TVSquad

The premiere episode of ABC's The Goode Family didn't do a great job of giving its titular family the kinds of three-dimensional emotions and motivations that make them more than just two-dimensional characters.

It seemed to doom the whole series to the bland, predictable taste of a tofu hot dog.

Last Wednesday's double feature of Goode Family episodes gave the family and even some of the lesser characters more depth and funnier situations. The Goode Family may not be so bad after all.

Want to try MythTV, but don't know the first thing about Linux? Mythbuntu 7.10 is to Windows Vista Media Center what Ubuntu 7.10 is to Windows. Or something like that. Anyway, Mythbuntu makes installing and configuring MythTV about as easy as it gets.

This is the first full release of Mythbuntu. We first looked at a public alpha this summer.

Mythbuntu is not distributed by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. But it is recognized as a community supported project. Basically, Mythbuntu is a stripped down version of Ubuntu Linux, with MythTV frontend and backend software thrown in. You can either download and run/install Mythbuntu from a LiveCD or you can install Mythbuntu packages on an Ubuntu machine to convert it into Mythbuntu.

Like Ubuntu, you can expect regular updates to Mythbuntu every six months.

[via Digg]

We haven't heard anything from Monolith Media in a while. The company puts together affordable Linux-based home theater PCs running MythTV software.

But this weekend the company announced its second generation of MonolithMC computers. MonolithMC v.2.0 will include:

• Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04
• MythTV 0.20.2
• Schedules Direct integration (which replaces Zap2it Labs program guide data)
• 1GB RAM standard
• Prices starting at $599.
• Hard drives up to 750GB

The MonolithMC looks like a great deal for anyone who doesn't want to futz with putting together their own MythTV system. It's not clear what kind of processor or TV tuner you get for $599. And one of the problems with any Linux-based media center is that you won't get CableCard support. But throw a few standard definition tuners and an over the air HDTV tuner in there, get a good antenna, and you've got a great low cost open source media center.

[via Darknet]

Interested in setting up a MythTV-based media center, but don't know enough about Linux? Just as Ubuntu is designed to make Linux accessible to the casual user, Mythbuntu is designed to bring media center software to the masses. Of course, that's what Windows Vista does, but for anyone interested in open source applications, MythTV is the way to go, and Mythbuntu makes installation a relatively painless process.

The current version is a public alpha, so don't expect everything to work perfectly. But if you download the disc image, burn it to a CD, pop it in your computer and reboot, you should load up a MythTV frontend. That's the part that lets you interact with media. If you want a fully functioning media center that can record record television shows, you'll want to install the backend as well. If you've already got a backend machine running, you can access it from the frontend included on the liveCD.

Still, the LiveCD is a great option for anyone who wants to see how MythTV works without having to repartition or reformat their hard drive.

Ubuntu and its siblings Kubuntu and Xubuntu are widely considered some of the easiest Linux distributions for non-geeks to set up and use. But that doesn't make setting up a Linux based media center any simpler.

Sure, you could just install Knoppmyth or Mythdora if all you want is a PC running MythTV. But what if you want a multipurpose PC?

Well, there's some good documentation for setting up a MythTV frontend, backend, or both on Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. A backend is a machine that can record TV shows and store photos, videos, and music. It acts as a server, letting frontend PCs on the network play back those files. Or you can install a frontend and a backend on a single PC.

The process isn't quite as simple as installing PC-based software like BeyondTV or SageTV, but the walkthrough makes installation about as easy as it gets.