MythTV Theming and UI Patch Contest

After a year and a half of development and two release candidates, MythTV 0.22 final is now available. Version 0.22 of MythTV, this popular free software project to watch and record television from your computer, brings a lot of new stuff, including a major overhaul of the Qt-based MythTV user-interface and its new MythUI library with all new capabilities. The MythTV project also announced today a competition for designing new themes for MythTV with some nice prizes.

• First Prize: A Hauppauge HD-PVR ($249 Value), A Schedules Direct T-Shirt, a free year of Schedules Direct service, and the inclusion of the theme into MythTV to ship with MythTV 0.23 (Due out approximately March 2010).
• Second Prize: A Hauppauge HVR-2200/2250 ($149 Value, model will depend on location of winner), a Schedules Direct T-shirt, and a free year of Schedules Direct service.
• Third Prize: A Hauppauge HVR-1200/1250 ($69 Value, model will depend on location of winner), A Schedules Direct T-Shirt, and a free year of Schedules Direct service.

Read the theming contest details and about the consolation prizes at http://www.mythtv.org/theming-competition
 
Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY4MQ

MythTV 0.22 Will Rock You!

This might be old news to you, but I've totally missed it. MythTV 0.22 Will Rock You!

This is not an actual screenshot from MythTv 0.22

I think it's been almost two years since I tried MythTv, and my experience wasn't exactly pleasant. Patrick Wagstrom (that wrote the post in the link above) highlights many of the points, I would bring up myself.
The one thing that is bugging me most about MythTv is certainly the lack of bling (which is still an issue today). Back then all the manual configurations would also make me give up halfway through the installation.
Today, I dualboot Ubuntu / Vista and run MS MediaCenter which fits my basic needs. Actually, the first open-source project I ever got involved with was MediaPortal, which only runs on top of Windows.

I'm still waiting for a slick and user-friendly Linux replacement, and I really really hope the near future will bring that. On this blog you might have read about Elisa . I am an Elisa lover! It just works, has very frequent releases and is super slick. Elisa has currently no TV support, but it is planed for later releases. Though this might still be far away, I'm really looking forward to this feature landing.

Back on the topic of this blog post. The news Patrick Wagstrom posted has made me reconsider MythTv and now I will have to take the next release for a test drive. The biggest change in the 0.22 release of MythTV will probably be the new MythUI library with all new capabilities.

Read more here:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUIDemoTheme
http://patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog/2008/12/11/why-mythtv-022-will-rock-you/
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.22