mythTV, that is. Have you heard about this? This little nugget was the first of hopefully many discoveries I made today, after visiting my new best friend’s website.

MythTV is an Open Source project that is trying to be all the things TiVo is, and more. I browsed the site a bit, and now I’m convinced that I must try building myself a mythTV box. Just think, for twice as much money as a TiVo, and countless hours installing and configuring Linux and the gazillion dependencies it needs for this to work, I’ll have a “free” TiVo! Isn’t that what geeks do?

But seriously, if I were to upgrade my PC anytime soon, my current PC could be pressed into service as a mythTV personal video recorder with minimal hardware purchases. I’d just need a video capture card and a massive hard drive to store all the Gilligan’s Island reruns I’m sure to record.

But mythTV is much more than just editing commercials from episodes of “The Jeffersons”, because you can also get weather reports on screen, surf the internet, rip & play MP3s, view image slideshows and even play older playstation-type games (via emulation)! Honestly, I see no reason to leave the house once I get this all set up (which could be a month from now, or quite possibly several years from now).

Do have a look around at the website. It’s an ambitious project, and I for one am intrigued by it.