MythTV 33.1

MythTV is one of those few remarkable projects that have been around for so long they've become part of the open source canon (a little like KiCad!). It was first released over 20 years ago, and I personally used it as a daily television-recording solution, video player, and music center for five years, between 2004 and 2009, until my interest in live broadcasts waned and the Internet took over. Back then, I was using a video grabber to digitize the analog output from a satellite receiver in coordination with an LIRC infrared beamer to send channel signals. A successfully recorded program required a delicate balance between show timings carefully scraped from a website, the infrared beamer successfully sending a channel change code at the right time, the receiver interpreting that code correctly, and the grabber starting correctly with enough back end storage for whatever was being recorded. Remarkably, after a steep learning curve and considerable configuration effort, it worked faultlessly for years, running on a big-box PC hidden inside a clothes chest.

Since then, the DVB standard for digital television took over those analog transmissions, and the Internet replaced everything with streaming. We now have terabytes of solid-state storage, the Raspberry Pi, and few devices accepting infrared remote control. Projects such as Tvheadend, the DVR digital video recorder, Kodi, and OpenELEC make my old MythTV setup feel like a relic. But MythTV survives, and even thrives, because it still does things all those other tools can't do – like run forever. Its front end is still perhaps the closest match to the graphical front ends you get with a commercial cable or satellite service, and can be installed as a module in Kodi. The back end controls your hardware, and remains bulletproof after a not-insubstantial setup, with a separate database back end for channel and program guide data. Each element can be run on a separate device, with many people running the front end on their screens, for example, with a back end tucked away to manage recording schedules and video files.

The plugin system remains one of MythTV's best features, letting you fine-tune your system to your exact needs, including gaming, news, weather, web browsing, home security, image gallery, and music plugins. MythWeb is worth the entry price alone, because it implements what remains the best program guide and recording front end in open source, plus it enables convenient access to your movies and music and other plugins, all through a web page. And the latest releases keep adding new features, along with a longer term goal of modernizing and restructuring the code. Recent updates have added a new waveform view in the music player, new versions of FFmpeg, a new start-up page, better DVD and Blu-ray playback, and hundreds of individual fixes. Best of all, and thanks to the project still being actively developed, you can be sure the time you invest getting everything set up will be worth it. You'll probably be able to run MythTV for another 20 years. It will quietly record whatever you're searching for, removing any advertising, and converting the video into whatever format is most convenient for you. It may be unglamorous, but it's still the best way of taming the wild frontiers of digital television.

Project Website

https://www.mythtv.org

MythTV is a brilliant digital television recording platform, with powerful ad-removal capabilities and a standalone front end that integrates with Kodi.

Another benefit from MythTV's long history is that it has mature MediaWiki-based documentation that the community keeps up-to-date.

Bridge simulator

Thorium Nova

When you read that this game is a "bridge simulator," your first thought might be that it's a recreation of the tricky card game. It's not, nor is it a game like Bridge Constructor, where you're tasked with traversing some kind of chasm or river. This bridge simulator takes its inspiration from Star Trek, rather than structural engineering, and the bridge in question is the command center for a spaceship. Thorium Nova is a sequel to Thorium, which was the developers' first attempt at a space-base bridge simulator. True to a real command bridge, there are different stations for controlling different aspects of the ship, including captain, navigation, tactical planning, engineering, and communications. Each role has its own interface, its own skill set, and its own set of challenges. Most importantly, this is a multiplayer game, with a different player taking control of a different station, and everyone needs to work cooperatively to make the ship work.

The game itself runs on a server and other players connect through a web browser. By default, all of this is automatically set up when you first run the game. One of the main aims of the game is to be as accessible and as beginner-friendly as possible, and being browser-based means almost anyone can join. When players do join, they can choose their own station, or be assigned one by the flight director controlling the server part of the game. Due to the alpha state of the game, there are currently no missions, but it's the flight director and the team's task to set their own objectives. The pilot and navigation station is the most fully developed, letting you navigate to different space bodies and align your ship to targets. You can also move inventory through the cargo holds, but the game is still a work in progress, and this is an ideal time to get involved if this is something you feel you'd enjoy.

Project Website

https://thoriumsim.com

While much of the narrative structure in Thorium Nova has yet to be implemented, the basic game engine is fully functional.