Princess Fix IT

Oooh. Keep us posted. I was sniffing around the MythTV site a few months ago. I've been pining for a TiVo, but I just can't justify the $650. I built my wife a sweet PC for $450 and I could do a LOT more with a PC than a TiVo.

The secret to making this a real sweety is building a PC that's as silent as possible. Otherwise (whir!) your (squeak) viewing (beep. beep) experience will (crunch) suffer.

I haven't looked at MythTv, so it may be easier than how I go about it but here's what I did:

For my secondary box I bought an ATI 7800 All in Wonder, a 120Gig HD, and I record real nice high rez MP2 files. Drag those into Adobe Premier and I edit out the commercials, chop up the shows, and wallah, nice large DivX files. All I need is DVD authoring software and I'm set.

Couple of comments:

#1: MythTV is more like a complete Tivo. No commercial chop yet, but way easier than hand-recording.

#2: Premiere is $700. For that, I can build a whole MythTV box and have money to spare

#3: DivX doesn't go with DVD recording, necessarily. You want to stay with MP2.

I've been pondering doing a MythTV, but I got a ReplayTV already, so it's kind of moot.

#1: The ATI stuff is pretty good actually. About my only complaint is no TIVO like set it and forget it for certain shows feature

#2: Well yeah, if you pay for your copy.

#3: Crank it up to 8k/s and you get quality rivaling that of MP2, at about half the size. I converted them back to MP2 and wasn't able to notice that much of a difference between the edited conversion and the original.

And after reading about MythTV, I find it isn't compatible with All in Wonder. Damn ATI and their stupid driver monopoly. It's gotten so I can't install their codecs on a box that doesn't have a Radeon card in it.

You know, being somebody who lives off the fact that pay for software, I'm not really agreeing with your attitude on Premiere.

If it's good enough to use it, it's good enough to buy it. Or go get an Open Source tool.

- Robert

off the fact that /people/ pay for software. Never mind my typing, I've got a sugar low...

I live off of software development also, but I'd never pay for a corporate tool that's high priced and I would never pay for anyway...if I ever used it to make money, I'll pay...I pay for virus scanners and firewalls, and DVD authoring softwre, because they are reasonably priced for the consumer market. I'm learning how to use XSI also and fuck me if I'm going to pay for that so I can better learn the tools of my trade.

Interesting attitude. If you like the price, you pay, otherwise you'll just steal. I think I'll apply that to my next car...

Especially given that there IS an Open Source equivalent for the Software you're using. It's not even like they're the only ones in that market.

There's also ULead Video, reasonably priced. I take it you don't like the features enough?

I have to agree with Groby on this one - I've gone completely legit on my home PC. I don't have a single pirated piece of software anymore. As he points out, our livelihood depends on it.

Besides, there are plenty of cheaper alternatives for some of the more expensive things like sound editing software. I'm not going to shell out $400 for Sound Forge, but Cool Edit Pro was reasonably priced (although now its Adobe Audition, and I've noticed they jacked the price up, but no fear, I get a free upgrade).

Granted, it helps the bank account to have friends at Microsoft who can get you stuff from the company store at discount.