MythTV is a free and open-source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living room TV. It turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or home theater personal computer. It can be considered a free and open-source alternative to TiVo or Windows Media Center. It runs on various operating systems, primarily Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. History The MythTV project was started in April 2002 by Isaac Richards, who explained his motivation: Features Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows Completely automatic commercial detection and optional skipping Intelligently schedules recordings to avoid conflicts Interfaces with television listing sources such as XMLTV or PSIP Interfaces with nonprofit subscription listings service Schedules Direct in the United States and Canada. Schedules Direct delivers the same Tribune Media Services listings data that TiVo and other video recorders use. Supports ATSC, QAM, DMB-T/H and DVB (everything supported by LinuxTV) high-definition television Supports Xv, OpenGL, and VDPAU video output Supports H.264 codec Supports VP9 and H.265 codecs as of version 0.28 A backend server and frontend client architecture, allowing multiple frontend client machines to be remotely served content from one or more backend servers. A single computer can perform as both the frontend client and the backend server. Plays recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary Schedule and administer various system functions using a web browser-based interface Controls a set-top box using an infrared remote (IR blaster), or Firewire HDTV support MythTV is capable of capturing HDTV streams from any source that will provide unencrypted video. This means broadcast ATSC and DVB content, as well as encrypted DVB content when using a tuner with an integrated CI module. Most U.S. cable and satellite providers use encrypted video only accessible through their own set-top boxes. Cable systems may provide some unencrypted QAM channels, but these will generally only be local broadcast stations, and not cable programming or premium channels. OpenCable devices are available to access encrypted content on U.S. cable systems, but as this is a full DRM system, and not just CA like DVB CI, every piece of hardware and software on the playback chain must be tested and licensed by CableLabs. At current, Windows Media Center is the only DVR software to meet these requirements, and only it, and other software using