Welcome to my new Myth TV blog

I am working towards implementing MythTV at home, as an alternative to Sky HD+. I have been a Sky+/multiroom subscriber for 6 years now, and have been a Sky HD+/multiroom subscriber for the last 3 years. I have paid handsomely for the privilege of watching so many repeats 🙂

I have been thoroughly dissatisfied with Sky+ for quite a while, but having said this, but having said this, if I had the opportunity to upgrade to a Sky HD+ quad tuner box, which was connected by ethernet (wired or wireless) to up to 6 other sky boxes elsewhere in the house, then I probably wouldn’t bother implementing my own client/server TV/media streaming solution, which obviously carries a large, upfront cost.

Problems with Sky+

1) Recording 2 programmes at once while watching another would appear to be enough, but this breaks at primetime. Because Sky doesn’t correctly record perfectly from the start to the end of each programme, you have to add 10 mins to the end, to ensure you don’t miss the cliffhanger ! This has a knock-on effect if a recording is starting on another channel, and it’s therefore quite easy to get a clash.

2) When you get a clash, as there is no way to attribute priority to recordings, you have to be in front of the TV when the clash occurs, otherwise there’s a good chance that the recording you wanted, above all else, will not take place.

3) There is no way to archive the material. This is fraught with problems, as the original programme maker/broadcaster is also probably selling DVDs with the material on and doesn’t want you to be able to keep it. However, keeping it is entirely possible with a Sky box if you have a big enough hard drive (1TB now available).

4) Tuners and recorded programmes on sky+ box are only accessible to that box and not to the others.

5) Sky+ cannot be a central archiving location for all media (ripped DVDs, recorded TV, ripped FLVs (e.g. Youtube), MP3s/lossless or other types of music, family photos and clips from the family video camera), so it could NEVER be called a Media CENTRE.

6) Sky+ and multiroom boxes are bespoke and therefore cannot be expanded on to perform other functions. For instance, although you may not practically want to, why couldn’t you watch TV, while chatting on MSN, while searching on iTunes or Amazon for the name of a song ? Only possible if the media CLIENT is a commodity device, with the most cost effective example being an Atom-based PC with HDMI out and VDPAU-capable (HD content decoding) inbuilt video card.

Other posts to follow…