GBPVR vs Media Portal vs Mythtv

[phantastic]

My system 512Mb P4 3.0GHZ HT ATI Radeon with tv Out 160Gb HDD. PVR-250 and remote

I will start with the others first:
Mythtv:
Used Fedora Core 3 as Linux DIstro with Haupaugge PVR-250:
I eventually got this thing doing everything I wanted to do...autostarting on boot...remote button to restart daemons... Xine for dvd and mpg/avi/ogg playback. Took over 2 weeks to get everything configured properly. The video quality was never great though.


Pros:
If you are a linux buff go for it
Remote support excellent
Web Interface is extremely robust
TV Guide Easily updated and automated
Front Ends for Just about any OS...OSX, XBOX, PC...tested all 3 worked great
Once working very configurable
Open Source

Cons:
Linux blech updating anything is a royal pain
I just couldn't get the video quality where I would like it. (not horrible but worst of the 3)
Audio difficult to configure properly
Kind of made my dvd recorder useless in the box.... yeah it works but it isnt like ripping a dvd, making a data disk or burning an iso in windows
Limited capture card support

Media Portal
Pros:
Lots of stuff prepackaged
Live tv and recorded tv quality excellent
Opensource.
Easy to get started with...difficult to get fully functional

Cons
XMLTV what a pain took me a couple hours to get the guide and time in sync. I still dont know how I got it working right but eventually it did
SLOW real slow...
Menus are overly complicated. Made configuring the remote very difficult
Guide search function is horrible
Web front end is weak

GBPVR
Pros
Fast and slim...if you want to get as close to tivo here you go
Very easy to configure and automate. Up and running in a couple minutes tweaked in an hour or 2.
Plugins to add most or more of the features found in myth and media portal
Channel Guide is great
Importing channel guide is very easy
Supports many cards
Remote suport is excellent
Excellent web front end

Cons
Still some minor bugs to workout. You can workaround most
Not open source (maybe not a con you decide)


All around I have tried all 3 in the last month. MythTV 1st, followed by GBPVR and currently playing around with media portal. Probably going back to GBPVR once I resolve my current error (not making the program unusable or unstable just annoying and making livepreview unusable). The program moves very quickly and it is the easiest to use when comparing with TIVO. It is also by far the mode Wife friendly. Running on windows means the pc retains useability for other stuff (games apps etc). For linux buffs MythTV does too but not the average user. If the PVR has other uses the investment can further be justified over a TIVO or something else.

[mikerm19]

When I first built my PVR I was going to use Linux and MythTV. I had seen online that there were Linux drivers for all of the PVR cards. What they don't say until you actually go and get the drivers is the PVR-150 support is just getting started, which means young crappy drivers. After a few days I gave up.

Then I went straight to GB-PVR. I love it now, never gonna turn back.

[Darx-starz]

I started with Myth as I am a Solaris admin and I thought yup thats for me. What a pig though. I never got it working right. I then tried gb-pvr. I just couldnt get it working either. I thought you get what you pay for and so I went over to Frey. That was worse. I could never get the guide working properly. It would also crash all the time. So... I came back to gb-pvr and stayed ever since. This is one app that is worth paying for. When it goes GR that is

[gwyden]

Let see the mess that I have played with:

External Winfast PVR USB2 (not a hardware encoder so I was getting poor video quality) I also had ot use the package PVR software, lots of features but took too much CPU time to encode the video stream.

Purchased Avermedia 150 and a copy of Media Center 2005. Easy to play with, but limited to DVR-ms format =(

Moved on to SnapStream (Beyond TV) I could never get this working correctly.

Started in on GBPVR. I will never look back.

[reboot]

I also tried all 3.
Linux/MythTV...plain and simple Blech! Impossible to configure unless you're a Linux Admin/programmer.
Media Portal...decent enough. The wizard even screws things up, when you give it the info it's looking for, and still get's it wrong. Weather panel sucks to configure. XMLTV another PITA, hours wasted. 100% CPU usage 100% of the time, just putting the skin on the screen.
GB-PVR...Easy to set up. Easy to use. Easy to configure. Easier than Sage/Beyond pay-for-me-I'm-the-greatest crap.
PVR-250 on MSI KT4000a board, Athlon XP2500, 1gig RAM, XP Pro.

[rheslip]

I had similar experiences.

Tried the "easy, preconfigured" KnoppMyth. It installed and kind of worked in a half baked manner. I rebooted it, it bluescreened every time after that, I gave up.

Media Portal looked good, but configuration is a bit of a pig and I never really got it working right. Seems to be very much a work in progress.

GBPVR is very straightforward to configure and works quite well if you have the right hardware. Still took me many hours and many reinstalls to get it right. I am getting a bit frustrated with the bugs tho. Forced to upgrade due to bug - next release has more bugs forcing upgrade to next release etc. etc. I just want something stable, the feature set is fine IMHO.

Rich

[sub]

I am getting a bit frustrated with the bugs tho. Forced to upgrade due to bug - next release has more bugs forcing upgrade to next release etc. etc.

Thats pretty much what you going to have to expect for free application that one guy is developing, maintaining, supporting in his spare time. This is hugely complex type of application to write, and I'm the first to admit I'm stretched very thin and I just dont get the time to test things as much as I'd like.

That said, this current release is by far the best release we've ever had. Which bugs have been introduced that you are talking about?

I just want something stable, the feature set is fine IMHO.

Yeah I wish...one mans happy with the feature set, but hundreds of others would claim they just cant use it with out one more specific thing that they absolutely must have.

[Dubya]

Sub, your doing a fantastic job... One guy developing this whole application... I dunno how you find the time... Just trying to clean up a few skins can take hours... let alone write in new features. Keep up the great work!!!

Dubya

[jsteele]

Well, I spent weeks trying to get various releases of MediaPortal working and and stay running --- finally gave up. I installed GB and it was working inside of 20 minutes. If it hadn't been for a memory problem last week GB would be installed and running for TV in my house. Hopefully next weekend.

As 'sub' notes there's always just one more 'gotta have this' feature or widget. I think it is a terrific accomplishment for one guy doing the core and all of the fantastic developers creating plug-ins.

On the one hand it might be good if the core was open source, but on the other hand I think that may be one of the reasons why things like MP are still rough around the edges --- too many cooks. There are all sorts of tradeoffs.

[jsteele]

One more thought --- I hope that 'sub' has arrangement for the code in case he gets hit by a beer truck ;-)