Monolith Deliver MythTV Without The Nasty Install
One thing we love is free open software, especially when it is of very high quality. We have followed the free media center apps for many years now, mainly
MythTV and
Freevo. These are very robust and fully featured media centers that run on Linux and are completely free. MythTV is the more mature of the two and has a wider adoption in the world.
One of the downsides of MythTV, Freevo and the other open source packages is that they tend to be hard to install and they require you to have at least one Linux machine in your home, not to mention experience with the Linux OS. This tends to be enough to turn most people without a little tech savy off. We have tried to tell people how great it is, but once they realize they can't buy it and need to install and configure it they get turned off very quickly.
We can't blame them at all. As any reader of this site knows we are all about things working out of the box. We don't mind having to configure systems and tweak settings, but your average person doesn't want to, or need to, deal with that. So with Monolith releasing a pre-built system running MythTV is a huge step forward and one we find very encouraging.
Monolith has bundled MythTV with a pretty standard PC running
Ubuntu Linux. It doesn't sport the fastest processor out there or the highest end graphics card, but it does give you enough to run a fully functional MythTV system. The beauty of MythTV is that you can run it on one box, like Monolith has done, or break it up to multiple boxes that each do a separate part of the equation. Of course doing it that way is really for the hard core and someone with a lot of money and and technical know-how.
The Monolith people have wrapped it all up in one convenient package and delivered to the masses. There is no configuration needed or worries about having the right hardware, as they have provided it all for you. It comes with a 400GB hard drive so that you will have plenty of storage available for you movie collection. The included DVD burner will allow you to rip your current DVD's to the system with very little effort.
We do admit that it is a little bit pricey starting at $650, but for the amount of functionality you get and for the amount of headaches that are saved we really don't see that as a big price to pay. If you stack MythTV up against the latest Windows Media Center you would be hard pressed to find a place where the Windows offering beats MythTV.
All in all it is a great system that will make anyone purchasing it very happy. And one of the beauties of the system is that you can always add to it as new functionality changes. Try that with the Windows system. Having an open system is a great benefit to the consumer since they have the option to update or change the system as they see fit and not how some company says they should use it.
If anyone is currently using this system or one like it we would love to hear from you with your experiences and thoughts.
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Posted by David Ficocello at September 14, 2007 11:38 PM
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