Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC

MythTV is a powerful open source personal video recorder (PVR) application that runs on Linux. Developed for several years by volunteers, it offers a stable and extensible platform for automating all of the things you would expect from a PVR, and much more.

Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC takes a project-based approach to implementing your own MythTV setup. You get to pick and choose the functionality you want to install for your PVR, and will learn the details of everything from selecting hardware to advanced customization.

You will learn how to record your favorite television shows, store your DVDs for later playback, create a music library out of your CD collection, and even use your PVR for voiceover IP. Your PVR wouldn't be complete without a remote control or the ability to play back content to other TVs in your home. You'll learn how to do both of these things in this book. You'll even learn to how to utilize your Xbox as a remote front-end to play back content.

Beyond these basics, you will learn advanced techniques like commercial detection and skipping, auto-expiring content, creating your own themes for MythTV, and utilizing plug-ins to do things like display weather conditions, RSS feeds, and photo slide shows.

MythTV is a powerful open source personal video recorder (PVR) application that runs on Linux. Developed for several years by volunteers, it offers a stable and extensible platform for automating all of the things you would expect from a PVR, and much more.

Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC takes a project-based approach to implementing your own MythTV setup. You get to pick and choose the functionality you want to install for your PVR, and will learn the details of everything from selecting hardware to advanced customization.

You will learn how to record your favorite television shows, store your DVDs for later playback, create a music library out of your CD collection, and even use your PVR for Voice over IP. Your PVR wouldnt be complete without a remote control or the ability to play back content to other TVs in your home. Youll learn how to do both of these things in this book. Youll even learn to how to utilize your Xbox as a remote front end to play back content.

Beyond these basics, you will learn advanced techniques like commercial detection and skipping, auto-expiring content, creating your own themes for MythTV, and utilizing plug-ins to do things like display weather conditions, RSS feeds, and photo slide shows.

Stewart Smith is an Australian and a software engineer working for MySQL AB on MySQL Cluster. He started being a serious Linux user in the days of MkLinux pre-DR3 and remembers being thrilled with the arrival of a driver for his floppy drive. In 2003, he first saw TiVo and realized that TV could be made not to suck. Stewart had MythTV running very soon after that and has enjoyed enlightenment ever since. He has always liked writing his own software and continues to enjoy doing so. He is also involved in the local LUG (LUV&emdash;Linux Users of Victoria) and has been on the board of Linux Australia from 2003 to the present.

Michael Still released his first open source project in July 2000 and has been actively developing ever since. He has had a variety of articles published by IBM DeveloperWorks, and once made a tux out of fairy lights! He is the author of the recently published The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick (Apress, 2005). Michael grew up in Canberra, Australia, and now works for Google and lives in the Silicon Valley with his wife and two kids. Michael is a past committee member of AUUG, Linux Australia, and the linux.conf.au 2005 committee.