I tend to agree with your sentiments... to a point. However, I'd be dishonest if I didn't tell you that I'm not 100% convinced that MythTV will every be "the solution" for the average Joe-and-Jane-Home-User. Why? Well, the SQL backend stuff is a worry. However, MySQL doesn't always "lose it" when suffering a hard reboot. A lot of it has to do with your hardware. The other thing is that it *is* Linux-based. I have yet to see a device based upon Linux which doesn't require some sort of "power user intervention" on occasion. I even played recently with the Nokia 770 and found that it's as close to a consumer level device as I think Linux will get any time soon... but still if you want to get the best out of it then you're going to have to "hack it" eventually. Truly, the only way that Myth is going to function "out of the box" for the average joe-and-jane-user is to use its own database solution that's primed to the job. All of this should sit on top of a truly embedded RTOS kernel. Remember, the Linux kernel is still a retrofitted high school project despite its high visibility and profile. I'm not saying it's not ready to be used by a number of people (5 out of 7 home machines I have run Linux, and I installed it on my router) but the simple fact is that it's not designed for the average joe. Similarly, I don't think we'll see a Windows MediaCenter PC that's truly "home-ready" any time soon. The simple fact is that multi-purpose operating systems and their associated software are not designed for the embedded single-use device market. What happens when an MCE PC craps out? Well, you need some modicum of ability to fix that, too. Last time I hard-booted an MCE, it ran CHKDSK, rebooted again, then required the manual cleanup of some temporary files before it would play live TV again (though recordings worked great). Understand that Myth is NOT an attempt to get Linux into everyone's living rooms... at least I don't see it that way. Myth, MCE and their ilk appeal to a certain subset of society that tends to be slightly technical (Myth moreso than MCE), which is why I think that businesses that keep cropping up thinking a pre-built MythBox is going to make them rich are somewhat misguided. Nice concept, but we're no closer to that objective today than we were when Isaac started all this. Sorry about the rant here, it's just that I have felt this way for a long time. Although my MythTV box has a great WAF from my SO, I have no doubt that in the event that I were to be somehow taken "out of the picture", the Myth box would run for a few more weeks, maybe months... then it would break... then she'd buy a Tivo. She's just not technical, and doesn't care much to learn much about the guts of my Mythbox. That's a simple fact of life... if I weren't here then she'd either do without or buy a Tivo. Now Tivo... there's something that's close to the ideal. Sure, it uses a Linux kernel (or at least early versions did... haven't kept up with development there in a while)... but there's a HUGE amount of custom code in there designed specifically to keep the device in the living room. Simplification... and the support of a company (now several) which will answer a phone call. Myth strives a *lot* higher than Tivo... reaching to exceed even MCE's capabilities... but in doing so adds complexity and puts that day of "Myth in every living room" that much further away. Of course, that may not be an attainable goal at all (see my earlier remarks) Little OT... but it had to be said :)
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Ryan Rawson
Sent: Thu 1/26/2006 1:35 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Cc:
Subject: [mythtv-users] Mysql complains at me
So I had to powercycle the computer that runs mythtv. Luckly my
filesystem is journaled (ext3 and xfs) so I didn't have to wait long,
but wait, surprise for me in my mailbox:
Subject: WARNING: mysqlcheck has found corrupt tables
The debian packaging of mysql runs check tools on system boot.
So apparently my mythtv tables may or may not be corrupt. The rest
of the message just indicates that some tables weren't closed
correctly, and now people are accessing them.
Now I don't really want advice how to fix this, since I don't have
the time or interest to fix it (and I'm getting rid of cable
anyways). But I'd like to say that as a power-user who just wants to
be an end user, this is a very bad experience. The one instruction
for fixing it involves like 10 steps. I'm not really interested in
this, I'm really interested in watching my TV, not databases.
My engineering hat comes on, and says - this is intolerable. Mysql
isn't really helping here, and maybe mythtv should at LEAST offer the
option of using a database that doesn't need care and feeding after
system crashes/hard reboots. My prime vote would be for postgresql.
At this point I cannot really recommend mythtv to anything less than
a power developer. Fixing corrupt mysql tables is NOT cool and not
at all interesting.
-ryan
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