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If you want a free TiVo like machine read on...

    As the title says we are featuring MythTV today. It is a PVR or DVR (personal, or digital, video recorder) that is free, as in open-source.

    Some features are: 

• live-tv functionality such as pause, fast forward or rewind
• support for multiple tuner cards and multiple simultaneous recordings
• completely automatic commercial detection/skipping
• a fully themeable menu
• picture in picture (PIP) but this is available only if you have more than one tuner card
• EPG (Electronic Program Guide)
• scheduled recordings
• remote control through a web interface
• image viewer/slideshow
• DVD player
• RSS feed reader

    If all these features get you going you need to know that MythTV is not for everyone yet. There are out there pre-configured MythTV boxes that are pretty stable but if you want to buy one yourself it won't be that easy, but that is the price for those functionalities.

    For using it you need a basic configuration like the one below:

• a Linux distribution (we are going to focus on Ubuntu)
• a VGA card supported by Linux with an optional TV-out via composite or s-video
• 256MB (preferably 512) or more of RAM
• a CPU that meets your needs: 800Mhz for hardware-MPEG, 1500MHz if not using hardware-MPEG or at least 2800MHz for HDTV

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