What's good and bad about Freevo?

March 19, 2004 7:15 AM

Freevo. Does anyone use it? How good is it? Can someone in the advanced-beginner stage of linux knowledge install it and use it without swearing a lot?
posted by Mayor Curley to computers & internet (7 comments total)

As an addendum to the right honorable Mayor's question (and considering I had to see his pixilated ass, I think he owes me), does anyone use SageTV for windows? I'm in the process of setting up a media system myself. Is the convenience worth the cost?
posted by jpoulos at 8:07 AM on March 19, 2004

Another option for linux, Mayor, is MythTV.
posted by jpoulos at 8:28 AM on March 19, 2004

Here's a good article outlining the difference between the two linux apps, and what it will take to get it all going. (Does no one here have experience with these things? Administrator! Please hope us!)
posted by jpoulos at 8:52 AM on March 19, 2004

I'm a reasonably experienced unix-head, and I've messed about with bouth MythTV and and Freevo. In my experience they were both rather flaky (which perhaps isn't surprising considering the compelexity needed). I've since gone with the traditional unix way of patching together a lot of single-purpose applications (mainly mencoder) with shell scripts, in combination with a tv guide screenscraper (think XMLtv before that existed) I wrote ages ago.

The only feature I don't have and miss is being able to pause live tv.
posted by fvw at 9:53 AM on March 19, 2004

I haven't tried it, but I've heard multiple positive reports -- some from sources I trust -- about KnoppMyth. You just download, burn, and boot the CD. I don't know if there's an equivalent setup environment for Freevo.
posted by majick at 10:29 AM on March 19, 2004

<not an answer to the question>

I was just over at my friends house and saw (and used) MythTV. I think that having a high quality video card is important for stability and performance.

</not an answer to the question>
posted by zpousman at 4:51 PM on March 19, 2004

Most people have had the least amount of problems using the Mandrake distro over Knoppmyth, from what I've heard anyway.

I've toyed with the idea of making a mythtv box but the motherboard to be used died so that project is on hold for now. Oh, and you probably shouldn't cheap out on the video card -- get a Happague (sp?) PVR 250/350. It's worth it. And The Inquirer is spreading a rumor that the new nvidia cards coming out this spring will have built-in hardware mpeg decoding. Nvidia is also very linux friendly.
posted by Tacodog at 8:23 AM on March 20, 2004