MythTV is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

home entertainment application with a simplified "

10-foot user interface In computing, 10-foot user interface ("10-foot UI"), also known as a 3-meter user interface (especially for international marketing), is a graphical user interface designed for televisions. Compared to desktop computer and smartphone user int ...

" design for the living room TV. It turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematic ...

streaming Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to ...

, a

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals ** Digital camera, which captures and stores digital ...

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

home entertainment system, or home theater personal computer. It can be considered a

alternative to

TiVo TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...

or Windows Media Center. It runs on various

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s, primarily

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

History

The MythTV project was started in April 2002 by Isaac Richards, who explained his motivation:

Features

* Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows * Completely automatic commercial detection and optional skipping * Intelligently schedules recordings to avoid conflicts * Interfaces with television listing sources such as XMLTV or PSIP * Interfaces with nonprofit subscription listings service Schedules Direct in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

. Schedules Direct delivers the same

Tribune Media Services Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media S ...

listings data that TiVo and other video recorders use. * Supports

ATSC Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like th ...

, QAM,

DMB-T/H DTMB (Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast) is the digital TV standard for mobile and fixed devices, developed in the People's Republic of China. It is used there and in both of their special administrative regions ( Hong Kong and Macau), a ...

and

DVB Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

(everything supported by

LinuxTV The LinuxTV project is an informal group of volunteers who develop software regarding digital television for the Linux kernel-based operating systems. The community develops and maintains the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) driver subsystem which i ...

)

high-definition television High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

* Supports Xv,

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

, and VDPAU video output * Supports H.264 codec * Supports VP9 and H.265 codecs as of version 0.28 * A backend server and frontend client architecture, allowing multiple frontend client machines to be remotely served content from one or more backend servers. A single computer can perform as both the frontend client and the backend server. * Plays recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary * Schedule and administer various system functions using a web browser-based interface * Controls a

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of s ...

using an infrared remote ( IR blaster), or

Firewire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

HDTV support

MythTV is capable of capturing

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

streams from any source that will provide unencrypted video. This means broadcast

and

content, as well as encrypted DVB content when using a tuner with an integrated CI module. Most U.S. cable and

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

providers use encrypted video only accessible through their own

es. Cable systems may provide some unencrypted QAM channels, but these will generally only be local broadcast stations, and not cable programming or premium channels. OpenCable devices are available to access encrypted content on U.S. cable systems, but as this is a full DRM system, and not just CA like DVB CI, every piece of hardware and software on the playback chain must be tested and licensed by

CableLabs Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs) is a nonprofit corporation promoting innovation as a research and development lab founded in 1988 by American cable operators. System operators from around the world are eligible to be members. Th ...

. At current, Windows Media Center is the only DVR software to meet these requirements, and only it, and other software using its recording libraries, can use these devices. In 2010, CableLabs relaxed the DRM restrictions allowing unlicensed devices to record ''copy freely'' content using these devices, however it is still entirely up to cable operators what content they provide flagged as such. As an alternative to direct digital capture, one can use an external decoder to receive the channels, and then capture using digital-analog-digital conversion (the

analog hole The analog hole (also known as the analog loophole or analog gap) is a perceived fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected wo ...

). A popular means of doing this conversion is to connect the component outputs of a set-top box to the

Hauppauge Hauppauge ( ) can refer to: *Hauppauge, New York, a hamlet on Long Island in the United States * Hauppauge Computer Works, a computer component company located in Hauppauge, New York ** Hauppauge MediaMVP, a network media player by Hauppauge Comput ...

HD PVR.

Modules

MythTV's add-on modules (plugins) include: * MythVideo plays various video file formats * MythMusic a music player,

jukebox A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to sele ...

, collection manager, and CD ripper * MythGallery online photo gallery manager * MythNews RSS feed news reader * MythWeather fetches

weather forecast Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th cent ...

s – including

weather radar Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly pulse- ...

– from the Internet * MythBrowser small

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

* MythGame frontend for game console emulators * MythWeb controls MythTV from a remote web browser * MythArchive DVD burner * MythNetvision streaming video player intended primarily for Flash-websites like

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

* MythZoneMinder frontend interface for a ZoneMinder system *

UPnP Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the n ...

AV MediaServer v1.0 compliant server: share media files with UPnP-clients The base system integrates with its modules. A system can be controlled with an infrared remote control using

LIRC LIRC (Linux Infrared remote control) is an open source package that allows users to receive and send infrared signals with a Linux-based computer system. There is a Microsoft Windows equivalent of LIRC called WinLIRC. With LIRC and an IR rec ...

, or radio remote control using kernel modules.

Operating systems

MythTV is available for many operating systems based on Linux or Unix, including Mac OS. The MythTV website distributes only source code, which must be

compiled In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

for the desired system; executable programs can be downloaded from various third-party sources. The software runs on and is officially supported by Microsoft Windows, but no official executable version was available; there are detailed instructions for compiling for Windows. All core frontend features work under Windows, including LiveTV, scheduling, and watching recordings, but most plugins do not work without additional patches.

Bundles

Notable projects that include a Linux distribution bundled with MythTV (and associated libraries) are: *

has several ports to support MythTV *

LinHES LinHES (Linux Home Entertainment Server) is a Linux distribution designed for use on Home Theater PCs ( HTPCs). Before version 6, it was called KnoppMyth. The most recent release (R8), for 64-bit machines only, is based on Arch Linux, though prev ...

is a bootCD derivative of

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, ...

. Its MythTV frontend can be run from the CD. An entire installation to the hard disk can be made in minutes. *

LinuxMCE LinuxMCE (Linux Media Center Edition) is a free and open source software platform with a 10-foot user interface designed to allow a computer to act as a home theater PC (HTPC) for the living-room TV, personal video recorder, and home automation ...

bundles MythTV with

Kubuntu Kubuntu ( ) is an official flavor of the Ubuntu operating system that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop instead of the GNOME desktop environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems. Kubuntu shares the same reposito ...

as the Linux distro, along with the Pluto Home automation suite. * Mythbuntu combines

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

distributions with MythTV. The Ubuntu community has built extensive resources for installing, configuring and troubleshooting MythTV. It was discontinued in 2016. *

Ubuntu TV Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

integrates MythTV into a television-ready interface (based on the

Ubuntu Unity Ubuntu Unity is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, using the Unity interface in place of Ubuntu's GNOME Shell. The first release was 20.04 LTS on 7 May 2020. Prior to the initial release it had the working names of Unubuntu and Ubuntu Uni ...

user interface). * Xebian is a distribution of

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

Linux for the

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...

game console and includes MythTV.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Client/server media players Free television software macOS media players Television placeshifting technology Television technology Television time shifting technology Video recording software Video software that uses Qt