Last weekend I attended the LugRadioLive2006 show held at Wolverhampton Student Union as an 'exhibitor' of MythTV. First of all - let me say that running a stand at a Linux expo, demoing MythTV in front of so many people is easily the most fun I've had in ages.
Let me say from the outset here that I'm not criticising in any way, shape or form, the developers or existing user base of MythTV, or even MythTV itself. I love my MythTV - enough to take it on the road and get pretty damn evangelical about it. No doubt people will flame me regardless of the disclaimer - I'm just passing the information on.
So. What information?
Undoubtedly the most asked question of the weekend was:
"Where can I buy a ready made mythtv system?"
On further digging it emerged that a large proportion of people (non mythtv users) believe myth to be very hard to install & configure. My own experiences couldn't be further from that and I did my best to communicate that to everybody I met. Exactly where this consensus comes from wasn't clear but I suspect that very early versions of MythTV left a very lasting impression on some people and word got around. Of course there are always going to be people who want to buy ready configured systems - and before you tell them to go out & buy a Windows MCE box consider this: Everyone who asked about ready made systems said they were willing to pay similar kinds of prices, if only for the benefit of not being locked into a proprietary system.
The next most frequent question wasn't so much of a question actually - more of a criticism.
"Why does MythTV depend on mysql? It's only a PVR program ffs, not some kind of megalomaniac search engine".
Quite. I think I managed to convince a few of the critics that having a database of some sort is a very good way to make some of mythtv's functionality easy to implement. Commercial flagging, programme guide data, editing recordings etc etc would all still be _possible_ without a central database but how else could they see it implemented? Flat files? Don't make me laugh! Anyway, I couldn't change everyone's mind about the specific need for mysql (que sera). I made sure to tell everyone I could that nothing is cast in stone - in fact a move away from mysql has been mooted but nothing has yet been decided (there always seemingly being bigger fish to fry).
I explained that a lot of great work has been done recently (work which is continuing) on reducing the amount of queries to the database, citing MythMusic as one example. This seemed to make some people a little happier.
With the amount of corporate activities at every linux event these days it was perhaps inevitable that the question of building & selling 'embedded' platforms built from/around MythTV came up a couple of times. Not necessarily something that a proportion of existing mythtv users would care about, but I thought it could be a very interesting route to take.
So that basically sums up the criticisms people had.
I initially had to point out to a lot of people that I was only there as a guy who likes MythTV - I'm not a developer & make no pretence of being a developer (okay so I once did a badly formatted patch & I've made a couple of themes - not the same thing ;-) ). Because of that I had to field a few questions along the lines of "why do you do this? why do you / don't you do that?". Heh. Occupational hazard at that sort of event I guess. I was told it might be a good 'PR' move for MythTV if a developer (or _qualified_ representative) were to attend events such as this. It's not my place to say whether or not MythTV is in need of better public relations, or even _any_ public relations - that's totally up to the people in control of the project.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that the subject of the friendliness (or lack of) of the MythTV community came up during the proceedings. I'm sometimes guilty of yelling "RTFM! RTFM!!" at users who don't ask smart questions, so I know how this is going to go. I for one will be trying harder not to yell in future. It seems to be the consensus that flaming never does _any_ community any good in the long run and I feel myself agreeing with that sentiment.
Now the good stuff :-)
People who'd never seen MythTV before were on the whole very impressed with what they saw, even without us being able to show them live tv (no signal in the building, something I want to rectify next time).
One or two people who had tried earlier versions of MythTV in the past were (quote) _inspired_ to try it again on the strengths of a demo I gave on the main stage.
I can't stress enough how amazing a hell of a lot of people think MythTV is. The critics were few, and I certainly didn't meet anyone who asked "why does mythtv _suck_?" (actually I tell a lie, but I'm not publishing his name).
Overall (in fact well over and above the rest) I, my colleague Ludovic and MythTV got a very very warm reception at the event.
Right then. I hope this gave you some useful insight. Remember my own position about MythTV in this post is clear - I really like it & want to shout it from the rooftops. All I'm doing is passing on feedback I got from people at the show.
Best regards,
Justin (IRC nick: Juski)