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Linux Box As Digital VCR
Janus Daniels writes: "Kuro5hin has a story about how to use Linux tools to capture any video to a hard drive, edit it, and then copy it to the long term media of your choice."
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I've been working on a similar project, but using a headless box. It has a TV tuner in it, and runs Linux 2.2.18, with the latest V4l drivers. The trick is, that an extremely clever person put this little program together vcr. This program lets you record any video4linux stream straight into any format supported by avifile to disk. Consequence? I now have a skeleton of a web interface that is based on tvguide, that I can select shows from, and have this program automatically record them, straight into low motion DivX, which is really good quality (arguably better than Tivo's MPEG-2) If there is interest, I'll complete and release the project. I can then watch the recorded show on any box on my network, or even the box connected to my TV. It'd probably be cooler to have a TV out card, and watch it right on my TV, and even have a TV interface, but let's walk before we run :)
And who says this will be used for purposes of defeating copy protection? I've been lusting after a digital video editing package for a long time...a VERY long time...and this seems like just the ticket, and at the right price.
Don't automatically assume or assert the worst possible usage for innovation. You only wind up making the status quo harder to break past.
Just my two cents' worth...donate the change to your company coffee fund. And feel free to moderate down as flamebait at will...I know I would.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Can you say FSCKTV??
This thing would ROCK with a cable TV descrabler, (for educational purposes of course).
Just what I need. Instructions on how to turn my $2000 Linux box into a $100 VCR.
Anyone play around with hardware MPEG2 encoding? I like the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR (different than the regular WinTV), but it looks like this thing is Windows only :( I'd like to be able to capture and record stuff directly to MPEG2. Anyone know about any Linux drivers for this one? The regular WinTV works with video4linux, but this one apparently does not.
I understand the guys at LinuxTV have drivers for a particular board with the Visiontech KFir chip but I've never seen this board anywhere...
I'm praying to god that this is a troll. If not, here's my response:
;-)), so maybe we should just outlaw books since they can be used for illegal purposes.
The ability to copy digital video DOES NOT IMPLY PIRATING you CLOSE MINDED BAFOON! Macintoshes can do this already. Do you associate THEM with pirating?!?! What if you happen to have a digital video recorder or some such device and which to easily copy its contents to your harddrive?
Copying digital video to your harddrive WILL NEVER BE ILLEGAL. Copying specially COPYPROTECTED digital video will be, probably. A humungous difference.
Also, I'm not completely sure that seeing an OS as good for pirating will hurt your business with consumers. It may make companies more wary but I'd think it would actually attract users.
Also, yes, linux CAN rip DVD's. Both legally and illegally. This is not wrong. If you want an impotent OS that can't do anything illegal even if you wanted to than go to Win98. You'll be too busy rebooting to notice how much it sucks though.
No one here is "'Hacking' devices for illegal purposes", we are just hacking devices. Hacking is not wrong. This is not wrong. It COULD be used for things that are wrong. I could also beat you to death with one of my Neal Stephenson books, which sounds pretty good right now (probably the effect of playing all those video games
Justin Dubs
Alas, alack... One of the only reasons keeping me from switching completely over to Linux running Gnome and Wine is the fact that my video capture device just doesn't cut the mustard under linux.
It's not an appropriate card for gaming, but I have another card for that in the same machine. It even outperforms newer video capture devices in terms of quality and capture stability. Better yet, it works pefectly on a machine as slow as a P1 133. (A 3dfx 3500 TV card has problems with synchronization on anything slower than a p3 550)
Unfortuneately, this problem is pretty standard across the board. Matrox is unwilling to support this card on newer OS's (Linux or Win2k) and Linux drivers just don't exist. Unfortuneately, I'm an artist and don't have anywhere near the coding skills necessary to craft my own. I doubt anyone else could because of this line I found in a Matrox email post: "Matrox has evaluated the required resources to produce a "black-box" for Linux to enable the use of the non-Matrox components. Unfortunately we concluded that many man months would be required and we cannot assign such resources to this project."
Older, yet servicable hardware is getting more and more support on linux, but because of crap like this, it's still lacking in a big way.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This is the same debait in my mind as to why Napster was wrong but FreeNet was right. Napster was specifically designed to trade illegal MP3's regardless of the lies the creater spews out to cover his ass. Freenet was designed as a generic way of trading files. All files. Random files. There is nothing illegal about that.
I find it absurd that a program that has no illegal intent, but COULD be used illegal could possibly be viewed negatively. You shouldn't have to limit your program to make it legal.
Is fdisk illegal? I could use it to wipe out your harddrive. Or a companies harddrive. Just throw it on a bootdisk and go computer to computer rebooting off the disk and wiping harddrives. That would be illegal use of the software. Should fdisk have been designed to make those kinds of things impossible? I don't think so. What's the difference?
Justin Dubs
correction, under all final OS versions of the MacOS currently out, you cannot get root access remotely without applications such as Timbuktu
but what exactly can you do with that DVD burner? http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html
read the part about the Burner.
Scary, huh?
Boycott the MPAA (see below)
Get involved
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
There is actually a similar solution for windows...its called SnapStream PVS...and its pretty incredible...full web config/viewing/acess...only downside is it only reacords to AVI or WindowsMedia. Oh well... Try it (I beta tested for them): www.snapstream.com
--matt Cowger
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue62/silva.html
I can't wait for my tuner card to get here.
All your dangifiknow are belong to us.
Check your URL. You're probably at one of the typosquatter pages that frames slashdot with more ads.
I have a hacked 40Gig ReplayTV(they go upto 160 gig now) which is more than enough for my needs. The dedicated device handles all the channel aggregation(cable/sat), scheduling conflicts, space management. It has channel guides which exactly match my locale and also provides many other features(web interface, theme based recording, ...) Most importantly it's never in the middle of a reboot when I want to record something nor does it ever slow down my computer while it's recording. See my web site for more details:
http://www.slip.net/~gmd/index.html
B.t.w. I'm just about to release 0.3 of the software, which includes a Gtk based interface.
you want an impotent OS that can't do anything illegal even if you wanted to than go to Win98." This is not true. When I last ran Windows98, MANY of the operations it performed were illegal. Luckily, soon after the illegal operations were performed, screens of blue showed up and closed everything down, forcing a reboot of all operations.
Looks like these guys have come up with a redimentary opensource tivo: http://www.stanford.edu/~jjd1/opendvr/. Looks like a fun and very promising school project! Aparently they could not solve the realtime encoding problem. S
At least here in germany digital TV (using the afaik worldwide standard DVB - digital video broadcast) is gaining popularity.
You can already buy PCI-Cards for the reception of digital TV (arround $200-250). A Linux Video Disc Recorder for the storage of the digital MPEG2 stream from the satellite is available too.
It has all the features a decent satellite receiver needs and nice recording features. You want to record that weekly show? No problem. Or that other daily show? Cut out the commercials? Using a second card: Start recording when the movie starts, and make a break whenever you like, playing back the still recording stream when you return from your kitchen or whereever you have gone to.
For the software (under the GPL) see http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/
You're a cheating git, Synpax./ 1/31/18749/1930
:-) please :-) )
Any time I am permitted to moderate I'll mod you down for the points that belong to outlyer who wrote that comment on the kuro5hin pages.
Screw meta-moderation, I have 28 Karma to spare.
(This will be modded down by -3 to -1 off-topic, but I don't care. Of course - the nice moderators who are just about to mod me down could verify my story by going to http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001
and searching for 'outlyer', and then they could mod you down instead
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Well, I have a $100 VCR, about a year old. Current problems:
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