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Actually, owning a supposedly crappy sofwtare card (Pinnacle PCTV Stereo) http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_n.asp?Produ ct_ID=1480 and a classy PVR-350, I am actually suprised of the results. On a beefy P4 machine , the recordings from the software card look better than those of the Hauppage, which has a lot of 'ghosting' especially on faces. That said, the PVR-350 runs great on a 2400+ sempron, and nothing beats the quality of it's tv-out for replay, especially with GB-PVR http://www.gbpvr.com/

" I still think Beyond TV snapstream is the only logical option on windows XP due to price and the fact that it runs on virtually all cards. MythTV and other open source projects seem so raw still"

plug I just posted a review of BeyondTV 3.5 on my site. There's also SageTV on windoze that's good. (sage tv review)

GBPVR is free as in beer and although an independent project hangs pretty well with the commercial apps in most respects, from what I understand.

Also commercial is Meedio HTPC which used to be myHTPC which has a beta PVR plugin that should be not beta pretty soon.

GotTV (no link handy sorry) recently spun into something else, and is also windows and "free" (not sure if it's FOSS or not...)

Have you used mythTV lately? I'm not sure you are giving it a fair shake. I think the issue is more the complexity of the install/linux learning curve than usability/look and feel issues... (hopefuly efforts like knoppmyth mitigate that a little bit)

*shrug* that said, I do like the polish and all the features of BTV, but there's a lot of options out there, and i'm glad to see media portal's (and xmbc's) progressing nicely)

e.

well if you go with a wired network, a hauppauge mediamvp makes for a neat network based media "client"

people have bridged mediamvp's over a wifi networks, fwiw.

GBPVR integrates nicely with mediamvp and its own backend PVR/scheduling/htpc-esque functions and is free as in beer.

ymmv,

e.

Hardware: Old Dell optiplex 110 with Pentium III 800MHz, 256Mb RAM, DLink 802.11b PCI wi-fi card. Cost - a favour to a buddy.

Additions: Hauppauge PVR-350, 200Gb Seagate Barracuda, USBUIRT http://www.usbuirt.com/. Cost of additions - £ 216

Wi-Fi with MythTV was hell, PAL TV out with X-Windows was hell, S-Video input with MythTV was hell, EPG download from http://www.bleb.org/tv with MythTV was flaky, IR support for driving my Cable set-top-box was not great.

I tried a copy of XP MCE, but unless you have certified hardware, forget this being easy or stable, so I went on the hunt for Windows based PVR software and came across http://www.gbpvr.com/.

I must say I have been suitably impressed with ease of setup, ease of use, stability and features. Pretty much all of the MythTV features, but a lot easier to set up. Total setup time from blank hard drive to working GBPVR on XP in under 2 hours on above hardware. MythTV took a weekend to have partial functionality working on the same box. The USBUIRT works well with GBPVR, and GBPVR is able to pull EPG from Bleb (Or other XMLTV sources). Main problem now is 256Mb of RAM is just not quite enough for XP... the box is now deemed prototype, waiting for more cash to buy a new barebones system with decent CPU and RAM. Probably go for a Shuttle small form factor like one of these ST62K's http://www.de.shuttle.com/en/desktopdefault.aspx/t abid-72/170_read-2782/

On the music side my mp3's are sitting on a samba share on my main linux server so are accessble over my network to any of the other machines on it ... I also have ampache setup so that i can stream audio straight out to winamp (or equivalent) on any of the machines as well. I am not able to stream to my HiFi with the kit I have but I tend to listen to stuff whilst doing something on the PC anyway so that doesnt really matter. This means that my CD collection, (from which ALL of the mp3 have come from), can be stored away.

On the video side I have a little shuttle box connected to my TV ... this has a large disk, a PVR250 and a graphics card with TV out. I am not running MythTV (although that is a perfectly valid option, (I tried to use it with a PVR350 had lots of issues so decided against it here)) .... instead I'm using GBPVR ... Its free, (but not open source), and has a similar feature set to MythTV but runs on Windows instead. The shuttle box is connected by wireless to the lan for downloading EPG updates etc. This is used for time shifting TV programs ... (although if anybody has any recommendations on how to convert mpeg2 video (3Gb/Hour) to a smaller format for longer term storage ... (e.g. divx? ... I've done it before but the brightness of the recording seems to reduced quite significantly)). The box also has a DVD writer, (and software for multiregion playback)

Tim

although not free as in speech... GBPVR does some of the same UI through the pvr350's tv out as SageTV (and mythTV with the special IVTV drivers)

fwiw I've got a review of sagetv 2.0 with screenshots n' stuff... if you wanted to contrast with Steve525's experience (hey steve!)

IMHO the main differences between sagetv and beyondtv is this:

equally polished and tivo-esque, more or less

SageTV has more media htpc-esque functionality like mp3 jukebox, photo's, etc...
the previously mentioned pvr350 UI overlay support

BeyondTV has remote scheduling capability (i.e. login from work and schedule a show/etc)

BeyondTV supports software encoding cards like ATI AIW whereas sagetv/et al will only use hardware encoding cards.

*scratches head* I think that's in a nutshell...

I'll be building a knoppmyth box soon, but don't have the hands on opinion of mythtv besides what I garner from the mailing lists/etc...

There's a ton of other options out there... new on the block is Meedio (formerly the free as in beer, myHTPC.net)... and a bunch of others Media Portal is OSS... uhm... freevo on linux, whatever GOTTV's latest incarnation is...

e.

besides the pvr350 part of your setup (which has it's own quirks), did you consider checking out knoppmyth to potentially cut down on the build/install time?

*shrug* FWIW there are other "off the shelf" commercial (and free) 3rd party PVR/htpc software solutions out there... although they are on the *gasp* windows platform *ducks*... I liked SageTV... BeyondTV has been getting good reviews... and GBPVR is very full featured, FREE as in beer (not source), and is pretty cool overall. There's a lesser known HTPC solution that's open source for windoze Media Portal... I've got a growing list of PVR/HTPC links here

Also there are other linux based OSS pvr solutions besides myth/knoppmyth... like freevo, dave and dina multimedia project, and a few others I can't recall...

*shrug*

e.

Hauppauge MediaMVP is less than 100 bucks at PCAlchemy

There's pleny of mediamvp hacking (including work on a mythtv client) and 3rd party client replacements out there like gbpvr (how to article on my site )

*Shrug*

e.

I haven't tried MCE myself but I found that GBPVR http://www.gbpvr.com/ works for my needs. I currently run the pvr stuff on my main PC but I want to build a much smaller box (VIA?) and have it with the rest of my TV "stuff". I'm currently running on XP but the smaller box will be of Linux decent.

I also have a TiVo and what I miss most on the Panasonic is the lack of a program guide. The best you can do is use the VCR Plus codes from TV Guide but otherwise you have to manually enter the time and channel. And the worst is, you have to manually enter the program name!

" "Offer a software package for sale that will run on any Windows-based PC. TiVo should leverage their name brand recognition and become a powerful software player."

If TiVo were to offer their software separately, why would I buy it, when I can go and get something like MythTV for free?"

besides the work in progress windows based mythTV client, myth isn't really available for windows...

Of course there is GBPVR which is windows and free as in beer.

Sage TV IMHO ( review ) is pretty close to usability as Tivo... and there's also SnapStream's Beyond TV ... both are windows based commercial software PVR solutions which there ARE a market for.

So, in short even though YOU'd download knoppmyth or mythtv for free... others would be interested in TiVo on teh windoze platform... (or on linux for that matter).

Regardless of platform (win/linux) if tivo created a software package that installed as easily as the settop box... and was as easy to use it would be of interest to people on BOTH platforms... (even with knoppmyth/etc I don't think it's *quite* easy enough for "anyone" to install and configure... but it's certainly getting there)

E.

I have been thinking about creating a web service that could be used by PVR software to create an open-source version of TIVO-style recommendations.

The idea would be to collect viewing habits anonymously, and then automatically create "viewers who recorded this also recorded..." listings.

A PVR project could then use this data to automatically record shows, or just mark them as recommendations in the Guide. It would not be tied to a specific PVR project, it could be added as modules to GB-PVR (which I use), MythTV, or any other project.

Some of the challenges include how to identify films and TV series correctly, handle international show titles, and how to make the users contribute to the database hassle-free.

If anyone has heard of a project like this before, please let me know :-)

" If I am going to pay 80 bucks for the Hauppage device, I might as well pay 20 more and get another TIVO. Or for 109 bucks, you can get a refurbished Xbox. Little hacking on it, and you have the perfect media center PC.

I am not discrediting the Hauppage device as it sounds really cool. But for 80 bucks I think I would compare the other devices in this category and find a better alternative. IMO that is."

ah.... but the rub there is the 13 beans a month (or 300 beans for lifetime of the "unit" subscription) and if you are one of the tinfoil hat folks, well say no more =). Setup a MediaMVP with GB-PVR (or get one of those myth client hax being worked on ) and use a 90 dollar hardware encoder/tuner card in your existing PC and you've got PVR goodness for around 170 beans (plus shipping) and no subscription. You also get expanded functionality that you have to pay EXTRA for with Tivo's "home media option", bah! Granted ReplayTV is a little bit better off in that arena, but you are still on the hook for subscription fees.

Note: I have a tivo and love it, but I've seen this combo outlined above as a viable option. *Shrug* ymmv.

FWIW a regular user on my site did a review of the hauppauge MediaMVP and a new writeup about using it with GBPVR (instead of the default software) is coming "soon".

hey, it's a different option, and it's not for everybody... but I'll be watching what the mediamvp hackers come up with... reminds me of the good old iopener/websurfer days =)

e.

AC said:
"GB-PVR is a free windows alternative that does support full OSD on the PVR350 tv out. I've also seen a pre-release that supports the xcard. This application rocks. Take a look at GB-PVR"

gb-pvr is very neat, but it is also very beta... I look forward to watching the progress develop on that project. Until then I still yearn for something more/better/stable and free (as in beer and as in speech)

e.

I've recently been trying GB-PVR, a *FREE* Windows based PVR package. It seems to do a brilliant job with Hauppauge PVR250 and PVR350 cards.

Their website has got some good screenshots of it in action at http://www.gbpvr.com

Does all the normal stuff like integrated TV Guide, pause Live TV, listen to music. Also comes with a couple of very nice looking skins.

GBPVR is pretty new, Windows based and darned nice looking to boot. Written by a buddy of mine, it shows what you can do in a few weeks when you put your mind to it..