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<p>
I think a lot of the people who are really afraid of the "sky falling"
with the recent news<br>concerning zap2it need to relax. I am quite
confident that the MythTV developers will come<br>up with a solution,
and that it will work.<br><br>Unfortunately, I think what the MythTV
developers will come up with, though it will work, will<br>be a
short-term solution. I think we in the MythTV community should give
serious<br>consideration to establishing a commercial partnership of
some sort. I understand the<br>reluctance of open-source projects to
form commercial partnerships, due to the fear of the<br>open-source
ideal being diluted with commercial constraints. But it can work. For<br>example,
the Linux Wine project is a successful commercial partnership with a
company<br>called CodeWeavers. And one of the foundations of MythTV --
QT -- is itself an<br>open-source/commercial partnership.<br><br>Here
is what I envision. MythTV is extremely rock-solid on the back-end. It
just works, and<br>works extremely well, almost no matter what kind of
hardware you through at it. If it has a<br>Linux driver and the
hardware itself works, the MythTV back-end will use it with few (if
any)<br>problems. Where MythTV has most of its weaknesses (and
complaints) is with the<br>front-end. For example, I have found myself
complaining a time or two about not being<br>able to successfully burn
a show to DVD without something or other making the DVD<br>unwatchable
on a standalone DVD player. (Motion 'fringes' or lack of A/V sync).
What I<br>envision is a partnership with a company like SageTV to make
their front-end work<br>seemlessly with the MythTV back-end. I know I
would gladly pay for a good front-end if it<br>solved all the problems
I've encountered with the MythTV front-end, even if it ran only on<br>Windows.
We could continue to maintain our Linux-only open-source front-end,
and a<br>commercial Windows front-end would be available for those
people who would be willing<br>to pay for it. In return we could get a
solid source of TV listings thrown in for the partnership.<br><br>(BTW,
as a fringe benefit, it would solve our problem of lack of a good
Windows front-end<br>for MythTV. The WinMyth project sucks, to be
totally blunt about it)<br>
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