| Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC |  | Authors: Stewart Smith, Michael Still
Publisher: Apress
List Price: $29.99
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Rating:  13 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7 x 1.2
ISBN: 1590597796
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9781590597798
Publication Date: May 7, 2007
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 13
 Good Reading May 7, 2010
L. B. Little (Lumberton, Texas)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very informative book. I am building a Linux media box and the book helped a lot.
Great Book... July 9, 2009
Furball (USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Got this to install MythTV on an old PC with a PVR-150 MCE TV Tuner. Even though the book is more than helpful...it is several revisions behind the current version of MythTV which you can get for free. You do not get a copy of the version of MythTV they talk about in the book. This will need to be found on your own.
Even after reading the book and following the steps...still had trouble getting Mythbuntu/KnoppMyth/MythTV to work properly to record a program...any program at all. Working nights...I record shows with an old PC to watch at a later time. Not only did MythTV not record ANYTHING at all...the log showed where it did.
The problem with MythTV...even for someone like myself who has been around computers since the late 70's...is not this book...but the program itself. Unlike some of the Windows PVR programs...MythTV forces you to jump through WAY TOO MANY HOOPS with WAY TOO MANY STEPS to simply record a program. The Windows PVR program I use allows me to record a program in 4 steps or less...rather than requiring me to configure every aspect of every program every time I want to record something in MythTV. This is why I went back to Windows XP and the freeware PVR program I was using before. For some reason...the designers of MythTV have never heard the saying that less is more.
Once MythTV is as easy to use as some of the Windows PVR programs...they will get a great following. Sure it's free...but when the program will not do what it claims...I would rather pay for TIVO or use Windows PVR/MCE. At least those will work and not let me down.
 Practical MythTV April 13, 2009
Timothy C. Darr (Illinois)
The books was out of date in some areas. Mythtv has come really come along in the configuration and setup.
How to wathc TV using Linux February 24, 2009
Krasen Davidov
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is about how to watch TV using Ubuntu Linux. Nevertheless that in book is described for Ubuntu Linux after reading this book you may use this for other Linux distributions. This is an useful book.
Almost Completely Worthless July 21, 2008
Blake Watson (Winnetka, CA USA)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Look, I'm not going to say that these guys didn't try, or that this is a cynically written attempt to cash in on something, but this book is as close to worthless as I can imagine.
Now, again, this is not entirely the authors' fault. MythTV is highly dynamic. What's true today isn't true tomorrow. I'm a journeyman MythTV builder, and a lot of what I've learned in the painful progress I've made simply does not apply any more.
That said, a lot of stuff =hasn't= changed, and it's here where the book falls apart. They should have started with the basics of content flow, i.e., where is the media coming from? Because that's the first thing you need to know before you even decide if MythTV is right for you. (Over the air content, for example, is easily handled by Myth, while controlling a set-top box from a cable, satellite or fiber optic company is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.)
While support has been added since this book was written, the stuff they actually did mention that has been part of MythTV since its incpetion is not well covered. For example, to set up your MythTV backend, you have to select from various capture card types. There are V4L, MPEG2, DVB, etc.--how about explaining what these are? No explanations is the norm, and when there is an explanation it's often simply restating the on-screen text without actually clarifying.
Six months of having this book and I've never once found an answer to a question I had. Now, I don't go looking for product specific stuff, because (as I said) there's no way they could cover that, but just basic joints and cogs and so on.
See, the thing about MythTV is that if you have just the right hardware and a simple enough setup, it might take you fifteen minutes to set up. If you don't, it could take you weeks to set up, or you might never be able to do it.
To be useful, this book really should have explored =how= to troubleshoot. They couldn't do the actual troubleshooting for you--there are too many things that can go wrong--but they could tell you about the utlities and hardware settings that allow you see where your problems lie.
Maybe they just didn't have the space. But, as I say above, it makes the book almost completely worthless.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 13
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