Smart Home Blog

Mythbuntu team recently released the first stable version of its MythTV distribution based on the latest Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). The first list of features includes:

• Frontend can be run from the live CD
• Complete installations(Backend, Frontend, Backend/Frontend, etc)
• Xfce4 Desktop Environment
• Easily upgrade from Ubuntu Gutsy to Mythbuntu
• Custom Mythbuntu MythTV theme
• GUI setup of LIRC
• Setup MythTV optimizations through MCC

Full release notes can be found here. To download and read upgrade instructions go to that page.

It’s good that Mythbuntu developers follow by Ubuntu releases. Waiting for LinuxMCE team to do like that 🙂

The target of any wrap software is to do using original system easier without patching it. MMS – My Media System does the same. It integrates VDR, Mplayer and Xine into one easy install and configure system.

MMS allows to you manage, display and play media content such as videos, music and pictures on your TV. It’s translated to 11 languages (Russian is one of them :)).

The latest version of MMS can be downloaded here, installation instructions are available for Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo and SuSe.

Fly in the ointment: I didn’t use MMS on practice. So, maybe I missed something but I don’t understand why it’s needed to install MMS if VDR can do the same things from the box and even more. But anyway, MMS seems good system to build your home media center!

Additionally to Mythdora and Knoppmyth we got now Mythbuntu – Ubuntu based MythTV distribution. The alpha version of Mythbuntu allows to run a live frontend from CD. So, it’s good opportunity to test it without installing. Mythbuntu 7.04 Public Alpha 1 can be downloaded here (checksum).

However, this version has serious limitations:

• Proprietary graphics detection isn’t included yet
• TV Out isn’t included yet
• Firmware grabbing hasn’t been included yet
• LIRC hasn’t been included yet

Hope the beta version will come soon and those features will be included there.

Good news for all fans of VDR and HDTV. Finally, Klaus decided to add support of HDTV into VDR. According to his comment in the VDR maillist:

Yes, I do plan to do this. Yesterday I’ve installed my DVB-S2 card in a test box, so hopefully I’ll be able to start digging into this one of these days

This good because MythTV which already supports HDTV doesn’t include a lot of VDR features.

P. S. The DVB card which is going to be used is Technotrend S2-3200 HDTV-S2.

VDR is one of the most popular and power Linux-based front-end for the HTPC. It has a cleaver architecture and a lot of plugins. Using streamdev-server it’s possible to stream live TV over LAN. As client you can any PC with installed VideoLAN or mplayer. But in that case some functionality will be lost. Here is a way how to use Mac with Mac OS as streamdev client. I suspect that it’s the first step to port VDR under Mac OS. As there are no DVB device drivers for OS X with Linux headers you cannot use DVB devices on Mac. But you can enjoy full-featured VDR client on your Mac (thanks to Tero Siironen).