MythTV Boxes Main Features

MythTV Boxes are so much more than set top boxes to watch TV. This is just a short list of its advanced capabilities:

Pause, Rewind and Fast Forward Live TV

With any of the MythTV boxes, you can pause live TV, rewind up to where you started watching tv and fast forward to catch up to the live version.

This means that if you get interrupted while watching your favourite show, you can pause it and then come back and continue watching it from where you left it. You can also fast forward till you catch up to the live version. This process is called time shifting.

One Click Recordings with EPG

Thanks to the Electronic Programming Guide or EPG, your MythTV Box knows when program start and finish. What this means for you is that you don't have to spend hours setting the start and ending times to record your favourite show.

You can ask your box to record a show by pressing the record button of your remote control while you are watching it, or you can open the EPG screen, move around it, and when you find the show you want to record, just press the record button.

There is also a search EPG facility that allows you to look for shows alphabetically.

It can be set to start a few minutes before a show starts and to end a few minutes after a show ends, which is very handy for the normally out of time shows in Australia.

Your MythTV box automatically downloads the programming guide from the Internet every day on the background without you noticing it.

The only drawback of this feature is that to download the programming guide, a broadband Internet connection is required.

All MythTV boxes are equiped with an ethernet connection and an optional wireless wireless ethernet connection that connects to your home router to connect to the Internet and download the programming guide.

The EPG Data can be made available for all free to air TV Channels in Australia and optionally the Pay TV ones. The electronic programming guide is not directly supplied by Open Media Centre and it might contain schedule errors. The schedule normally includes 4-7 days in advance.

Backup to DVD your Favourite Recordings

With the MythTV Box, you can transfer to DVD your favourite recordings. That way you can backup your shows and then erase them out of the hard drive of your media centre, releasing the space for other recordings.

In most units in the market, your recordings are trapped in the box. After a while your only choice is to delete old recordings to allow space for new ones.

Truly HD 1080p Digital Output

Now you can watch live TV in truly digital HDMI 1080p digital format. Most set top boxes output the video in a format called component. Even though this format can be considered high definition, component output is analog not digital.

When your TV set gets a component signal it converts it back to digital to display it. There is always a slight loss of quality in this process.

When the output is HDMI, the TV set doesn't have to convert anything as it is receiving the video signal in its natural format: no conversions from analog to digital means no loss of quality!

Music Storage & Jukebox

MythTV Box supports a wide variety of media formats to play your favourite music files. You can import your existing CD's or transfer your music files (subject to DRM restrictions) to your MythTV Box.

You can also use it as a jukebox, create playlists and even save your playlists to CD.

Th jukebox has a few amazing visualisations to improve your music experience.

Video Storage & Playback

MythTV Box supports a wide variety of media formats to play your favourite video files. You can import your existing DVD's (some of them can not be imported due to copy protection restrictions) or transfer your video files (subject to DRM restrictions) to your MythTV Box.

You can download from the Internet information about your movies and even an image of the DVD box.

Play DVD's & CD's

The MythTV Box is also has fully featured DVD and CD players.

Network Server

The MythTV Box can become a network server when connected to your home network. You can use it as a storage server for your music and video files that can be accessed from Windows or Macintosh computers.

This feature makes it ideal for mp3 players such as ipods.