The other big update to occur recently was an upgrade from MythTV 0.16 to the just-released 0.17. Aside from the usual bug fixes and prettier themes, the important features for me are:
1) A screen that lists all previous recordings. One of the frustrating things about MythTV was that there was no easy way to tell it to ‘forget’ that it had already recorded something and to get it again (in case you deleted it and want to watch it again, or the previous recording was poor quality or got cut off, etc.). You could work around it by fiddling with the duplicate matching settings, but it was awkward and annoying.
Now, in 0.17, you can finally use this new screen to remove its memory of a previous recording, so that it will automatically record the same one again the next time it sees it.
The example I ran into was that I needed to recapture one specific Dilbert episode, but there was no way to tell it to forget just that one and not recapture any of the others. I had to keep checking the ‘Upcoming Episodes’ list every few days until I saw it on the list and then added an override for that episode. That’s easy enough for something that repeats fairly often, but what if it might be months or years… Under 0.17 I could just go into the ‘previously recorded’ list, delete the entry for that episode, and then it would automatically re-record it the next time it was broadcast without me having to keep looking for it.
2) A new MPEG decoder library. The occasional system hangs I’ve been having might be related to either the realtime thread usage or XvMC, which I use to squeeze some extra performance out of this old box. Supposedly this new decoder is faster than the old one, so with it I might not need those other features, and with them off the system might be more stable. Here’s hoping, anyway…
3) Official Mac OS X support. Although you can’t run a MythTV backend on a Mac yet, the frontend support is fully fixed up now. I haven’t tried it yet, but theoretically I should be able to use the iBook to watch any recordings or even live TV anywhere within wireless range.