[Discuss] MythTV: from bad to worse. Start over?

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Thanks for all the comments!  One direction I've thought of going is DLNA
front-end hardware to replace my somewhat-old Acer Revo front-ends.  Now that
those can be had in the <$100 price range (and the functionality is
increasingly getting built into TVs and BluRay players), it's only a matter of
time before one of those products becomes more compelling than the d.i.y.
Linux solutions.

It looks to me like Freevo is suffering a fate similar to MythTV.  These
software packages don't age well as hardware platforms (and the required
device drivers) surge ahead year by year.

So I guess what I'm thinking of is a DLNA hardware solution for playback of
networked DVD images, and some independent solution for PVR.  Off-the-shelf
products like TiVo are too limited:  ever since the days of VHS, I've been
collecting broadcast videos (mainly news coverage of historic events,
sometimes other things).  MythTV doesn't directly support PVR archival through
its UI, but at least it's easy enough to 'mv' the files from its temp storage
into a separate archival volume where it can be played through any other
software.

Wikipedia's list of PVR software for Linux also includes DVB Vulture,
Tvheadend: really slim pickings.  UPnP/DLNA server software that I've
identified are MediaTomb, Rygel, Twonky; VLC is the most advanced client;
alas, none of those has any support for TV tuners and/or schedules.  The most
comprehensive list of PVR software seems to be located at this URL:

 http://www.schedulesdirect.org/approvedsoftware

It's hard to make sense of all this:  maybe if someone put up $50 million into
funding an open-source startup, we could put meaningful muscle into solving
the problem.  But alas there's no business model for repaying the investment. 
*Sigh*.

-rich