, comes down to personal choice. Clearly we hope you will choose vdr if you have DVB signals available in your region. My take on it, and its very biased in favour of vdr of course ;-) , is that vdr is a lean, stable app that is a real workhorse and really exploits what you can do with DVB. In particular its ability to allow you to access all of the 'channels' on a given MUX using a single tuner is the killer I believe. From a software developers perspective vdr is again a lean well engineered app that does not overload your systems resources even in heavy use, making it easily extended and simple to configure.

but remember I am biased ;-)

[mrothwell]

Are there areas that offer DVB signals as well as ATSC/NTSC signals?

I would love to have the VDR option available in the US.  Any chance that it will be ported to ATSC/NTSC?

[colinjones]

Certainly - there are plenty of DVB-S (satelite) signals that broadcast into N.America, I believe. But outside that, very unlikely; DVB-T wouldn't be allowed in the US, and ATSC is only used in a handful of countries, mostly N. America.

[danielk]

I just want to warn people up front that LinuxMCE 710 is still in beta. And a beta operating system is a different from a beta application, in that it really can result in you having to reinstall everything from scratch and possibly lose data stored on that computer that an application couldn't normally touch.

That being said, if you receive DVB-x or ATSC via a DVB device driver please test the VDR option even if you aren't going to be using it going forward. It's new and more testing is appreciated. The MythTV in LinuxMCE 710 beta 3 is the same version as was in LinuxMCE 704, but there have been some improvements to UPnP and a few LinuxMCE specific fixes have been applied to make it much more stable.

The multi-record capability in VDR is most useful in Europe where different networks use the same transport stream than in North America where the additional streams are generally just low-resolution versions of what is on the main channel, or some looping content like this morning's weather forecast. This capability won't be in a MythTV release until this spring.

But really it is an entirely different program. On the whole is more lean (and by extension less feature rich) than MythTV. And  while it took many revs to get the giant MythTV suite stable under LinuxMCE, I expect there will be a lot less surprises with the new VDR integration, since it just provides the DVR we are looking for from it in LinuxMCE and has a more fine grained modular structure.

[colinjones]

The only specifically VDR thing I note so far (besides that it lacks alsorts of features like record, time shift, channel up/down, integration with the remote - and all those things that I assume are missing simply because it is the first incarnation in public beta) is that periodically, and with no obvious pattern, it seems to loose my channels.conf file and revert to the default so I loose my TV and have to re-upload the channels.conf file. Or less frequently, it just comes up No Signal - sometimes I can just choose another channel, reboot, etc and it comes back - other times I have to re-upload the file again, and that sorts it out...

As an aside - will the final release version have the ability to only deinterlace interlaced channels by detecting them first?

Also, is there anyway of querying VDR to ask it for details like how many frames per second it is achieving?