Slashdot Mirror

I can't speak for the parent, but both my HTPC's use the bundled remotes that came with the Hauppauge Nova-T (a DVB-T card). It's a great little remote and you can pick these cards up for less than £40 in the UK.

You can see a piccy of it here. I know for a fact that, at least with the DVB cards, Linux has full support for all their features. Use any modern kernel (the keycodes for some of the buttons weren't added until 2.6.13 or something IIRC), evdev and lirc and you're laughing.

Actually, it'd be great if I could just use my TV and stereo as alternate display and sound devices for the laptop... wirelessly. Plug a little box into my entertainment center, then just use some control panel on the laptop to turn the TV into a secondary desktop, and drag a media player over to it.

You'd be silly to buy a non-Intel Mac right now.

And yet, I'd desperately like to find a new non-intel Mac Mini at close out prices!

(I wanna build a diskless Myth frontend)

Face it, there is still software out there that won't run on the Intel based Macs that will run on the PPC Macs.

Since I can't find one at a reasonable price, I have my eyes on this instead...

Intel is pushing a technology called Treacherous Computing, which will prevent unsigned code from running on their hardware. So even if you have the source code, if you try to remove the DRM restrictions, the hardware will refuse to run the modified binary.

The Free Software Foundation admits that the anti-DRM provisions in the GPLv3 will not be enough on their own to prevent the nightmare scenario where users can't trust their own computers.

People who understand the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management at a technical level (ie.Free and Open Source software developers) should warn the general public to avoid buying DRM-crippled hardware. Consumers should know about the great variety of DRM-free computers and accessories built specifically to work with Linux, the KDE desktop, and other Free and Open Source applications.

On the music side, there are plenty of websites that legally sell DRM-free, RIAA-free music by independent artists. Consumers can use an iTunes-like application called Songbird to easily download songs from these sites.

As for movies, building a Linux media center works better than the DRM-crippled offering from M$FT. Just download MythTV and run it on a computer equipped with the pcHDTV HD-3000 card and the PVR-350 card -- these will capture both standard definition (NTSC) and Digital/Hi-Definition (ATSC/HDTV) signals.

It already has caught on in a big way for some. I use XBMC to stream audio and video from a media server, and there are other devices out there built to do the same, like MediaMVP, Avel LinkPlayer, D-link DSM-520, and many others. Heck, there's even an entire forum dedicated to such devices over at avsforum.

I use this http://www.hauppauge.com/html/mediamvp_datasheet.h tm at the tv and this http://www.gbpvr.com/ on the computer (windows). You can also use this http://www.mythtv.org/ for linux

Intel is pushing a technology called Treacherous Computing, which will prevent unsigned code from running on their hardware. So even if you have the source code, if you try to remove the DRM restrictions, the hardware will refuse to run the modified binary.

The Free Software Foundation admits that the anti-DRM provisions in the GPLv3 will not be enough on their own to prevent the nightmare scenario where users can't trust their own computers.

People who understand the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management at a technical level (ie.Free and Open Source software developers) should warn the general public to avoid buying DRM-crippled hardware. Consumers should know about the great variety of DRM-free computers and accessories built specifically to work with Linux, the KDE desktop, and other Free and Open Source applications.

On the music side, there are plenty of websites that legally sell DRM-free, RIAA-free music by independent artists. Consumers can use a cross-platform, iTunes-like application called Songbird to easily download songs from these sites.

As for movies, building a Linux media center works just as well as the DRM-crippled offering from M$FT. Just download MythTV and run it on a computer equipped with the pcHDTV HD-3000 card and the PVR-350 card -- these will capture both standard definition (NTSC) and Digital/Hi-Definition (ATSC/HDTV) signals.

Nice try, but it's a weak analogy.

A DVD player started out expensive -- heck HD-DVD players are starting out moderately expensive. But everyone knew they were going to get cheaper. I don't foresee $100 Mac Minis any time soon, and a $600 box for every TV seems to be unlikely to work.

Much more practical and affordable is some kind of set top box like a MediaMVP. You can buy one today for $100, and it plays music, video, and photos nicely. Of course, Apple doesn't make set top boxes, and their DRM prevents you from using the existing solutions that are out there.

But really, who would want an open solution that would work on their choice of hardware?

What about something like the MediaMVP for $100
mentioned in Wired yesterday, so you could use your computer as a media center without having to dedicate it. I've never tried it, so I don't know how much bandwidth this would suck up, but a cool concept.

I'm pretty sure I don't care or know if it does onboard video compression, but I'm using a hauppauge card which I think is about as good as it gets in the USB world. http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvrus b2.html

There is a Hauppauge card that supports clear QAM as well as the Linux only pcHDTV card (with support right in MythTV).

I'm confused. Are you saying the card you are running does not support clear QAM or that ESPN-HD is encrypted?

By saying "Haupage" did you actually mean Hauppauge? I'm asking because when I did a google search for "Haupage" google asked did you mean "Hauppauge".

For those of you who don't know how to pronounce it here as a copy from their site FAQ.

"How do you pronounce Hauppauge?
Hauppauge is pronounced HOP-HOG."

Also why use USB, as from my experience IEEE 1394 is better for transfering data of this size or using the PCI push technology (IIRC that is what they called it back then) that my ancient TV Tuner card from them uses (Please note I use the PCI card not the even older ISA card). Also from checking out the various cards & USB devices they make it is clear that the PCI devices work better because they use almost no processor time, while USB hogs it all up in comparison. I know this because I used to use my TV tuner card in a computer with an AMD 486 120 Mhz. Also the PCI versions frequently have a driver for running in Linux. My card had the driver included into the 2.2 version of the Linux kernel.

So why use USB for this when PCI is a much better option? I mean I can understand for the people who use a laptop as a desktop. I laugh at them, but still since they don't have a PCI slot I can at least understand. If they actually have a valid reason for the laptop I don't laugh, it's just the ones who buy a laptop, but don't even use them as a portable computer that I laugh at.

By saying "Haupage" did you actually mean Hauppauge? I'm asking because when I did a google search for "Haupage" google asked did you mean "Hauppauge".

For those of you who don't know how to pronounce it here as a copy from their site FAQ.

"How do you pronounce Hauppauge?
Hauppauge is pronounced HOP-HOG."

Also why use USB, as from my experience IEEE 1394 is better for transfering data of this size or using the PCI push technology (IIRC that is what they called it back then) that my ancient TV Tuner card from them uses (Please note I use the PCI card not the even older ISA card). Also from checking out the various cards & USB devices they make it is clear that the PCI devices work better because they use almost no processor time, while USB hogs it all up in comparison. I know this because I used to use my TV tuner card in a computer with an AMD 486 120 Mhz. Also the PCI versions frequently have a driver for running in Linux. My card had the driver included into the 2.2 version of the Linux kernel.

So why use USB for this when PCI is a much better option? I mean I can understand for the people who use a laptop as a desktop. I laugh at them, but still since they don't have a PCI slot I can at least understand. If they actually have a valid reason for the laptop I don't laugh, it's just the ones who buy a laptop, but don't even use them as a portable computer that I laugh at.

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/mediamvp_datasheet.h tm

It's not open source, unfortunately, but has a very active development guy and a very good plug-in architecture.

My PVR is an AMD Sempron 2200+ with 768MB RAM, 360GB Hard drive space, two Hauppauge tuners (250 and 150-MCE) running in a small case on a Chaintech 7NIF2 board running Win2000. Everything works flawlessly and my wife loves it! She records all her shows and watches them whenever she wants. I've got about half of our DVD collection ripped and converted to Xvid sitting on there, ready to go (those discs aren't getting anywhere near the kids!) and everything is awesome.

When we move into our house, I'm going to run network through the walls and have a Hauppauge Media MVP as a small, quiet front-end in the bedroom.

The PVR itself is fairly noisy, but when the TV's on, you can't hear it so it doesn't really matter. When I do an upgrade, I might get another MVP and put the main server into the closet.

I originally tried MythTV (using KnoppMyth), but after a week of hassle and wrestling with it, I gave up and tried GB-PVR. I haven't tried MythTV since. I'd like to have only open-source, free software running, but I couldn't get it to work. I hope to be able to switch over in the future, but for right now, we're quite happy.

Hauppage make this Windows only thing:

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/mediamvp_datasheet.h tm

but once you replace the OS with the Linux version:

http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main

it does fairly well as a MythTV front end. The Linux version is still in it's infancy so there are the normal teething problems (hangs, audio sync problems, etc.) but I've had one for about a month now and it does well enough for me.

The big wins are that it is absolutly silent (no fans at all) and it's about CAN$130 or the equivalent in US$

I'd recommend a USB-2 tuner instead of PCI

Finding one that works right can be a bit of a challenge. Most of the USB video-capture devices I've run across deinterlace everything they capture, which makes it impossible to do inverse 3:2 pulldown before burning to DVD. Some of them are video-only, which leaves you capturing the audio with your soundcard. That can lead to nasty A/V sync problems unless you use something like Virtual VCR to correct for the sync problems.

So far, the only USB capture box I'd recommend (for whatever that's worth) is the Hauppauge WinTV-PVRUSB2. It's a bit more bulky than most (an issue if you plan to haul it around with your notebook), but it captures video and audio and compresses to MPEG-2. There's even a Linux driver for it. The capture hardware is the same as what you would get in their PCI MPEG-capture boards (like the WinTV-PVR150), which is pretty good.

Another sub-$100 aolution might be the Hauppauge MediaMVP.

I have to agree. I love the SlimServer, but I don't have a Sqeezebox and instead use it to stream my collection to my desk at work, and to plug my laptop into my stereo at home. Don't get me wrong, I think the Squeezebox is a beautiful piece of engineering, and I do covet the digital output. But I'm not enough of an audiophile to consider it mandatory, and for $300 what me and my family are looking for is something to fully bridge the content on our home computer network and home theater. I want a device that will play our digital music collection through the stereo but also play visual media from our computers, like slideshows of our photos and .AVI and .MPG files, plus do visualizations like those found in WMP/iTunes/Winamp. PrismQ and DLink products and Hauppauge have products that do some or all of that stuff.

How about a "headless" Squeezebox, one without the flourescent display that instead did all the display through a video output? Losing the display would lower the price, too. Maybe even better, keep the same price-point AND keep the high-end pedigree of the SqueezeBox line offering not only composite and SVideo output but by including COMPONENT video output with Faroudja upconversion. THAT'S what I want to buy, from SlimDevices, rather than the DLink and such mentioned above. When can I place my order?

I've been searching for a good network device to integrate my computer with my stereo system and television. There's a bunch out there, but no one has executed it gracefully - hence (in my opinion) the relative failure of these devices. The squeezebox products seem nice, but are overpriced and not very multimedia oriented. The situation as it stands seems relatively akin to the pre-ipod mp3 era; I believe apple could probably succeed in pulling off a standalone network media center with the proper interface and a decent pricetag (I'd argue for the $2-300 range) and perhaps a higher end model that offered what I believe would be a unique feature for this line of devices - an integrated capture card with a memory buffer allowing bi-directional media transfer (maybe a later model could include a HD for a full out DVR integrated system). I broke down and recently ordered Hauppagues system, but I know I'm in for a dissapointment.

    apple's mcd appears little more than a remote control perhaps with a slick interface - ho hum -- perhaps its a test bed for a network media hardware device though? I hope so.

What sort of inputs are on that card? Does it have s-video?

I just got my MythBox with a PVR-350 running. I'm pretty impressed so far. I was using Gentoo, but there was a lot of manual tweaking to be done. I installed Fedora Core 4, and I had the whole thing running in a few hours.

The TV-Out of the PVR-350 puts a really nice picture out. I've only had a couple of annoyances so far:

- it takes about 3 seconds to change channels
- a couple channels are coming in distorted (these same channels look great on my tivo)

The cable system in my condo is supposed to be old, but I've never had a problem before. Maybe the Tivo has a better receiver than the 350. I haven't had much time to mess with it yet.

If you are going to build one of these, I highly recommend using the Fedora Myth(TV)ology HOWTO.

YOURE ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!! "People who have ATi graphics cards and/or people who would rather buy such a graphics/DVR capable card from the local Best Buy or CompUSA instead of ordering a specialized Linux supporting card from a more obscure source." You can buy a Hauppauge WinPVR at Compusa, Circuit City, etc... http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/buy/wtob_us.html These cards are not obscure or specialized. They work well on many platforms and are easy to buy! These are hands down the most compatable / reliable PVR cards out there for Linux and they work well in Windows MCE. I am not going to crap on Windows MCE because it does have some nice features, but let me offer some insight to my ignorant friend. Regarding ATI - They have horrid Linux support. I have seen a handful of people successfully use their ATI TV Cards (Not AIW cards) for Myth. (http://www.mythtv.org/ The AIW series support just isnt there. However, the Nvidia driver support has been wonderful thus far. I set out to put together my own PVR. At first it was windows based due to the ease of setup and install. It sucked. It was resource greedy and there are subscription costs. I do not want to pay for a TV guide which should be free already. So began the MythTV install. I have successfully set Myth up on Fedora and KnoppMyth. Both are viable solutions depending on your experience. KnoppMyth (http://mysettopbox.tv/) is extremely easy to install and setup. You have a handful of hardware options. I use an Nvidia Ti5200, and old SB Live, and a new Hauppauge PVR250. Relatively cheap stuff in todays market. This system is incredible! You can configure multiple frontends (Including the nifty Xbox Frontend) on a single backend server, have a special server to cut commercials, or just one box to do it all. You have Mame, SNES9x, Nes support, RSS Feeds, a Web Browser, a web frontend to schedule from another pc..its great. So many people have done it now the documentation is very comprehensive. If you have ever played with a Linux box or built your own PC this project is not beyond your scope. Get off the microsoft bandwagon and dive into a real PVR. You will not regret it.

This is one topic I'm rather passionate about and I'm always talking to my co-workers about PVRs and how having one has changed my viewing habits. For example, we (the wife and I) just used to watch whatever was on and our experience wasn't the best. But now, we find that we watch what we want to and consequently, watch less TV overall.

Personally, I'm really excited because GB-PVR has a built in MediaMVP server which means that you can have a ~$40USD small, quiet front end for all your TVs and keep the huge, noisy server in the basement or whatnot. Having seperate front-ends and back-ends was a major plus in my book for MythTV, but I was getting concerned about the cost of building small and quiet (wife-acceptance factor is really huge here) front-ends for my TVs. With a MediaMVP (a wireless version is in the works), I won't have to worry about it.

As much as I don't want to, I'm going to agree with you....

I've been running mythtv for almost a year now, and I use it for all my tv-watching and recording. And ivtv is the weakest link. Everything else about the software works fine, but IVTV is always beta and always crashing. I was expecting it to be a lot better since Hauppauge advertises MythTV and Linux support on their page.

Does mythTV support multiple receivers?

In order to do this with DirecTV, I'm guessing you'd need multiple DirecTV tuners. I'm sure some of the more knowledgable MythTV folks that read /. can add more information and experience here.

I JUST built my own Windows-based HTPC using the free (as in beer) software GBPVR (http://www.gbpvr.com/

I am running it with XP Pro on an old P3/866, gig of ram, 1 10 gig HD for OS, 1 40 gig HD for recordings, a WinTV-PVR-150 (http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr1 50.html), and a Geforce MX4000 for TV out.

And when I say JUST built it, I started it last Tuesday. All I had to buy was the WinTV card as I had the other stuff lying around.

I tried mythtv, knoppmyth, and Meedio (windows HTPC software), but got the most bang for my time with GBPVR. In two hours I was up and running and within three days or so had it tweaked how I wanted.

I'm no noob to linux either (I run a few servers at work doing spam filtering/firewalling and have a web server at home for my wife's business, and run it on my laptop) but I did not want to put my wife/kids through TV "downtime" while I troubleshot linux stuff I'm not that familiar with.

Todd

this is just another "Overhead projectors with LCD panels make big ugly projectors that you cannot use anywhere but a darkened room" story

another silent front end/client to consider is a MediaMVP which has a very active hacking community.

e.

I hear the MediaMVP from hauppauge is really nice, especially for 99$ US. A friend of mine has one and streams all his movies from a PC in his house. It does music, video (including divx) and stills. You can skin the interface if you don't like the canned one.
On the downside, it requires you to install software on your PC, which I think is windows only, don't know if there is a OSS server yet for it. Also, if you intend to watch divx movies, you'll need a 1.8 Ghz CPU or better. Apparently the box is some type of VNC client, and the software turns your PC into a VNC server.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr25 0.html

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr15 0.html

Both the 250 and 150 feature a hardware MPEG-2 encoder. The 150 is cheaper because it uses a newer chipset that handles both the audio and the video, resulting in a lower cost to manufacture. The 250 used separate chips for the audiot and video. The only reason I mention the 250 is because I don't know if the 150's chipset is supported yet. Either card will do an excellent job as a video capture device.

Also, I suspect that the bottleneck that you're experiencing has very little to do with how much memory you have on the system, assuming you have a reasonable ammount (512 or more). The hard drive speed is even less likely to be the problem. For you the problem boils down to CPU speed. Before I moved over to the PVR-150 (I'm using snapstream) I also had problems recording and playing back video at the same time. My system is an athlon 2200 with 512 megs of ram and a 120 gig hard drive. Once I offloaded the mpeg encoding to the 150, my problems disappeared, and the quality of my recordings has improved dramatically. Before I was using an ATI AIW-7500 which did not perform well under snapstream.

Lee

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr25 0.html

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr15 0.html

Both the 250 and 150 feature a hardware MPEG-2 encoder. The 150 is cheaper because it uses a newer chipset that handles both the audio and the video, resulting in a lower cost to manufacture. The 250 used separate chips for the audiot and video. The only reason I mention the 250 is because I don't know if the 150's chipset is supported yet. Either card will do an excellent job as a video capture device.

Also, I suspect that the bottleneck that you're experiencing has very little to do with how much memory you have on the system, assuming you have a reasonable ammount (512 or more). The hard drive speed is even less likely to be the problem. For you the problem boils down to CPU speed. Before I moved over to the PVR-150 (I'm using snapstream) I also had problems recording and playing back video at the same time. My system is an athlon 2200 with 512 megs of ram and a 120 gig hard drive. Once I offloaded the mpeg encoding to the 150, my problems disappeared, and the quality of my recordings has improved dramatically. Before I was using an ATI AIW-7500 which did not perform well under snapstream.

Lee

Get a tuner card first - especially something like PVR-350 that can encode TV to MPEG and simultaneously decode MPEGS to S-video/composite for playback.

My 1.2GHz machine uses 10-15% CPU encoding/recording one channel and, at the same time, playing something previously recorded at 1366x768 (with ads removed of course :-)

Also, unless you have done some significant work around dealing with heat, you have a pretty noisy machine in your living room. Ick.

If anyone starts this type of project, get a low spec and very quiet machine, such as one based on an EPIA MII10000 (1.0GHz) or fanless Eden600. Add a PVR-350 and a *quiet*/fast/big disk (I have 550GB), and you are away.

Oh, and use KnoppMyth for a quick and painless install.

Get a tuner card first - especially something like PVR-350 that can encode TV to MPEG and simultaneously decode MPEGS to S-video/composite for playback.

My 1.2GHz machine uses 10-15% CPU encoding/recording one channel and, at the same time, playing something previously recorded at 1366x768 (with ads removed of course :-)

Also, unless you have done some significant work around dealing with heat, you have a pretty noisy machine in your living room. Ick.

If anyone starts this type of project, get a low spec and very quiet machine, such as one based on an EPIA MII10000 (1.0GHz) or fanless Eden600. Add a PVR-350 and a *quiet*/fast/big disk (I have 550GB), and you are away.

Oh, and use KnoppMyth for a quick and painless install.

However, I understand there are people who have built USB cables for their XBoxen. And the spex for the Hauppauge WinTV-USB external tuner do say the following:

System Requirements

• PC with Pentium® processor (333MHz MMX min., 733MHz min. recommended for SoftPVR(TM))
• Microsoft® Windows® XP/Me/2000/98SE
• USB port - 1.1 or 2.0 (performance is the same on either USB 1.1 or 2.0)
• Sound card
• CD-ROM drive

P.S. Note carefully the USB 2.0 claim above: their product is only USB full speed, not USB Hi Speed. USB 1.1 is upwardly compatible with USB 2.0, but does not increase its speed just because it's connected to a faster hub.

For most people I would recommend just buying a tivo or something off the shelf like that, but if you're a true geek you're going to want a mythtv system. I spent about ~$1,000 total on mine, but it's the nicest PVR me or my friends have ever come across. It's actually more of a media center than just a PVR. Here's the basic setup..

First I didnt want some clunky beige case sitting beside my TV looking akward, so I opted for a home theater PC case, specifically this one.

I've got two Hauppauge PVR-500's, which are dual tuner cards, so I have a total of 4 tuners (this way I can record 4 different shows at once if they happen to be broadcast simultaneosly. This comes in handy durin g prime time when you would otherwise be forced to pick between different shows.

The rest of the hardware is nothing special, a soyo kt400 mb, 512M ram, athlon 2100+, and a geForce fx 5200. Not a top of the line system by any means, but not bad at all. Probably overkill for doing the PVR stuff, but I do alot more with it than just that.

The software is where it really gets interesting. I use gentoo on most of my machines, and this one was no different, mythtv as well as several plugins are already in portage and installed hassle free. MythTV acts as my front end to TV, weather, DVD's/Movies, Games, etc. I scripted a little GTK frontend to all my emulators and roms, so my PVR is also a NES, SNES, SMS, N64, PSX, etc. (now you see why I needed that GeForce :P) It server as my fileserver and mp3 jukebox, and can stream all of it's data (video,tv,music) to any other PC in my house. I can browse tv listings and schedule show recordings through a web interface from anywhere.

So all in all I spent about 4 times more than a Tivo and got about 20 times more out of it. Not a bad deal I'd say...

That tells me that the 150MCE, 250MCE, and 500MCE should be about the same for setup and functionality. The "new low cost design" aspect scares me some, but even the 500MCE is only $147 at pricewatch. We've all taken worse baths than that.

(those of us that bathe, anyway)

Why not compare apples to apples? I'd more readily compare the two full-height PCI cards to the full-height Hauppauge 250 ($127) rather than the half-height 150. Of course, that may not have yielded the result the author intended.

"The PVR-150MCE l.p. is easy to discount due to its comparatively poor image"

According to Hauppage:
"The WinTV-PVR-150MCE has the best video quality of any Media Center TV tuner,..."
Hauppauge PVR 150MCE

But its obvious this is not the case when you look at the comparison.

*sigh*, marketing, go figure.

I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 running on an Athlon 2200+ w/ 512 MB RAM, 16G OS/software hard drive, 250 GB video hard drive (both IDE). The machine also supports a DVD burner, and a USB-UIRT for remote controlling my cable box. The PVR portion of it comes from Sage TV. Oh, and the wireless. Mustn't forget the wireless.

This setup gives me a PVR package that has superior capabilities to my old DirecTiVo, but slightly (SLIGHTLY!) inferior quality. It records MPEG video that I can easily work with in many video players, video editors, and DVD authoring/burning packages. I can watch videos either streamed over wireless from the SageTV box's hard drive, or I can use the SageTV Client software.

The only weakness is slow channel change times (2 seconds or so). The computer has to control the cable box through IR, and in order to guarantee precision it "punches the remote control buttons" slowly. However, channel surfing is something I don't miss -- now the machine just records what I want, I watch it when I'm damn good and ready, and skipping commercials requires only a few taps on a key on the wireless keyboard I use to control the computer. (I could use a regular remote through the USB-UIRT but the keyboard is faster (though bulkier)).

Due to an unusual work shift, I have to record any TV show I want to watch. I converted an old system into a DVR (using SageTV and couple Hauppauge tuner/capture cards). Works great.

When it comes to playback, I copy the files to my main system. I strip out the commercials using Pegasys TMPGEnc MPEG editor. Knowing that most commercial breaks are three minutes, I can just jump around the timeline until I find where the show resumes. Then I watch the shows on the pc or burn them out to a DVD-RW for later TV viewing.

Really quite simple.

Dual tuner MPEG2 encoder.

Caveats: Only NTSC air/cable, so unfortunately no, this doesn't do two DirecTV streams without two separate receivers. But that's only because DirectTV/Dish/etc aren't exactly eager to put their satellite signal reception/decryption on a PCI card one step away from being perma-descrambled and distributed to oblivion.

Anyone know anything about their new PVR-150 card? Most importantly, what's the chipset?

Hauppauge PVR-250 is what I used on mine.

Hauppauge PVR-250 is what I used on mine.

You're in luck! Hauppauge has a great tuner card that supports HDTV over cable. For help getting their cards to work under linux, check out their Linux forums.

MediaMVP is a device that hooks up to your computer via ethernet, and hooks to the TV via SVideo. It can play MP3s, show still photos, and play MPEG1 and MPEG2 movies.

Since he can control a TV using a remote control type device, then he should be able to control this using a remote control.

How long before the fools selling on ebay realize that they can't ask 600-800$ for a low end G4 powermac, when a higher spec'ed mini is selling for 499$, includes a warranty, and possibly an update to tiger when it come out?

Yes I know that you can put add in cards in a powermac. But do a majority of people actually install anything in the slots?

Hauppauge really needs to write good solid Mac drivers for the WinTV-PVR-USB2, and put the case through a redesign. At this point it looks like something that came out of a cat's ass.

If the new model ships in a brushed aluminum case, and is called the MacTV-PVR-USB2, it would go well with the Mac mini.

I've had a Windows-based PVR for a couple of years now, and while I'd love to check out MythTV, I'm unable due to them not supporting any of the ATI All-In-Wonder cards. I run an ATI 8500DV for my PVR currently.

I'm a big Linux supporter, but it is frustrating that there's still problems with drivers for popular hardware, as the lack of AIW support illustrates. Blame's really pointless at this point also. The hardware companies are losing potential sales by not (fully) supporting Linux yet, much less porting drivers, and/or releasing specs for older product, and Linux is losing potential users due to pre-existing hardware setups.

I'm surprised hardware support hasn't kicked in more than it has yet, really... The AIW's have been around, in version or another, for quite some time now, and evidently the entire line's not supported yet. Things are starting to get better, but the 8500's been out a long time now. At the rate driver progress is advancing, I have a better chance of running a BeOS clone before using my 8500DV with MythTV. 8(

I actually considered purchasing a Hauppage 350 when my PVR box went down last month (lost a drive), but it's easier to justify spending much less on the ultra-cool MediaMVP and sticking with Windows than buying a rather expensing dedicated mpeg encoder just to try out some of the Linux solutions. With the MediaMVP, I can relocate my PVR box entirly out of the living room, and dedicate a headless box to recording, and playback somewhere. The biggest (and only) drawback I can come up with doing this is not being able to have Mame and other games on my PVR box. Perhaps with bluetooth control's though, one could even achieve that with the MVP.

For that matter, I'm seriously considering spending a little more down the road, and getting a completely silent, PPC-based box, with HD capabilities. My only concern is how the DRM will impact this when the FCC's broadcast biut kicks in this summer.

"Here's what I want - I want to be able to watch Tivo recorded programs elsewhere besides the family room. I figure here are my options:"

"Build MythTV box. Not gonna happen in my house, as I could never get away with having a noisy server sitting in the entertainment center..."

You don't *have* to put the "media center server" in the same room as the TV... you can use thin clients over a wired network like MediaMVP (quasi how to "thrifty pvr" article on my site)

People use modd'ed xboxes as the front end of their mythTV/other media/PVR backend.

That's just one approach... there's a couple others that are worth investigating.

e.