I'm evaluating both Freevo and MythTV to use a front-end for my music, movies, videos, etc. I would like to hear from anyone who has used both of these programs to comment on which they thought was better, and why.

This isn't much, as I haven't used both, but I did ponder and research this same question last year. I ended up going with mythtv. The differences show up in how you plan to use them - Freevo seems easier to extend on your own due. I don't remember the specific technological or feature reasons for going with mythtv, but I chose mythTV primarily because it seemed to have a larger body of documentation and support, and I anticipated I would need a lot of help. Just my 2 cents.

Does freevo have commercial cutting yet? Last I looked, only MythTV had this when I looked at it, Freevo, and DVR...
Unfortunately, MythTV is the only one that locks you into using MySQL. The others can use PostgreSQL, IIRC...

I'm going through deciding between the two myself. I've just set up freevo and can say that the setup was extremely easy on Ubuntu 6.10. A few apt-get's, edit a single configuration file, and TV, music, DVD, and photo galleries magically work. While freevo is very easy to set up, I believe mythTV has more features, at the expense of being way more complicated. I think freevo is a good place to start, unless you love SQL. I think I may give mythTV a try as well, but I'm glad I chose freevo first.

I went with Freevo because I was only looking for a player for video, music, and photos. I didn't really like Myth because it seem too clunky and while I don't want to say complicated to setup, was a lot more effort then Freevo.

i have a mythtv box and i do admit it is a pain to install on some flavors of linux but the one i have going after trial and error is really great and does not need any upkeep at all, and has its own built in upnp server.

If you don't feel the need to do everything from scratch, KnoppMyth is an extremely easy solution for trying MythTV. You can have a system up and running in under an hour.

I looked at both, also, and went with MythTV.

This was my analysis, which you can take with a suitable amount of salt: Freevo seems to be more of a "media management frontend." It does TV recording, and will import DVDs and CDs and photos and other stuff, and allegedly has a pretty nice interface for managing it all. The codebase is supposedly pretty clean, and if you're into stuff like that, it's pretty easy to extend on your own.

However, it doesn't do pause/rewind/fast-forwarding of live TV. I don't know why, because it seems like if you can record and watch something later, you ought to be able to record to a buffer, and provide 'pause live TV' functionality ... but it apparently doesn't, and somewhere around I even heard an interview where one of the Freevo developers basically said 'MythTV has us beat on live TV viewing.' I think their logic is that once you get all your favorite programs set up to record, you won't really care about watching live TV anymore, which may definitely be the case for some.

MythTV, on the other hand, seems to start off from basic Tivo-esque features, including live TV pause/ff/rew, and then builds up from there. Its core features (live TV and recorded TV, with auto commercial detection and delete!) are quite solid, but some other things feel like hacks or addons. When you play a DVD, for instance, it's a different program that the one used for TV recordings, so the controls are slightly different by default. Nothing huge, but you're aware that you're using an agglomeration of parts and not a monolithic application. Sometimes navigating around requires a lot more keypresses and navigation through menus than it seems like it should.

MythTV requires that you use MySQL. It uses the database for practically everything, from storing program data, to configuration settings. Some people seem to really hate this, but I don't really see it as a strength or weakness. It does all the MySQL setup automatically, so it's not like you have to do anything. The only situations where I think this would matter, would be if you had some huge SQL server around already, that you wanted to use (rather than running the DB on the backend)...but this is not a typical setup.

I'm sure that there are situations where Freevo would be most appropriate; maybe where you want to have a nice interface to access lots of types of media, but don't really care about live TV watching. But I wasn't going to make a "Tivo" and have my SO ask me "so ... how do I watch TV on it?" and have to tell her that she can't do basic Tivo features like pause and rewind. That would have been bad. :)

I've heard anecdotally that Freevo is easier to setup than MythTV. Unless you really understand Linux, or really enjoy pain, I would recommend against installing MythTV yourself. I tried, on top of Ubuntu, and there were a lot of little Catch-22s that drove me nuts (I consider myself moderately experienced with Linux; not a total noob but not advanced, either). Knoppmyth or Mythdora, which is Myth+Debian or Myth+Fedora respectively, are the way to go here. (I went with Knoppmyth, because I'm more experienced with Debian-based distros.)

The biggest thing that I learned, is that you need to stop thinking about MythTV as "just another application." Installing Myth isn't like installing Firefox. A MythTV box is an APPLIANCE. If you keep that in your mind all the time, you'll probably have an easier time of it than I did initially.

For the record, now that it's all working, the SO really loves the MythTV box.

MythTV does not require an external player for mainstream formats, including DVDs

MythTV does not require an external player for mainstream formats, including DVDs

And for the formats that do require, say, mplayer, you can configure them to use the same keys all the time, or use LIRC to make it pretty seamless... With myth, the possibilities are endless...

The recent development collaboration/merger of Freevo and the Geexbox projects might mean good things for Freevo...

http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

I'm wondering the same question as the original poster, but with the following addition: I won't be using PVR functionality. I'm simply looking to do a front-end box for music, ripped DVDs, etc. Would that favor one vs. the other?

I'm wondering the same question as the original poster, but with the following addition: I won't be using PVR functionality. I'm simply looking to do a front-end box for music, ripped DVDs, etc. Would that favor one vs. the other?

I would think it favors Freevo, for simplicity and ease of setup on Ubuntu. If you need Myth capability later, you could switch at that time.