Before getting into MythTV, it might pay to check out this review, first. See, Myth is not as easy to setup as some folks like to believe. Having said that, if you can get it setup right, the hours of video that you will enjoy will last for years. Great project if you have the time.

I’ve been a MythTV user since version 0.16, so I was happy to find out that version 0.19 is now available. MythTV 0.19 brings a number of improvements, new features, and added stability and usability.

MythTV describes itself on its home page as a “homebrew” personal video recorder (PVR), but thanks to its many available plugins, it’s actually a complete open source home entertainment system that lets you to watch and record TV programs, watch movies, view photos, listen to music, play games, and more.

My MythTV system includes a home-assembled 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 CPU on a VIA PT880-based motherboard, with 512MB DDR RAM, and an 80GB SATA hard disk used for the OS and recording TV shows. I have a RAID-5 array shared via NFS on an OpenBSD server for other media. The system has an ATI Radeon 9200 video card, a TV/radio tuner with BT878 chipset, and a custom-built serial IR receiver. Although my system doesn’t use the newest hardware, it gets the job done without problems. Source: Linux.com

[tags]intel,mythtv,pentium 4,raid-5 array,openbsd,ati radeon 9200[/tags]