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I already do this, kinda.

I say to my iMac "What's on TV?" and it logs in to the canadian version of clicktv and shows me my TV listings. (It's a short AppleScript I wrote that knows my username and password.) I say "Webcam on" and it starts up my webcam and logs me into CitizenX using a combination AppleScript/JavaScript program. I say "Angst" and it checks to see if the right CDR is in the drive, and if it is, plays Angst by KMFDM in my MP3 player, and if it isn't, lets me know so that I can switch CDs. I say "Slashdot" and it logs me in here. I say "Tag's Trance" and it plays one of my favourite techno shoutcast streams. I say "Salon"...

I hope my point is clear.

The only problem with it is that when I'm playing MP3s, it tends to not hear me too well, because the mic is really close to the speakers. So I want a solution: a cordless headset mic.

Ah, yes, the cordless headset mic. That's what people use in call centres. And that's what they would use in offices in general if talking to your computer was an accepted practice. Pretty simple technology really, and no more expensive than a high-end mouse.

I discovered last weekend that I stopped getting UPN. Who knows when, since I've never needed it before. So I will be missing it, and crying in chair, while mumbling curses directed at my cable provider.

If you're still blacked out (as in Holland, MI -- sorry Rob), I'd suggest contacting all the local stations that carry a lot of syndicated content. That sort of agitation is rather appropriate -- the first Star Trek series lasted an extra season because of it.

Not that I really care about "Enterprise". I seem to be the only slashdotter who realizes that this will be a dud. Same "creative" team as Voyager, even more potential for logic-free stories. (The bad guys are time travellers, for crissakes! Every time the writers get stuck, they'll declare a pardox.) But it is essential that all America should witness Buffy's return from the dead!

Ditto.

Next project: Spend some time checking out the status of Linux drivers for my ATI All-in-Wonder-128 32M card.

And if that doesn't give me any love, install Windoze Scripting Host and goof around with VB for a weekend using the bundled software. I can capture and encode MPEG2 video in real time when the box is suitably overclocked. All that's missing is a 30G hard drive and a user interface.

A little bit of Perl (yeah, it'll run in a Windoze console too!) and a suitable lynx -dump to and I've got my TV listings.

This question has been asked no fewer than two times before, and one time, I even answered in +3 detail on exactly what would be needed to make a PC-based TiVo.

But that's okay, let's rehash.

Since we're going entirely software-based, e.g. you're sitting a normal, icky PC in your stereo rack, or you're just using your PC as normal, you probably don't have a hardware MPEG encoder. The best you've probably got is a Matrox card with onboard MJPEG compression, and I don't think the Linux drivers support that.

Now, assuming you already know how capture a video stream and pipe it to an MPEG encoder (and trust that your system is fast enough to not drop too many frames; think P3/500 or better), the only thing you really need to do is add in TV listings, and integrate them into channel changing and record functionality.

Copy and pasted from my previous post, channel guides are easy. Just have a Perl script rip and reformat any of the listings from the online providers, including Excite TV, Ultimate TV, GIST TV (which also provides the Yahoo TV listings), Ask TV (in the UK), Click TV (what TiVo uses), TV Quest, TV Grid or TV Guide Online.

As for integration, a lot of this work has already been done, at least for satellite TV streams. Klaus Schmidinger produced his Video Disk Recorder which performs channel guides and VCR functionality on his Linux PC, for his satellite TV using a PCI card. All GPL'd, so feel free to port it over to plain old TV cards, too.

--Vito

But there are some problems that I see right off the bat that need correcting - and they can be. But are they already?

The main problem, as I see it, is where to get the program information. There are places like Click TV that give really good program guides, but I would think the commercial outfits would get mighty pissed if I wrote something that repackaged their program guide. Is there a open TV listing system, like the Free CDDB is to CDDB?

I live in Canada where you can't buy a TiVo, and even if you could you couldn't get the service. I really love the TiVo concept -- never searching for a blank tape when you want to record something, never waiting around to find the start of a show. And that doesn't even mention what the service gets you -- automatic recording of your favourite shows without having to even know when they're on.

But unfortunately I can't buy a TiVo or get the service here. But maybe soon that won't matter. I can easily buy one in the US and bring it over. I'm pretty sure you can use it as a fancy VCR even if you don't have the service. I've considered doing this already. The main sticking point is the service.

Last time I talked to the TiVo rep who frequents all the discussion groups he said they had no plans to move into Canada. If they did I'd worry that a TiVo I bought in the US and brought over wouldn't work with the Canadian service once they introduce it here, but as it stands I guess that's not an issue.

So I might just go get one of these babies soon. But I wonder -- if you can get a BASH prompt on these things, modify the hard drive, and do everything else these guys currently do, how far are we from not needing the service? Ideally I'd like to exchange the modem in the box for an Ethernet card, add the TiVo to my home LAN, and let it use ClickTV for listings.

Now am I dreaming? Anybody think this is easy? Anybody think it's impossible?

I've been doing research on this for the last month or three, and the news isn't entirely good. First, you need to figure out exactly what you want your TiVo-esque set-top box to do. "Personal TV" features like live pause and live rewind? Digital, full-frame recording? MPEG1, MJPEG or MPEG2 compression? Channel guides and automatic VCR programming? CD playing? DVD playing? Lastly, what will you put it all in?

Let's start with personal TV features. You can currently record live, full-resolution video and audio onto your HD without dropping frames -- assuming you've got at least a 500mHz processor and a fast HD. That's just a live dump to a raw AVI, and you'll fill up your HD pretty fast that way, at roughly 1-2 meg a second. But if you can blow 4gb for an hour of programming to be able to do a live pause/rewind for a while, then that's not too big a deal. But what if you want to include digital VCR features, not just live pause/rewind?

Now, things get a little more expensive. The crux of the problem is to do live, full-frame MPEG2 video and audio encoding in software, you need at least ANOTHER 500mhz of horsepower, and a single 1gHz processor won't cut it. MPEG1 quality blows if you're recording off satellite or even decent cable TV (if you want the low-end, though, the Broadway MPEG1 encoder is cheap, around $800), leaving you with just MJPEG or MPEG2 video. MJPEG is much larger than MPEG2, because it doesn't have temporal compression, but you can get consumer-grade hardware MJPEG encoders on Matrox hardware, so for a build-your-own box, if you 2-3x your HD size, you should be okay. But to do it right, you want full-frame D1 MPEG2 encoding (half-D1 MPEG2 is MPEG1 resolution, but MPEG2 quality), like you have on DVDs. And to do that in hardware will cost you over a thousand dollars, and may not include an MPEG DEcoding solution!. Yuck. Darim's MPEGator2 can do full D1 encoding for (only) US$1800, VisionTech's MVcast is US$1995, DV Studio's Apollo Expert is US$1995 and includes both encoding and decoding, making it possibly the best buy. I have no idea if Linux drivers are available for any of them, but the price alone puts that sort of tech out of the realm of most people's hands.

With that sobering realization in mind, let's forge forward to channel guides and VCR programming. Channel guides are easy. Just have a Perl script rip and reformat any of the listings from the online providers, including Excite TV, Ultimate TV, GIST TV (which also provides the Yahoo TV listings), Ask TV (in the UK), Click TV (what TiVo uses), TV Quest, TV Grid or TV Guide Online. And once you have this set up, it's not much farther to program an IR transmitter to sit in front of your VCR's IR port to have it automatically record shows for you.

CD playing in a set-top box is a nice feature. Pop the CD in, and have it hit CDDB for the disc info, and give track options. Shouldn't be too hard.

DVD playing in a homebuild Linux-based set-top box is nearly possible now, too. As of this weekend, I believe that you can now put a DVD in the drive, and play it, entirely software decoded, no ripping VOBs or copying to a HD, full-screen, full-frame, with real-time AC3/48kHz audio downsampling to 44kHz, and audio/video sync is probably only a few hours of coding away. Now all we need is hardware MPEG acceleration in the ATI Rage chipsets, and maybe that attractive Apollo encoder/decoder.

Lastly, what are you going to put this monstrosity of open-source software engineering in? What we've just explained above is that for around $3000, you can build a combination cable box (we'll ignore the open source software cable descramblers for the moment), real-time MPEG2 digital VCR, timeshifting personal TV player, channel guide, CD player and region-code-less, restriction-less DVD player, that utterly blows the quality of anything else on the market out of the water. This is what TiVo WANTS to be. But what are you going to do? Stick a fat, ugly, beige desktop case on top of your TV? Bah. T-A-C-K-Y. Even the recently rediscovered BookPC (aka NLX) cases still look like PCs. But most people can't afford to mint custom cases, yet you want something that doesn't look like a PC. How about a 1U or 2U black rackmount case, sans locking front panel and rails? 19" wide makes it a bit wide for small TVs, but that's okay. You've got a bay for a floppy drive or small LCD panel, a DVD drive, and enough room inside for at least one HD, and in some 1U cases, both the TV card and the MPEG card! Otherwise, just go 2U, which isn't TOO much larger. Whee.

I think that's it. I don't know what the state of TV input on Linux is, but I assume it's pretty good, or you wouldn't even be able to consider this project, so that's not a big deal. And even through you can record in real-time, without compression, straight to AVI (bleagh!), I left out the possibility to post-process the AVI to MPEG, because really, that's so tacky. That's like having to play DVDs by copying them to a HD first. Do it realtime, and Do It Right(tm). Lists of MPEG hardware encoders I got from a Canadian distributor called BernClare Multimedia, Inc. Seems like a nice place. Other URLs I used for reference (no, my personal project doesn't have a site; I just posted most of my knowledge here!) include the still-conceptual LinuxVCR project, the LinuxToday article on How to Build Your Own 1U Rackmount, the Calibri 300R 1U rackmount Linux-based router, and LCDproc for that LCD display you know you'll need on the front to perpetually blink 12:00.

Check http://www.clicktv.com/. It told me my local station (in Dartmouth, NS) is WGBH, and with a little digging through http://www.wgbh.org I found out that the station I see is GBH/2, and Code Rush is only ever going to be shown on GBH/44. Sucks to be me.

I've always used ClickTV and the great thing is that it supports Canada too!!!

(Of course, I probably wouldn't use ClickTV if it didn't have Canadian listings to begin with...)

Wiwi
--
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"

Are there any Linux-compatible TV tuner cards with MPEG encoding?

TV listings (broadcast, cable, and satellite) are available on the 'net. Perhaps one might could write a Linux app to extract the relevant listings from a site like ClickTV, and record their favorite shows. Slo-mo and freeze-frame are optional.

I'd do it, but I can't remember the last time I watched TV. :-)

What is UPN, and how can I find out if I get it? I know, if I have to ask... I probably don't get it. But just in case? If you really want to help, my line-up is here.
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