Freevo vs. MythTV on Debian Linux

For the past few months, I have been working on building a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) like Tivo, using a Linux system. I ended up building a relatively inexpensive system with the following components:

• IBM Thinkcentre S50 (off of eBay)
• Debian Linux
• Geforce4 MX w/ TV out
• Hauppauge WinTV
• Linksys 802.11b USB WiFi

When deciding on which PVR software to use for the system, I had two options. Freevo and MythTV. I searched the internet for a good comparison, but most were outdated. Here are the differences I found while using the two systems (correct me if I'm wrong):

MythTV

• Can pause/rewind live tv
• Requires QT/X, why do you need to run an X server on your TV?
• Requires MySQL
• Has a built in tv/audio/video player (codecs can be troublesome)
• No plugins for SNES/Genesis/NES emulators
• Packages are hard to find for some distros, a compile from source is recommended

Freevo

• Can run off the framebuffer, you can run it in X if you want to
• Uses SQLite (less resource intensive than MySQL)
• Uses Mplayer or TvTime for video playback
• Uses Mplayer or Xine for video playback
• Uses Mplayer or XMMS for audio playback
• Has many more plugins including most game emulators
• Cannot pause/rewind live tv
• Written in Python, easy to modify if you need to
• Packages are easy to get off the Freevo main site for most distros

Both

• Can record shows using an XMLTV schedule.
• Support HDTV capture cards
• Run on Linux
• Are Free and Open Source!

In general Freevo is easier to install, and easier to configure. I also think there is more momentum behind Freevo, more development is going into it. Finally, I like how Freevo is designed... it's structured using the UNIX design principles of creating something bigger our of various small parts. MythTV is more monolithic, which makes it harder to troubleshoot and adapt to your needs. Don't get me wrong, both can do the job, but I prefer Freevo :)

Links

Freevo
MythTv
Hauppauge

Last Updated: July 14, 2005