I've seen the blurbs about Ubuntu TV being able to receive from cable and it has EPG and so on, and I'd love to install it on a regular PC that is currently running Windows Media Center.
I don't merely want to have a media player; I specifically want to be able to watch and record live TV via a tuner expansion card. I have tried installing MythTV earlier, but I failed miserably because the instructions I used were US-centric but I'm in Austria (Europe). I couldn't find a way to make the TV tuner work right.
I'm concerned that this time, again, Ubuntu TV will only work really well in the USA.
Given that I'm in non-US country "X", what are my chances of getting Ubuntu TV to work well, specifically with regard to receiving local-region EPG data and also aerial and cable TV signals in PAL and DVB-T formats?
Best Answer
Firstly, UbuntuTV is currently a demonstration product. However, Canonical is a UK-based company with international appeal - the screenshots of the demonstration EPG have UK channel logos in them. The UK is in the process of converting to entirely digital TV broadcasting, so it would be odd for it not to be supported in the finished product.
As a UK MythTV user for over 5 years, DVB-T has worked really well for me. I found it much easier to set up than analogue tuner cards, especially in more recent releases of MythTV. It's also far less CPU hungry than using analog tuners.
My current MythTV installation is still running off the Mythbuntu Jaunty (9.04) release at this current time, and I'd expect it was even easier in newer releases. I'd encourage you to give MythTV another try, since UbuntuTV will not be released for some time.