Re: annoyances Digest, Vol 8, Issue 3

>
>As far as the list goes, I suppose it people aren't using it I will shut
>it down. 
>  
>
My bugbear is getting a PVR system up and running.  I'm not sure whether 
in the scheme of things this should be regarded as difficult or not, but 
the people putting the distros (knoppmyth and others) together really 
seem to cater to a rather limited range of hardware.

It _seems_ to me (I really wish I knew more about this) that under 
Windows you usually add a capture or DVD playback device and it gets 
registered somewhere, and then a host of various price and quality apps 
talk to the OS and use standard bits and pieces to playback DVDs or 
retrieve video from whatever device you have installed.  It either 
appears in the apps dropdown list or it doesn't.

With Linux however I'm abivalent -- on the one hand it's possible to 
figure out what's going on underneath of you have to.  On the other 
hand, you have to -- the module (which might need to be compiled 
(perhaps with special options))  needs to be loaded and the app needs to 
be configured to use that specific module -- and not by a drop down 
list.  The options and procedure varies enough between modules and apps 
that one needs to do some amount of research for each piece of slightly 
older or unusual hardware.

With windows the procedure is always the same -- clicky click click, 
"update drivers".  Browse to the inf file at it almost always just works.

To put all this in context, it is not hard to setup a relatively useful 
PVR on Windows 2000 with a Hollywood plus em8300 dvd decoder and either 
an old bt848 spirit tv card or a more recent lifeview "prime tv 34" 
card.  All the drivers & functionality are fine but the software 
available is atrocious. (P4 1.4 / 512Mb)  In Linux, Myth TV and mplayer 
and xine et al are all better than anything I've found available for 
Windows, but the system configuration can be a pain.

Happy to provide more details if required.   It's a shame there won't be 
a book though.

Cheers.