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So why aren't more companies selling boxes with preloaded MythTV?

No content controls. CableCard won't sell to anyone that cannot lock-down their systems (probably due to pressure from the content providers), so they're only available to closed-source systems, like TiVO, MediaCenter, etc... systems. As a result, MythTV can only record unencrypted broadcasts (Cable or OTA) either analog or digital.

A lot of members of the general public (that is, not the hardcore geek demographic overrepresented on Slashdot) don't want to have to buy a dedicated PC and spend hours learning how to secure it and set up MythTV.

It doesn't *have* to be a dedicated PC or even one PC - the front (display) / back (record/database) ends can be split. And you can have multiple frontends using a single backend. Split front/back ends don't even have to be the same OS,

Download and install MythBuntu or simply run "apt-get mythtv" (on Debian/-based or equivalent on RedHat, etc...). The setup is menu-driven. If your system is behind a NAT firewall there's no need for extra security, but it's all just Linux (or FreeBSD). Scheduling can be obtained from Schedules Direct for $25/year and MythTV knows all about them.

Capture/tuner cards can be bought from Amazon or where ever. I have 2 Hauppauge 250 (internal) cards in my system. MythTV even supports USB and Firewire devices - and can even use your cable decoder, if it supports USB/Firewire (which, I believe HD units are required to by law - in the US anyway).

Seriously, it took me 10 minutes to setup MythTV in 2007, from a base Ubuntu install - it's even easier now.

Windows Media Center's primary benefit is a high Wife Acceptance Factor. It's polished well, and that goes a long way.

If you want OTA and WMC, I suggest some Hauppauge cards -- enough to satisfy your need to record multiple channels at once during sweeps without conflicts. Perhaps: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/...

Sorry - Can you clarify for me why, in this scenario, a cheap laptop with a USB TV tuner isn't a simple solution? e.g.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1950.html

Hook the laptop up to your TV, add a remote and you're off to the races, for hundreds of dollars less than a VCR cost back in the day...

Hauppauge has a number of different products that do all kinds of things, including standalone PVR boxes. http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/prods.html

Another big one to look at if you want to capture tv is Silicondust's HDHomeRun, which simply connects to your network and works quite painlessly with Windows and Linux. I haven't used it with OSX, but supposedly that's fairly easy as well. http://www.silicondust.com/

Encryption can be a problem if you want more than just your local channels, but Hauppauge does offer a couple of CableCard boxes for use in the US. I'm not sure about the details as I've only used the more basic capture cards.

Because all the consumer A/V equipment can only record in SD even if it gets HD input.

Hauppauge has made a HD analog video capture device for a number of years now.

Are these Hauppauge products self-contained "consumer A/V" boxes, or do they need to be installed in a desktop PC? A lot of the products on hauppauge.com are obviously PCI Express cards that won't work if your primary computer is a Mac or a laptop. This page states: "it uses your PC", as opposed to just using an external USB hard drive. Which Hauppauge products work with no PC at all?

There is a way, though it is expensive and inconvenient. It involves using a Hauppauge HD-PVR and the IR blaster with your Uverse box. http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

I love my Win7 Media Center solution. The PC is located in my living room, and I have a linksys DMA-2100 Media Center Extender in the bedroom. Using a Hauppauge dual cablecard tuner it replaced my ($20 a month) DVR and a cable box ($10 a month) from my house. It isn't 100% perfect, there's a very occasional issue with the Tuning Adapter (for SDV channels) which is being ironed out, but all in all it's wonderful. The media center PC is just a cheap small form factor Dell with a low end C2D in it. Using onboard video, it plays 1080P content without issue.

I have all of the DVR functionality I had before, but with practically unlimited storage. I can pause recorded shows and resume from my bedroom. The Media Center interface meets my household's requirement (high Wife Acceptance Factor is a necessity,) and I have Parental Controls that I require.

That takes care of my cable TV options - which I require because I watch live Premier League soccer games on Fox Soccer Channel.

The rest of the setup is MediaBrowser for movies and all other content, and Remote Potato for remote connectivity, scheduling and streaming. I have a better solution than I was paying Time Warner for, and it will have paid for itself after 5 months.

It's astonishing to me that Microsoft didn't throw their weight behind this solution. I know you can use xbox 360s as extenders, but I like my silent, tiny Linksys. This is the start of a completely integrated home media solution.

-Simon

I think the issue is that getting your content INTO iTunes is the difficult proposition. If your content needs to be re-encoded, it's a pain in the butt.

Getting content INTO iTunes is as simple as choosing File->Add To Library... from the main menu. At least it works with the various video clips with which I've tried it. The difficult part is ripping a DVD or BlueRay disc.

I just unplugged and am in the process of getting rid of my HTPC. I spent a lot of money on a fancy home theatre case, Hauppauge HD PVR, SageTV, etc. etc. I think I spent almost as much time over the years trying to get/keep it working as I actually spent watching TV. OK maybe I'm exaggerating but still it was a lot of effort.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 that would work when it felt like it. I think the hardware is sound, but the software is a disaster. Too many separate packages to install, none of it is clear which is actually required. I believe that there's a Mac driver and software package for it, but since we have the eyeTV in the living room, the Hauppauge box just sits. (And yes, I've tried to sell it on eBay and craigslist, and never got any bites.).

I'm going to replace it with either an Apple TV or a mac mini server, depending on how rich I feel and what I decide I want to do with it. I'm looking forward to the easier maintenance, quieter living room, and lower power bills.

Wish I could justify the price of the mini server; the standard mini does just fine. Also, we use our mini as our DVD player and the server flavor doesn't have a DVD drive, so spending a few extra bucks for that is kind of annoying.

I'm also dumping satellite TV and I seriously doubt I'll be spending $65/month on rentals & purchases, given how little I actually watch.

I think the issue is that getting your content INTO iTunes is the difficult proposition. If your content needs to be re-encoded, it's a pain in the butt.

I just unplugged and am in the process of getting rid of my HTPC. I spent a lot of money on a fancy home theatre case, Hauppauge HD PVR, SageTV, etc. etc. I think I spent almost as much time over the years trying to get/keep it working as I actually spent watching TV. OK maybe I'm exaggerating but still it was a lot of effort.

I'm going to replace it with either an Apple TV or a mac mini server, depending on how rich I feel and what I decide I want to do with it. I'm looking forward to the easier maintenance, quieter living room, and lower power bills.

I'm also dumping satellite TV and I seriously doubt I'll be spending $65/month on rentals & purchases, given how little I actually watch.

(Also, I doubt it would be "easy", since the amount of data contained in an uncompressed HD stream is pretty daunting. Like they say, they still can't decrypt it in realtime, to say nothing of encoding it. Just getting it onto a disk fast enough might be a challenge.)

HDMI without HDCP is basically just plain DVI (yes, I know that technically DVI can also carry HDCP). There are DVI to component converters available, and there is at least one device that can record component video to MPEG-4 in realtime.

So, it's not really hard, but it might cost some money.

Since a generic HDMI capture and compress device would be so useful, I think that some (Chinese) company actually may make one. I want HDMI input, and Ethernet output, although it will probably be USB output. I would hope it would generate something better than MPEG-2 streams, but I'll see.

This captures component video (up to 1080i) and spits out H.264. It's been available for a while now and works with Linux; MythTV includes support for it. I'd think it wouldn't be too big a deal to design a workalike that replaces component-video capture with HDMI capture.

I tried out the WD TV Live and was impressed by it. I was streaming recorded content from MythTV using UPnP/DLNA and tried a number of other media files over USB and it was able to play them quite nicely. I played a bit of content recorded from a HD-PVR (in 720p) and it played back nicely.

Based on size, features, and price it is a worthy consideration. One of my co-workers owns 2 WD TV Live and at least 1 of the original WD TV. He has been very happy with them. Currently at least one of his WD TV Live is running the b-rad firmware.

I built a HTPC, along with some friends, several years ago to run MythTV. I have been very pleased with the result. It took a while to decide on the hardware. I have a system that sits with the TV. It is reasonably quiet., basically I only hear it a little when all sound is off and even then mostly when I walk closer. I looked for cases with Silicon mounts for HDs and 120mm fans (1/2 speed switch). I've got a passively cooled video card. We picked the Antec Fusion and I have been really pleased with it. There is also the NSK2480 without VFD and the MicroFusion now. One friend even built a second machine using basically the NSK2480 since he like the Fusion case design so much.

That said, I have been looking for a nice compact low cost front end that I can use if I get a second TV. Ideally I would like to run mythfrontend since it provides complete support with mythbackend (LiveTV, Commercial flags, etc). The devices I have primarily considered over the years are the HD TV Live, popcorn hour, Apple TV/Mac Mini (only if I can install Linux and run Mythfrontend), or a itx computer.

Based on how content is being accessed is the primary consideration along with required features. Aside from the LiveTV and commercial flag limitations with MythTV, I am currently most interested in the WD TV Live based on my criteria - small, networked, HD, significant codec support (MPEG2, DivX, Xvid, h.264, ogg, ac-3, etc), cheap. I had been looking for a device for several years and I became excited when the the WD TV Live came out. It is the closest device to what I'm looking for. I figure I can even just make LiveTV on MythTV accessible over UPnP with a little effort.

That's cool about you rewriting the DirecTV script. About the only thing I have done is a super trivial PHP fix to the recordings page on a very old version of Knoppmyth so downloading the episode would work, then notifying their forum how to do it.

Component can carry all consumer HD resolutions through 1080p, whatever the cable box will put out. Some cable companies reduce the resolution on cable box component out for some or all programming, based on their contracts with stations and media companies.

I don't think many are disabling it entirely or downsampling OTA stations they carry on only the component out. They want to stay competitive with broadcast, DVD, and Netflix, and component signal is the lowest common denominator for HD playback. Until recently, the ability of a consumer to reencode component signal at HD quality was pretty limited and very expensive.

Before investing in switching, I'd contact my cable company to verify their available cable box has a component out, and they don't do, or rarely do selective output downsampling or disabling. Good luck getting a cable CSR drone to understand that. Better to ask if they ever reduce the HD resolution on the component out or turn it off for some programs. You can't do DRM on component signal other than turning them off or downsampling. If it doesn't work, or they change policy, I'm sure you could sell your HD-PVR on ebay and recover most of the cost.

The only affordable way to do this I know of is the fairly recent Hauppauge HD-PVR http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html. You can get it on Amazon for about $200. It takes a component signal up to 1080i and hardware encodes it into H.264 before passing the stream off to your computer. Seems like Myth users don't seem to have much trouble with it now that it is officially supported.

I have also heard there are HDMI to component converter dongles made unlicensed in China that ignores HDMI HDCP and allows you to watch or record any high def signal you want. If you can find it, I think they run about $100. But I think if the component pushing the HDMI is connected to the internet, DCP could revoke the key and prevent the dongle from working. The Chinese company would then need to break the new key and provide the updated key to you. But I don't know if these dongles are field updateable.

Someone's behind the times. HD component capture has been a done deal for over a year now.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

makes it dead easy as the thing as the ir blaster built in.

I've been using Snapstream BeyondTV for 4 years. I started first with a Hauppauge SD tuner card. I now have a Happaugue HD-PVR, a Motorola HD FiOS box and change channels with a USB-UIRT. The Motorola HD box connects the HD-PVR with component video and optical SPDIF cables. The HD-PVR connects to my Win7-x64 system via USB.

BeyondTV downloads the TV guide, manages the recording schedule and controls the HD-PVR and Motorola HD box with the USB-UIRT. The recording format is an H.264 transport stream (the file type is .tp) which uses about 3.6 GB per hour on the HD-High quality setting. These files are readily burned to a Blu-ray disk without re-encoding. The system is completely seamless.

My next step is to configure a DLNA enabled LG Blu-ray player in my living room to which I can stream the recorded files.

Interesting idea.

Their hardware list is a little sad. I was hoping they provided some sort of thin-client which was multimedia capable, and available in the US. Small profile, fanless, with Ethernet/Wifi, capable of Audio & Video and hopefully a remote control.

I have a Hauppauge MediaMVP, and It's not very good with either the default software, or with the mvpmc open source client (Development has slowed since the last major release in 2007).

I could build something as a MythTV frontend, but once you factor in the cost of a low-profile system, IR remote, and no commercial/community support, etc. the commercial products look better & cheaper.

I can't tell if anyone in a low-modded comment suggested this, but how about the Hauppauge HD-PVR? http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html Have yet to buy one, mainly because I don't think the machine I'm using is fast enough to keep up, but it looks like it should work until component video connectors go away.

The Hauppauge HD-PVR will record HD (1080i, 720p, 480p) via component video. So You can record whatever your cable box puts out. It is supported in MythTv.

If you know of any ways to capture Hulu streams (either via webpage or their desktop app), I'd love to know.

I would think that the Hauppauge.com HD PVR http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html would do the trick, as long as you have a video card that supports component output.

Cue the Linux fanbois... ...screaming about how Bill is abandoning their customers after YEARS of support, whilst the Penguin does the same with 2 years of a kernel release.

Note the silence of the Mac Jihad.

I guess you read the summary backwards and didn't even consider clicking on the article.

I'm no Microsoft fan (Linux purist of 6 years now) but they are merely requiring hardware makers to provide stable 32-bit and 64-bit drivers in order to get a "Works with Windows 7 Certification."

This is a good thing for every day people.

Just recently I tried to help out a friend with a Vista 64bit computer to get his Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 to work. Apparently it does not support any more than 3GB of RAM and is basically unusable (he has 8GB of RAM). It causes programs to crash and flat-out will not work with Pinnacle Studio 9.
Hauppauge claims it has something to do with the 64bit memory allocation or something. I can't quite remember what it was.

Maybe this will require them to revisit their drivers and make it "Just Work" like it should.

Yes you can integrate HD support. You can use a Hauppauge HD PVR to take the component out of the receiver then sent that to the myth box. http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

> And of course, none of those analog-to-digital converter boxes can be battery powered,
> so a battery-powered TV (yes, they do exist, generally in analog B&W) doesn't help. ...which is *precisely* why I bought a WinTV HVR-Q950: http://hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr950q.html

USB, receives both 8VSB and QAM digital OTA, is nevertheless capable of receiving NTSC & PAL (how useful that might be is open to debate, but it's there), and can even be used as a ghetto-fabulous video digitizer for composite video. It has Linux drivers, and works fine out of the box with Windows Media Center. Don't under-value the last one -- lots of USB tuner cards require proprietary apps to watch TV, which means the moment supporting the tuner ceases to be part of the company's grand strategic initiative for 3Q09, the tuner will be about as useful as a 256k flash drive, or HST 9600 baud modem once the next version of Windows comes out (seeing how basically every version of Windows since 98SE has catastrophically broken every scanner and capture card that existed 6 months prior to its release).

It's under a hundred bucks, and a 1.6GHz Netbook runs full-screen 1080i and 720p60 just fine, with 3-6 hours of battery life on a full charge. Plug a car adapter into a 12v rechargable battery (like the ones sold at Radio Shack for jumpstarting & have a cigarette lighter outlet on the side for good measure), and it'll probably last through the storm.

Not that I've given the matter much thought, of course ;-)

HD PVR-1212 http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

Build a MythTV box, install boxee as well and move out of the dark ages brother!

http://www.mythbuntu.org/
http://www.boxee.tv/

Recommended tuner for mythbuntu:
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr2250.html

Recommended sound card:
http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/riviera/home.aspx

Here is how I'd do it:

1) Buy a USB capture card that has known drivers for whatever windows server version is in use
2) Assume Windows Media Services can use this capture card and stream it to windows clients on your network.
3) ???
4) ???

My other thought would be to use like MythTV and then use it's streaming stuff. I'm pretty sure they have a web based client.

This is actually a pretty tricky question to be honest. Especially considering you have less than a week to set it up and test it!

Personally, I doubt you are going to be able to take a stream from the internet and "rebroadcast" it over your network. The only thing that would get you half way is CSPAN, who offers a stream using windows media player or real player. I somehow doubt you'll be able to stream from the big-boys like MSNBC, CNN or (shudder) FOX.

My hunch is you will be more happy with a capture card and streaming that.

Either way, this is a pretty large project. Good luck.

DivX is the best format to use for archiving TV shows you've recorded. It will usually half to third the size of a one hour show and the quality reduction isn't very noticeable(as in, the lady doesn't notice). It is a native format of the media extender and its bigger, high-def brother.

However, I do have to somewhat agree with you about both DivX and Mp3 getting their roots in piracy. I distinctly remember the first time I heard one of those new fangled mp3's in like 1997. Sneaker Pimps 6 Underground. The whole song, 4 megs and tons more on this new fangled XDCC thing on IRC. What could possibly go wrong :-) DivX? Years later, random Simpsons episodes, 50->100 megs a piece with a tolerable reduction in quality. Also available on that new refined XDCC thing.

@joedcc list
!joedcc "Blah blah blah.mp3"
... or something. It has been a long while.

But I sure wish I could at least get a QAM tuner on a PCI card that has a Cable Card slot on it. Once I finally make the plunge to getting HDTV myself I'll probably use this cute little guy and route around the whole mess. But the problem with all those solutions is you are basically going from Digital -> Analog -> Digital when you can just record the feed right off the wire with no loss in quality. I'm also reading stories about how the some in the industry want to down-convert the analog ports to keep us evil criminals from stealing the content we pay for. And regardless, I need a set top box.

And yes, I rant and yet I don't have HDTV personally. Every time I look into what it will take to get HDTV + SageTV, I get pissed and give up. The SageTV is a requirement, the lady would kill me if I took that away (Tivo lacks this or this). The analog capture card gives me comfort though, even if it isn't ideal.

But I sure wish I could at least get a QAM tuner on a PCI card that has a Cable Card slot on it. Once I finally make the plunge to getting HDTV myself I'll probably use this cute little guy and route around the whole mess. But the problem with all those solutions is you are basically going from Digital -> Analog -> Digital when you can just record the feed right off the wire with no loss in quality. I'm also reading stories about how the some in the industry want to down-convert the analog ports to keep us evil criminals from stealing the content we pay for. And regardless, I need a set top box.

And yes, I rant and yet I don't have HDTV personally. Every time I look into what it will take to get HDTV + SageTV, I get pissed and give up. The SageTV is a requirement, the lady would kill me if I took that away (Tivo lacks this or this). The analog capture card gives me comfort though, even if it isn't ideal.

There are alot of products out there that pretty good as an AV Gateway.

There is the Hauppauge MVP that is easy to use and setup, and yes you can put linux on it (if it isnt already).
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_mediamvp.html
It can stream almost anything but HD with an appropriate server.

A suggestion for the Ultimate at home Multimedia machine would be SageTV with its HD extenders that can play HD and almost everything I have found online. http://www.sagetv.com/hd_extender.html
(( Yes is it can play Netflix too !! ))

-BTK
 

You can. All you need is this: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

It is basically a hardware HD x264 encoder that works in conjunction with your HD tuner. Hook it up to the component outputs of your cable/satellite provider's tuner box, use an irblaster to change channels, and you're in business. (MythTV's support is nearly stable now last I heard.)

You lose a bit of quality in the A/D conversion, but it does allow you access to 100 percent of your HD material. That is, until analog outputs are made illegal, though I suspect that is many years away from achieving fruition.

Check out the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It records HD via component video and I think the newest firmware enables 5.1 audio. It is a hardware encoder and requires almost no CPU to record (you just save the video strem to disk). Playback on the other hand requires a very beefy system. Under Linux a 3.0GHz is about the minimum requirement. Windows users may be able to offload some of the video decoding to their graphics card.

Linky: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

For people that might be considering this, because they have no other way to capture QAM encoded video, wait a couple months. The Hauppauge HD PVR records component video as x264, and MythTV is working on support for it. That'll be your analog hole to the bs surrounding QAM and HDCP, so don't settle for this proprietary afterthought.

This works find for SD, but you're not going to be recording HD over component.

Sure you can. Note, Myth's support for this is just getting there, but it'll be an option in the near future.

You can buy an MVP and run mvpmc on it. MVPs have no fans and are very small, so they're more convenient than PCs. I have three of them. They were about $88 each on amazon for the wired edition (which I have) and somewhat more for the wireless. That said, mvpmc isn't as featureful as a full mythtv front end, and is a pain to get working initially.

The HDHomeRun is digital only. To record analog you still need a regular tuner. Setup in MythTV is fairly strait forward, and instructions can be had from the company's website. The bandwidth used for OTA broadcasts are relatively high so you should never try to use HDHomeRun over a wireless bridge.

For analog, I'd recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500.
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/prods_mcbuilder.html

It is well supported in MythTV, has two tuners, and does hardware encoding to MPEG-2. The external version is the WinTV-PVR-USB2 and should be nearly identical, although I have no direct experience with it.

If you want to stream from backend to frontend over a wireless connection, it largely depends on how high of a bitrate you use for your encodings. It is generally discouraged though as other applications or interference can cause the video to jerk/stutter.

Remember to get a TV Tuner that does MPEG encoding onboard. For recording two shows at once, you'll need something like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 500. With a card like this, your processor will hardly get used at all in the encoding process.

you are not correct anymore (well at least as soon as drivers are made for linux) Take a look at the Hauppauge HD PVR. It allows you to record encrypted HD channels through the cablebox component output and realtime encodes to h.264. I would say by mid or late summer encrypted HD will be recordable http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

Why would you need more than 1 PCI slot? You can get a dual tuner that only takes up 1 slot.

For $130, you could get a single tuner (one of each) ATSC/NTSC card. That's $230 for a dual tuner set up. Add $500 for a computer capable as a media centre, and $80 for sageTV, and for about $800 you have a really good media center. A little expensive, but it will be more nicely integrated, than what you get with the PS3 set up. You'll get a much better experience, because you can do whatever you want with the videos, convert them to play on your PSP off an SD card, or play them on your ipod, or whatever other device you happen to own. I've even set up a custom conversion (it uses ffmpeg from what I know) to convert videos to flash, so I can watch them on my Wii.

That's what Hauppauge cards are for: Hardware MPEG-2.

thats what the MediaMVP is for http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_media mvp.html. It is the about 1"x6"x6", ~$50, and is basically a client for a VNC-like protocol. MythTV and GB-PVR both support it. Run a network cable to it, use your existing PC as the server (doesn't use up a whole lot of resources).

with sites like Orb networks, you can already watch live TV at high FPS on your mobile phone. You can also already display your phone's view to any computer with remote display programs; it's just a matter of considering your computer as your TV, which many of us already do.

I just finished doing exactly this sort of thing, so I'll describe what I did, how, and why.

Some caveats: 1) I like working from the command line. 2) This was not a project for which I wanted ultra high quality - "good enough" was good enough for me.

I have a Hauppauge PVR-500 (a hardware MPEG encoder/TV tuner card - basically, this card is a pair of PVR-250's on one PCI card). This card is well-supported on Linux by the IVTV drivers. I decided to use its composite and audio inputs to convert some old VHS porn (gotta love that 80's-era stuff) to modern digital file formats so I could finally toss out the old VHS video tapes, some of which were quite degraded (they were formerly rental tapes, and some were nearly 20 years old). I used an old-but-decent-quality Sony VCR as the video source and fed its outputs straight into the PVR-500's first set of inputs. Capturing video was as simple as:

cat /dev/video0 >filename.mpg

How's that for simple? Heh... I "retensioned" the tape beforehand (fast forward all the way to the end, then rewind all the way to the beginnig) and made note of how long the tape was. I used a kitchen timer to let me know when the tape was nearly finished playing so I could stop the capture at the approprite time.

After the capture was finished, I used mplayer to find the exact end point (just after the credits faded to black, for example) and to find where to crop the video (most analog captures will end up with black bars on the left/right sides, and old tapes often have distortion at the top or bottom). mplayer's "cropdetect" feature was invaluable for that. I would play the file with a command like this:

gmplayer -vf cropdetect filename.mpg

To use cropdetect, you have to fast-forward into a part of the video where the picture doesn't have any black at the edges (no dark scenes, transition fades, etc.) Then you just look at the terminal window to see what cropping parameters to use (it spits them out continuously). I found that sometimes the default setting wasn't sufficient to eliminate the black bars completely, so I would occasionally use cropdetect=50 to make it a little less conservative about what it detected. That value of 50 was chosen by experimentation, so feel free to experiment yourself. 50 seemed to consistently work well for me. There are no units on that number, it's just a scale from 0 to 255. In the end, I'd have a set of cropping parameters that looked like this:

-vf crop=704:476:12:0

Those numbers are: X dimension, Y dimension, X offset, Y offset. Offsets are measured in pixels from the upper left corner.

Cropping the distorted crap at the top and bottom isn't quite so easy. It's not all black, so cropdetect doesn't detect it. So I had to manually adjust the parameters. The tricky part is the way mencoder/mplayer wants its dimensions specified. It would be much simpler if it used a format of startx:starty:endx:endy rather than the size/offset described above. As it is, if you want to crop pixels off the top or left side, you have to shorten the appropriate dimension by N pixels and then add N pixels to the offset. This sounds like a pain in the ass, but in practice it's not so bad. You get used to it very quickly.

Now that I had my crop values, I'd use mencoder to resize, deinterlace, and transcode the whole thing into h.264 video and variable bitrate MP3 audio. I experimented with AAC audio, but for some reason I kept having much better results with VBR MP3. I think the FAAC codec (the one bundled with Ubuntu Dapper) I have is just too old to be efficient. When Feisty comes out this month and I get around to upgrading, I'll try AAC again. Anyway, this is a complex command line, so I wrapped it in a script:


#!/bin/bash

# Bit rate at which to encode
# Formula for h.264: X * Y * FPS * 0.125
# Common

I won't say you're wrong about the missed-the-boat notion, but I think you might be misunderstanding the role of this product. At the very least we don't see it doing the same things.

From my persepctive, there are other similar solutions, but the Hauppauge MediaMVP is not one of them for a number of reasons. Just read the product page: http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_media mvp.html

For one thing, it's composite and s-video only. I know some people are whining that the AppleTV doesn't support those formats, but those of use with newer, high-def equipment are sick of componsite video signals.

For another, it only decodes MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video. It plays DivX, but only by using your host system to decode them -- it doesn't have the on-board power to decode anything in software, and doesn't have DivX hardware.

And as far as "works with MythTV" I assume you mean "can be re-flashed and the hardware used to run mvpmc", since the factory software only support Windows as a host system and doesn't know anything about MythTV. mvpmc is a great bit of software -- I've used their code to provide non-Java interfaces for my ReplayTV -- but it's hardly a feature of the MediaMVP itself.

The Windows Media Center Extender is a much better comparison to the AppleTV -- supports wired and/or wireless in the same box, requires a host system for content origination but can play with or without live streaming, outputs to HD, has enough processor to decode in software (i.e. without being limited to an MPEG hardware decoder).

As someone who's had both commerical and home-built media systems, I've been waiting for more people to get into the market that AppleTV plays in. Like I said, the Windows Media Center Extender is a comparable product, but it wants Windows Media Center, which I don't (and likely won't) have. SlingBox claims they'll put out something in the near future, but they haven't announced a release date or specs yet, just some hype to counter the AppleTV. There are a couple of other players like Pixel Magic Systems, but so far there aren't in clear leaders.

I'm not sure yet that I want an AppleTV, but I'm glad to see another big-name player through its hat in the ring, with the hope that either AppleTV will become the product I want, or will help define the high-def computer-based-but-not-computer-in-living-room media playback market and eventually will help bring about some more refined, mature products in that market.

...They want their technology back: http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wc_summ.htm (or http://web.archive.org/web/19971211230117/www.haup pauge.com/html/wincast.htm for the first occurrance of the proper hauppauge site in the web archive)

Look at the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 dual (ATSC y analog) tunner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoder Conexant-418

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_hvr16 00.html

In this way, the SlingCatcher may turn out to be a one-size-fits-all solution in a field populated with specialty products.

In this way, iTV and XBox360 may turn out to be specialty solutions in a field dominated by one-size-fits-all products, such as SlingBox, MediaMVP, MythTV, SageTV, and BeyondTV.

How is this better than the Hauppage MVP?

Not to blow my own trumpet, but I did a fair bit of work on the mvpmc project to get VLC streaming integration working on this device.

The Hauppage MVP can be picked up for around 50 USD, it sits next to your TV and has an ethernet (or wireless if you want to pay a bit more) connection and a remote. It can integrate with slimserver for music playback, MythTV, can play MPEG1/2 video directly from shares (and any kind of video via VLC, which it does by requesting a vod transcoded MPEG2 stream and allowing you to control it transparently via the MVP remote), and is far more flexible than this - AND cheaper!

Why don't you try KnoppMyth? It includes quite a detailed installation manual, and does the MythTV installation using Knoppix, so all the hardware drivers, remotes, etc. are basically automatic. It takes about 15 minutes. There's a free "subscription" to Zap2It Labs for daily TV listings going two weeks into the future. To renew, every 3 months you answer two survey questions about TV viewing.

My first install was with a Athlon 1.3GHz, 512Gb ram, a Hauppauge PVR-350 and an 80GB drive. It worked the first time.

I've been using it for about a year, and have since upgraded to dual 320GBs, a 40GB boot drive, and a second PVR-350. Aside from local grid power failures, it's been running nearly continuously. It's awesome. You can program/view shows over the web or your LAN; you can burn DVDs, lots more. Check it out.