The folks behind MythTV pushed out a new release this weekend. As you can probably tell from the title, this is a point release, moving from version 0.20.1 to 0.20.2. But don't let those low numbers fool you. MythTV is a powerful media center application for Linux.

The update includes two major changes:

1. Support for Schedules Direct program guide updates
2. Reduced MythTV front end memory consumption by up to 75%

There's a slew of smaller updates and bugfixes as well, including faster startup of the MythTV frontend, improved default theme images with better scaling and anti-alias, and fixes for ATSC channel scanning.

Probably the main reason to update your system is the support for Schedules Direct. In a few days, Zap2it Labs will stop providing the free program guide data that earlier versions of MythTV relied on. Unlike the Zap2it Labs data, Schedules direct program guides won't be free. You'll need to shell out $15 for 3 months of data. It's not clear if MythV 0.20.2 will support CT TV guide data which is available for $30 per year.

[via Digg]

Interested in setting up a MythTV-based media center, but don't know enough about Linux? Just as Ubuntu is designed to make Linux accessible to the casual user, Mythbuntu is designed to bring media center software to the masses. Of course, that's what Windows Vista does, but for anyone interested in open source applications, MythTV is the way to go, and Mythbuntu makes installation a relatively painless process.

The current version is a public alpha, so don't expect everything to work perfectly. But if you download the disc image, burn it to a CD, pop it in your computer and reboot, you should load up a MythTV frontend. That's the part that lets you interact with media. If you want a fully functioning media center that can record record television shows, you'll want to install the backend as well. If you've already got a backend machine running, you can access it from the frontend included on the liveCD.

Still, the LiveCD is a great option for anyone who wants to see how MythTV works without having to repartition or reformat their hard drive.

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, TiVo has warned that a new open source license could cause big trouble for the company.

TiVo is based on Linux, an open source operating system. And for the most part, TiVo's turned a blind eye to hardware hackers, allowing users to put larger hard drives in their boxes or enable networking.

But when it comes to software, that's another story. TiVo has always walked a fine line with content owners, and has included copyright protection that limits what you can do with television recordings. To that end, TiVo includes software that cripples the machine if you try to manipulate the source code.

The Open Source Windows PC-based Media Portal now has a web interface. That mean's you'll be able to perform a number of basic media center and PVR functions on your PC over the internet using a web browser.

• View your TV guide
• Schedule recordings
• Cancel/delete scheduled recordings
• View recorded programs
• View upcoming recordings.

No support for streaming videos over the net yet, but that could possibly be on deck for a future release.

[via Missing Remote]

It looks like two groups of open source media center developers are thinking about merging their products. Media Portal is a completely open-source Windows Media Center replacement, while MeediOS is a project to continue development of Meedio, which was purchased by Yahoo and pretty much scrapped in favor of Yahoo Go TV.

It looks like both teams are working toward an open source media center with multiple user interfaces for use on Windows, via the Web, and on a PDA. Most features of the media center would be plugin-based, letting you for example add music, video, and picture functions to create your own personal media center program. It looks like both teams have pretty much the same goals in mind, and given that each has made a lot of progress over the last few years, I'll be curious to see what they come up with if they join forces.