I deliberately made this extra section so M would read it. She’ll skim, probably yawning, through the technical stuff in the other posts. I’ll make this short and non-techy. ;o)
So was it worth it?
From the point of view of what the MythTV box can do, definitely. It can do the usual stuff that a PVR can do – pause and rewind live tv, record something and watch the beginning whilst it’s still recording the end. However where it comes into its own is on finding stuff to record. You can search for stuff, so unlike my commercial PVR, I don’t have to manually trawl through the program guide to find stuff. If there are multiple showings of the same show, it can record the one which doesn’t conflict with other stuff I want to record. All in all it’s pretty cool and so definitely worth it.
And yet… I have now ordered a box for phase 3. Phase 3 was supposed to mean buying the pieces and building a custom box, but it turned out expensive. I couldn’t get it in under £400. Which isn’t a lot, but for a PVR it is. I can buy one like mine for £150. It has a smaller hard drive and no cool search features but still. So instead of trying to build one, I bought a PC from Dell Outlet. Dell Outlet is where you can buy returned PCs at a discount. You can get some pretty good bargains. So I ordered one. Which means if I could have lived with the smaller disc space until it arrives, I could’ve saved myself a day and a half of effort. Effort which will in some ways be repeated once I have to set up the new machine.
So was it really worth it? Yes – because what else would I be doing other than slobbing around actually watching these programs I’m recording! Heh.
Of course the next problem is whether I can easily transfer the recordings to the new PC. But that’s next weekend’s problem…
(P.S. the observant amongst you will have noticed that today’s tuesday therefore yesterday wasn’t sunday. I wrote this yesterday but am only posting it now. Because of no internet access at home.
P.P.S. Did I mention I have no internet access at home???)