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Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC by Michael Still
MythTV is a powerful open source personal video recorder (PVR) application that runs on Linux. Developed for several years by volunteers, it offers a stable and extensible platform for automating all of the things you would expect from a PVR, and much more.
Practical Building a PVR and Media Center PC takes a project-based approach to implementing your own MythTV setup. You get to pick and choose the functionality you want to install for your PVR, and will learn the details of everything from selecting hardware to advanced customization.
You will learn how to record your favorite television shows, store your DVDs for later playback, create a music library out of your CD collection, and even use your PVR for Voice over IP. Your PVR wouldn't be complete without a remote control or the ability to play back content to other TVs in your home. You'll learn how to do both of these things in this book. You'll even learn to how to utilize your Xbox as a remote front end to play back content.
Beyond these basics, you will learn advanced techniques like commercial detection and skipping, auto-expiring content, creating your own themes for MythTV, and utilizing plug-ins to do things like display weather conditions, RSS feeds, and photo slide shows.
Practical Building a PVR and Media Center PC takes a project-based approach to implementing your own MythTV setup. You get to pick and choose the functionality you want to install for your PVR, and will learn the details of everything from selecting hardware to advanced customization.
You will learn how to record your favorite television shows, store your DVDs for later playback, create a music library out of your CD collection, and even use your PVR for Voice over IP. Your PVR wouldn't be complete without a remote control or the ability to play back content to other TVs in your home. You'll learn how to do both of these things in this book. You'll even learn to how to utilize your Xbox as a remote front end to play back content.
Beyond these basics, you will learn advanced techniques like commercial detection and skipping, auto-expiring content, creating your own themes for MythTV, and utilizing plug-ins to do things like display weather conditions, RSS feeds, and photo slide shows.
- GenresComputers
Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
4 people want to read
About the author
Stewart Smith
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 7, 2007
For the uninitiated, MythTV is a video recording and handling package for Linux - it turns your humble Linux distribution into a home theatre and TV handling machine.
I originally bought this book for two reasons: one - I was struggling with MythTV and getting nowhere at the time, and two - if I did succeed in getting it working, I wanted to learn how to do more with it in the future.
This book has been only a partial answer on both fronts. It is a walk-through of installing MythTV on a Ubuntu based system, and as such has little troubleshooting help in it beyond avoidance of any pitfalls you may encounter along the way.
It does have some advanced uses documented in the book, and has yielded some nuggets of information I previously didn't have on how to use and operate MythTV, but in the end it is for new users of MythTV, and fairly Linux-literate users at that.
Do buy if you want to install and use MythTV for the first time. Don't buy if you want help with troubleshooting or advanced hacking of the system. That having been said, this is a well-written and competent book.
I originally bought this book for two reasons: one - I was struggling with MythTV and getting nowhere at the time, and two - if I did succeed in getting it working, I wanted to learn how to do more with it in the future.
This book has been only a partial answer on both fronts. It is a walk-through of installing MythTV on a Ubuntu based system, and as such has little troubleshooting help in it beyond avoidance of any pitfalls you may encounter along the way.
It does have some advanced uses documented in the book, and has yielded some nuggets of information I previously didn't have on how to use and operate MythTV, but in the end it is for new users of MythTV, and fairly Linux-literate users at that.
Do buy if you want to install and use MythTV for the first time. Don't buy if you want help with troubleshooting or advanced hacking of the system. That having been said, this is a well-written and competent book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review