Hopefully OS4 will be stable enough to habdle this type of application. Windows2000 has proven not to be, in my case. It hangs every few days, requiring a tower case reset button press, as at that point not even CTRL-ALT-DEL does anything at all. I believe this is due to my TV capture partition on the hard drive filling up, and 'Doze isn't smart enough to handle a full drive in a reliable way, gives up and simply stops the computer. How hard is it for MS to tell an app requesting disk space that none is available, so that app can open a dialog window saying so, and terminate the disk access request in a system friendly manner? But no, Windows2000 either goes insane, or the ShowShifter app goes insane and 2000 allows it to stomp all over the system and toast the whole machine.
This isn't a media center PC, it's a home-brew project to make something Tivo-like but better than a Tivo when I add a DVD burner for archives) besides, XP Media Center edition won't let you play back your recordings ona different computer, which is stupid. Why shouldn't I be allowed to record shows I can't watch during original airtime, and play them back on a laptop I take on business trips??
I'm now trying to get Debian Linux installed and try out the MythTV software, but have had nothing but trouble getting this to a point that I can try to use anything, Linux still needs a great deal of work on installation ease, driver configuration/upgrading, and providing links to all additional software required by a particular app. So while this Linux/MythTV setup may very well be far more stable than Windows2000 has been, it's too difficult for most people to configure before use.
We need something that is 1) easy to install, configure, and use, 2) is a stable platform for this purpose, able to handle full disks and such without crashing, and 3) provides important features for home-theater use such as remote control input, ability to control external cable boxes, DirecTV/Dish Network/etc. receiver boxes via IR transmitter for situations where no PCI/AGP card has a suitable tuner available, and acces to a decent guide for your local TV scheduling. While I've seen Hans-Joerg mention in mailing lists that TV capture drivers shouldn't be difficult, there's more to such a thing than drivers. I'd love to see this happen for my Amiga, but we'll need to see someone put in the effort of developing the viewing/capture/external device control/etc. software system to use the driver. I also would like to be able to pause live TV or even rewind it, so I can visit the refridgerator or bathroom anytime I want to without missing anything, and rewind to replay something I missed due to my roommate that never shuts up. And this all must be stable enough for me to leave town for a couple weeks and come back to see it still running and responsive, even if the disk may have filled up with my scheduled recordings. It would also be nice to have background recompression features like Showshifter has to convert MPEG2 realtime captures into smaller DiVX files for archiving to CD or DVD. (My Athlon 1700+ XP isn't fast enough for realtime DiVX capture at better than 320x200 resolution that looks like crap, so no AmigaOne will be able to do it either)
