MythTV

Some time ago I really wanted to learn how Linux fits together better so I built a Linux-based PVR PC using MythTV. I used the excellent Gentoo as a base which has excellent documentation but forces you to build a system from scratch.

Over the years, running and upgrading this system has taught me much about how a Linux systems hangs together and this has aided me numerous times at work since Linux is a primary platform. The Gentoo docs and community meant that when an upgrade did break something there was always guidance. For those trickier problems, the act of diagnosing the system was invaluable. It wasn’t without its annoyances of course (such as the migration of Xorg from a configuration file to HAL and back again - grrr!).

MythTV was a good choice for PVR being flexible and reliable. I have no regrets.

However, given the systems hard drive is failing and how I consume media has changed (relying much more on catchup and streaming) I’ve decided to decommission this system and replace it with an off-the-shelf PVR. These have some of massively since I deployed my custom setup and finally have near parity.