One of several things I never got around to blog about is my experience with
MythTV (which, in case you don't know,
turns your pc into a tivo, given a suitable tv decoder card and the mythtv
software). To make up for the lack of a more detailed post, let's just recap:
I had set it up a little over two years ago, on what was then a 'possibly
temporary'
Kubuntu box. Well the box is
still there and still running Kubuntu, four releases later, and MythTV only
got easier as Ubuntu now includes the decoder drivers. So far no worries.
TV schedule information had always been provided via the 'free as in beer
if you answer a question or two' zap2it
subsidiary of the for-profit Tribune publishing company (i.e. the folks who
own the Chicago Tribune, Cubs baseball team, WGN TV station around here and
what have you, and are in the process of being sold to Sam Zeil). As had
been noted in other places, that 'free' service is no more, and a seemingly
cooperatively-run 'small fee' service has been set up by a few volunteers at
schedulesdirect.
So I just switched, and for the benefit of anybody sitting on the fence about
this, the switch is trivial:
- If need be, add 'feisty-proposed' to apt's sources.list file to get the
new MythTV 0.20.2 release directly from Ubuntu.
- Install MythTV 0.20.2 which takes as little as
wajig update;
wajig dist-upgrade
- Follow the instructions in
this
email, in particular point 4) about re-creating lineup info
- sit back and enjoy
Including the signup at schedulesdirect, the whole thing took maybe ten
minutes. Not bad. Now I only have to find some spare time so that the
backlog of unwatched episodes of the
Daily Show does not
grow much beyond six months... Oh, and last but not least, I'll have to pony
up the fifteen bucks for the subscription once my trial is up next Sunday.
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