MythTV
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MythTV is a GPL open source application for Linux designed to run a homemade personal video recorder. It was created originally in April 2002 by Isaac Richards, who says, on the project's website:
- I got tired of the rather low quality cable box that AT&T Broadband provides with their digital cable service. It's slow to change channels, ridden with ads, and the program guide is a joke. So, I figured it'd be fun to try and build a replacement. Yes, I could have just bought a TiVo, but I wanted to have more than just a PVR -- I want a webbrowser built in, a mail client, maybe some games. Basically, I want the mythical convergence box that's been talked about for a few years now.
As of October, 2004, the project is in a very usable state at version 0.16, a publically accessible CVS server, and several active IRC channels and mailing lists. The software supports any TV tuner card which is completely supported by the Video4Linux or Video4Linux2 kernel drivers, as well as the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR PCI card tuners (and some similar cards) which have the iTVC15/16 hardware MPEG-2 compression processors, using drivers from the IvyTV project (currently in version 0.2rc2, but also currently being heavily developed by Missouri PBS tv engineer Chris Kennedy).
Over time MythTV's architecture has allowed it to evolve into multi-functional home entertainment center. MythTV is extensible with add-on modules (plugins), which for version 0.16 include:
- MythVideo: video management module
- MythMusic: music player and music collection manager
- MythDVD: DVD management add-on
- MythGallery: image gallery management module
- MythNews: RSS feed news reader
- MythWeather: weather forecast
- MythBrowser: a small web browser for a living room
- MythGame: frontend to games
- MythWeb: web interface for MythTV
- MythPhone: SIP phone add-on module
The entire system is fully integrated and allows full control over infra-red remore using LIRC for Linux
