I've thought about the Myth box

With just about everything being digital now, I figured MythTV would be basically worthless.

The FCC is going to have a meeting Thursday and seemingly make a big announcement about people being able to use their own cable boxes soon. That might make something like MythTV become more appealing - maybe - but I figure the cable companies will try to come up with a way to keep up their margins even if people stop renting cable boxes.

On January 28, the FCC announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the FCC’s February 18 Open Meeting:

* “Promoting Diverse and Independent Programming.” The FCC will consider a Notice of Inquiry that “seeks comment on the current state of programming diversity and the principal obstacles that independent programmers face in obtaining carriage on video distribution platforms.”

* “Expanding Consumer Choice.” The FCC will consider an NPRM containing proposals designed to “unlock the set-top box,” according to a Fact Sheet released by the FCC on January 28. The FCC states in the Fact Sheet that “consumers should be able to have the choice of accessing programming through the MVPD-provided interface on a pay-TV set-top box or app, or through devices such as a tablet or smart TV using a competitive app or software.” The FCC’s primary proposal in the NPRM is to require that multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) – which are “cable, satellite or telco companies” – provide “three core information streams” to “creators of competitive devices or apps” that can be used to access MVPD-provided programming.

Chairman Wheeler discussed these items in a January 28 blog post , noting that the February Open Meeting “has a clear unifying theme: expanding consumer choice in the video marketplace.”

The FCC’s Open Meeting will take place on Thursday, February 18 at 10:30 a.m. in Room TW-C305 of the FCC’s headquarters at 445 12th Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. and will be streamed live at fcc.gov/live.

FCC Finds Broadband Not Being Deployed to Americans in a “Reasonable and Timely Fashion” [...]

I'll probably look into our options a bit more in a few weeks. But J is addicted to the Tennis Channel and the Red Sox, so it's not clear that we would save much even if we did get rid of cable. (We have had Prime for years and have never downloaded a show from Amazon - it just hasn't interested us (at least not yet). We haven't done much of anything with our Chromecast thingies either.)

Cheers,
Scott.

It's running Ubuntu 10.04 and Firefox is so old that Youtube complains quite strenuously.

At the time, consumer DVRs were very leading edge: hard to find, very expensive and small capacities. Even my initial MythTV box about 8 years ago with 300Gb was way bigger than any consumer DVRs. But DVB-T cards for Linux had just gotten cheap and easy to find. So I re-learnt enough to build my own box to do it.

It's been upgraded a few times as hardware has died or gotten better, actually, and got a re-install at one point with a 500Gb system drive. The original CPU couldn't keep up with decoding a HD DVB stream, but that problem's long gone. The original video card karked it 3 or 4 years ago, so I bought a cheapie NVidia thing. Then the motherboard died 2 or 3 years ago, so I bought an old HP office PC, stuck the drives and cards in and it booted right up where it left off.

The original box was a genuine frankenbox, but it was noisy, so I figured out how to make the BIOS alarm work for it to turn itself on and off. But the current one is much quieter (and the BIOS alarm doesn't work) so it stays on all the time.

Wade.

Post #408,131 by drook 2/16/16 6:18:18 PM 2/16/16 6:18:18 PM Reply	I've thought about the Myth box I'm past the point where I want to play with building my own shit any more, though. -- Drew
Post #408,135 by Another Scott 2/16/16 8:48:33 PM 2/16/16 8:48:33 PM Reply	I finally gave up on that. With just about everything being digital now, I figured MythTV would be basically worthless. The FCC is going to have a meeting Thursday and seemingly make a big announcement about people being able to use their own cable boxes soon. That might make something like MythTV become more appealing - maybe - but I figure the cable companies will try to come up with a way to keep up their margins even if people stop renting cable boxes. On January 28, the FCC announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the FCC’s February 18 Open Meeting: * “Promoting Diverse and Independent Programming.” The FCC will consider a Notice of Inquiry that “seeks comment on the current state of programming diversity and the principal obstacles that independent programmers face in obtaining carriage on video distribution platforms.” * “Expanding Consumer Choice.” The FCC will consider an NPRM containing proposals designed to “unlock the set-top box,” according to a Fact Sheet released by the FCC on January 28. The FCC states in the Fact Sheet that “consumers should be able to have the choice of accessing programming through the MVPD-provided interface on a pay-TV set-top box or app, or through devices such as a tablet or smart TV using a competitive app or software.” The FCC’s primary proposal in the NPRM is to require that multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) – which are “cable, satellite or telco companies” – provide “three core information streams” to “creators of competitive devices or apps” that can be used to access MVPD-provided programming. Chairman Wheeler discussed these items in a January 28 blog post , noting that the February Open Meeting “has a clear unifying theme: expanding consumer choice in the video marketplace.” The FCC’s Open Meeting will take place on Thursday, February 18 at 10:30 a.m. in Room TW-C305 of the FCC’s headquarters at 445 12th Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. and will be streamed live at fcc.gov/live. FCC Finds Broadband Not Being Deployed to Americans in a “Reasonable and Timely Fashion” [...] I'll probably look into our options a bit more in a few weeks. But J is addicted to the Tennis Channel and the Red Sox, so it's not clear that we would save much even if we did get rid of cable. (We have had Prime for years and have never downloaded a show from Amazon - it just hasn't interested us (at least not yet). We haven't done much of anything with our Chromecast thingies either.) Cheers, Scott.
Post #408,139 by static 2/17/16 1:35:31 AM 2/17/16 1:35:31 AM Reply	That's kinda why I've not upgraded the OS. It's running Ubuntu 10.04 and Firefox is so old that Youtube complains quite strenuously. At the time, consumer DVRs were very leading edge: hard to find, very expensive and small capacities. Even my initial MythTV box about 8 years ago with 300Gb was way bigger than any consumer DVRs. But DVB-T cards for Linux had just gotten cheap and easy to find. So I re-learnt enough to build my own box to do it. It's been upgraded a few times as hardware has died or gotten better, actually, and got a re-install at one point with a 500Gb system drive. The original CPU couldn't keep up with decoding a HD DVB stream, but that problem's long gone. The original video card karked it 3 or 4 years ago, so I bought a cheapie NVidia thing. Then the motherboard died 2 or 3 years ago, so I bought an old HP office PC, stuck the drives and cards in and it booted right up where it left off. The original box was a genuine frankenbox, but it was noisy, so I figured out how to make the BIOS alarm work for it to turn itself on and off. But the current one is much quieter (and the BIOS alarm doesn't work) so it stays on all the time. Wade. Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/

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