MythTV

MythTV is a free and open-source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living room TV. It turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or home theater personal computer. It can be considered a free and open-source alternative to TiVo or Windows Media Center. It runs on various operating systems, primarily Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. The MythTV project was started in April 2002 by Isaac Richards, who explained his motivation: I got tired of the rather low quality cable box that AT&T Broadband provides with their digital cable service. It's slow to change channels, ridden with ads, and the program guide is a joke. So, I figured it'd be fun to try and build a replacement. Yes, I could have just bought a TiVo, but I wanted to have more than just a DVR – I want a web browser built in, a mail client, maybe some games. Basically, I want the mythical convergence box that's been talked about for a few years now. 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 and Canada. Schedules Direct delivers the same Tribune Media Services listings data that TiVo and other video recorders use. Supports ATSC, QAM, DMB-T/H and DVB (everything supported by LinuxTV) high-definition television Supports Xv, OpenGL, 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.