MythTV has moved along A LOT in the past two years.
I still heavily patch my own copy, to improve GUI
navigation with the remote control, and other goofs
they've made in the UI.

But it isn't all that bad as distributed, either.

For DVD rips, I use DVDFAB-Platinum.
Yes, it's payware.
Yes, it's MS-Win based.

And yes, it works extremely well, and is well maintained.

Cheers