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Software-Based TIVO?
HBergeron asks: "Tivo and her various competitors, including the new Sony box, are intriguing tools for the broadcast media consumer, but devices themselves are nothing more than a variation on the special purpose PC, and you pay a substantial premium. Why don't we see a software based system that will run on our own PCs (Linux, Windows, Mac, etc.) rather than requiring another duplication of hardware we have heavily invested in? It may not work for everybody, but there are enough people with high-end, TV capable machines to make a market. After all, we're the ones that adopt TIVO-like technologies first. Is it access to programming information from the networks? Are there legal issues?" I think the only thing standing in the way of applications to do this are drivers for TV-capable video cards under the OS of choice for the specific user. Does Linux have support for the variety of TV video cards that Windows does? How about for BSD and Macintosh?
I have a ReplayTV box made by Panasonic. It includes a 30 GB hard drive, MPEG encoder/decoder, modem, TV tuner, systems software and a lifetime subscription to the program guide service. I'm not sure what CPU is used or how much RAM is in the box.
Without the program guide service, these boxes sell for about $400. It can be less if you get it on sale or with a rebate. $400 is not going to buy much hardware for a PC.
Much of the usefulness of the box is dependent on the program guide service. Are you going to type in the contents of TV Guide every week?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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
If you're asking this, I don't think you've used a TiVo. For the 10th time, it isn't just a digital VCR. First, they cost $199 for the 20 hour model right now. $199!!! You aren't going to build anything close for that. Take that 20 hour and add a big HD to it sometime. Second, there is an enormous amount of effort put in to the software and interface. It does more than just record a show at a certain time. Check one out, and you'll be hooked.