PVR For Linux

amix writes "After two years of hard work the final 1.0 of VDR (Video Disk Recorder) has been released under the GPL. VDR is Linux based VCR software for digital TV cards (DVB, the Linux driver supports cable, sat and terrestrial cards), the new TV standard in Europe and also in use at several places in the United States. VDR is a fully networkable digital video recorder (implemented as daemon on port 2001) with optional MP3, DVD and 'MPlayer' based video-codec replay plus much more. It features "timeshifting", an incredibly comfortable OSD, functions to make editing/cleaning-up the streams easier and is controllable by LIRC, keyboard, telnet/ssh, WWW (cgi) or dedicated utilities. It can be used natively on a TV, with standard v4l tools or the KVDR KDE frontend.. You have an old PC? Add one (up to four) DVB card and you got a cheap multimedia center. Here are the screenshots. " A very impressive project indeed.

Comments

No DirecTV or Dish

[nvrrobx]

Unfortunately, in the US, there is no card that works for DirecTV or Dish like that Siemens card. :(

Re:No DirecTV or Dish

[Cramer]

DirectTV: NEVER (proprietary DSS system)

Dish: Maybe. It's at least the DVB standard.

Re:No DirecTV or Dish

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadlogic ABA-1020 cards will do the trick. Linux drivers exists in at least 2 labs for them.

bye bye tivo

[mark_lybarger]

finally, a great build yourself TIVO setup. i didn't see if there's a project to build a public database of showtimes/channels for people to get. shouldn't be that challenging.

i'm sure a decent setup HDD, video card, and processor is near the price of a tivo, but this lends it self to much much more.

i can't see any DMCA implications, as the intent of the software isn't to distribute copies (that have been unencrypted via breaking a digital encryption method) to other users.

Re:bye bye tivo

[curunir]

Ummm...This shouldn't really hurt TiVo too much. For the average user, it's just too complicated. The overhead of building your own linux box is a signifcant one. When you add in that it doesn't come in a pretty package like the TiVo.

I also wouldn't discount the effort necessary to build a public database of showtimes. I would doubt that entertainment companies would just give open source developers an easy way to pull this information automatically. It probably wouldn't be too hard to screen scrape from some other source, but there are legal issues with that, not to mention the hassle whenever the format of those sources changes.

In the unlikely event that this does start to threaten TiVo's business, TiVo has plenty of patents on timeshifting video and the like that could probably kill off this product.

TiVo's not going anywhere...

Congrats

[mosch]

Extremely cool! Now I just need to find a way to buy a personal data feed from Tribune Media Services, and there's a networkable, build-your-own TiVo! I wonder if they'd be willing to sell feeds to individuals...

Sounds like I either need to start porting, or install Leenooks!

Several cool Features

[Larry_Z]

Looks like they have really thought this one through. There are several really cool features which push the DVR market forward and have been long overdue

- What's on next? button
- The ability to create an edited version of a recording
- Directories to hold recordings
- How much space is left on my hard drive indicator
- And I don't even want to get into network functionality.

Note to Tivo, please add these functionalites to the next system upgrade

Yeah!

[NetJunkie]

Oh, you mean like this?

http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html

Re:Slashdotted already

[0xB]

For screenshots just turn on your TV.

Except...

[NetJunkie]

The TiVo works better. Looks like it belongs in a A/V rack. Has a much better interface. More features. Integrates amazingly well in almost any setup.

So far all these do-it-yourself PVR "solutions" have fallen way short of being a TiVo killer. Anyone that actively uses a TiVo can tell you that.

Re:Except...

[Sloppy]

The TiVo works better.

Yes, for now. The problem with these do-it-yourself PVR solutions is that there are technical hurdles. Every few months, I get the latest Video4Linux driver for my Matrox Rainbow Runner, and try to get them to do something. After an hour, I give up in frustration. I guess I'm just too old or stupid or something for this shit.

But once this stuff gets mature, then some day, someone is going to make it super easy to build apps on top of the tuner/capture functionality. Maybe they'll write some Python classes to encapsulate it all. (Have you seen what happens when a library gets Python wrappers? The productivity that follows is almost scary!) The point is, it'll leak outside the realm of the chipset and kernel hackers. And when that happens, stand back, because, apps will appear that are as good as Tivo, and even better.

This is one of the few apps where the "open source" dudes really have good odds of beating the commercial guys, because they'll be free to simply make things as good as they can imagine -- whereas Tivo thinks they have to keep a good relationship with the networks. So Tivo deliberatly omits stuff like 30-second skip, makes it inconvenient to archive stuff long-term, occasionally includes some pointless promotion menu item, doesn't integrate well with your network and fileserver(s), etc. There are no corporate pressures in the "longhair linus" camp to hold people back. Free Tivo clones are going to rock!

Re:Except...

[Sloppy]

It looks like I somehow got you into Tivo-defender mode. I really didn't mean to do that... I'm not saying Tivo sucks, I'm just saying that it's intentionally less than it could be.

[30 sec skip]

Easily enabled with a backdoor code that you can easily enter with your remote.

Then I lose my skip-to-end button. :( C'mon, if they were really trying to maximize Tivo's ease-of-use, this would be configured somewhere under "my preferences", instead of this select-play-select-9-select silliness. Or better yet, there would have been an extra button on the remote (they were custom-made for Tivo anyway) so that people could do whatever they like best. The Tivo president admitted that this was a consession to the networks.

Yeah, like that very inconvenient "dump to tape" feature which includes a nice screen at the beginning telling you the program name and air date before starting the program.

That ain't nearly as easy to use as "cp". ;-)

doesn't integrate well with your network and fileserver(s), etc.

Huh? You are apparantly not familiar with the very nice TiVo networking hacks. I especially like accessing my TiVo via the webserver I put inside it so I can schedule shows I find out about at work.

I've seen the networking hacks (been too cowardly/lazy to try 'em, though), and I gotta admit that what you did with webserver sounds pretty cool. But that's what they are: hacks. And someday you'll get an update and then you'll have to set things up again. Compare the effort you put into this with what it takes to do the same on a PC.

But TiVo killer, it isn't. By the time they get something to compete with the current TiVo, TiVo will have Series 2 and assorted upgrades ready

Well, I guess time will tell. I don't think Tivo has the balls to implement certain ideas, such as

• collaborative suggestions databases. Imagine if the database of all the thumbing up and down you've done over the last couple of years, could be shared, and someone did the "computer dating" game to find other people that like/hate the same stuff as you... You'll learn about TV shows (which you'll probably like) that you otherwise never would have looked at.
• p2p sharing of "sed for video" scripts so that people can share little scripts to automatically playback shows w/out commercials
• Save an hour-long show to CDR in one minute instead of having to play a show in real time for a vcr to record

Someday, some Python programmer is going to think of putting these things into his do-it-yourself PC PVR, and then we'll see who's playing catch-up.

Mirror site

[WankersRevenge]

I managed to get a peek at the site before it got slashdotted. I only got to view one page but here it is on my own server:

http://www.jezner.com/slashdot/vdrs.html

Need Digital TV Support for the U.S.

[-tji]

This is a great project.. a fully open sourced PVR. If I lived in Europe, I would be all over it.

For use in the U.S. a Digital TV receiver card such as the HiPix or the AccessDTV.

Depending on how the hardware interfaces with the control software, it would be excellent if it could be made to work with U.S. cards.

Linux needs drivers for Creative's MPEG-2 PVR

[no_such_user]

Hey, check this out: Creative Lab's Video Blaster Digital VCR.

One of the things which makes the Linux VDR project slightly easier (?) to implement is that the DVB card they're using as a tuner outputs MPEG-2 to the system. Thus, no messy (and cpu intensive) video input and number crunching. This Digital VCR product from Creative has an MPEG-2 encoder chip on-board, and outputs MPEG-2. It can either use it's own tuner OR it will control your cable box/sat receiver via IR commands. And it's only $99. That's not a typo. I'm not claiming it's output will be as good as a Tivo/DVB/whatever, but at 640x480 resolution, it's a step in the right direction.

And it's no longer vaporware -- I picked one up at CompUSA last week (in NYC - 38th & 5th location).

Now, who's up for tearing this thing apart and creating some linux drivers?!

Not competition for TiVo/Replay

[bbum]

To put things in a bit of perspective: This is an awesome achievement and these guys should be congratulated many times over for the achievement. It is *way* cool!!

However, it is *not* competition to TiVo outside of the handful of geeks that may choose to do it themselves over buying the off the shelf solution provided by TiVo and ReplayTV.

First, the Linux VDR based solution is not a no-brainer installation. Not by any stretch of the imagination. You have to deal with obtaining the correct hardware configuration, install all the software correctly, etc,etc,etc. Even if someone were to pick it up and sell it as an off the shelf, preconfigured unit it will still have significant maintenance issues above and beyond, say, a TiVo.

This is not a criticism-- just a recognition that the market for a TiVo and the primary market for this software is very different.

Most of the folks I know with a TiVo do not have the knowledge or the time to deal with such a solution.

Frankly, even with the knowledge an awful lot of folks aren't going to have the time or aren't going to see blowing the time on building out such a thing as being a useful investment.

Personally, I would rather pay $500 to TiVo and be done with it than have to screw around with getting all of the different random bits inline to make the Linux VDR solution work!

Finally, the TiVo provides a level of seamless integration that will not be achieved in the GPL VDR solution for a long time. A lot of the channel and scheduling information isn't available via public channels without doing a boatload of parsing and screen scraping. Even then, it'll change over time and break often. TiVo and Replay have the distinct advantage of having paid the big $$$ for data feeds that provide this data in a machine readable format.

Paying the $$$ to TiVo/Replay buys a lot more than just some software and hardware. It buys a service, a data feed, and a company to back the whole package. For a lot of the market, all of that must be included before something can be considered competition!

To clear up any misconceptions

[mocm]

VDR is for DVB cards only. DVB is the European standard for digital satellite, cable and terrestial
reception. The drivers for DVB cards can be found at www.linuxtv.org.
There are mainly two types of cards available paired with the respective tuner for DVB-S, DVB-C or DVB-T. One is a full featured card containing an MPEG2 decoder and the other a budget card which only delivers the transport stream from the respective transmitter. The latter are very good for Internet via sat, cable or terrestial sources because they can deliver a full transport stream.
The DVB standard provides an electonic program guide (EPG) which allows VDR to get information about the programming and transmission times.
So it differs from Tivo because it doesn't need to encode the programs and gets the programming information directly from the respective providers. Replay is done via the MPEG decoders of the full featured cards, so you always need one to
have the full benefit of VDR, it also uses the TV out of the DVB card so no graphics card is required. Of course, you can use a software decoder to decode the transport stream that comes from the card, but that is not yet implemented in VDR.
There is also the possibility to add a common interface (CI) to the DVB card, so that you can use a common acces module (CAM) to decode encrypted channels using the smartcard you get from your provider.

What another company has done...

[NanoGator]

Just to be clear, what I'm about to talk about is a PVR, not a DVR, so the signal turns analog and then gets compressed again along the way. So this particular solution may be a little off topic, at first:

Ever hear of snapstream? (http://www.snapstream.com) If you have a TV Tuner card, this program turns your computer into a Tivo-Like device allowing one to capture TV Shows as .ASF files.

One of the features this software has is it can control your Satellite Dish or Digital Cable via Infa Red. It has a little cable or something connected to an IR emitter so it can set the channel for you. Theoretically, with this device, and IR controlled device could be tuned.

The problem is, as I mentioned above, is that you're going analog and then going digital again with the associated Degredation. (To be fair, I don't think it'd be bad.)

I imagine somebody COULD find a way to do a similar thing with Linux. If they were to take their satellite reciever apart, figure out which cable has the digital data (if that's possible... I'm not claiming to know what really goes on inside of these devices and imagine I'll be told it's not possible), and funnel it off to the computer, it wouldn't be that much bigger of step to add infa-red capability too.

Anybody wanna donate their reciever to experiment on? Heh

Re:how long...

[JabberWokky]

Yes, so long as you have the magic protocol which can transmit a video tape across fiber.

Well, if you count a postal employee's uniform as being made of fibers...

Seriously - if you want rare or hard to find stuff, you can get into the taper networks which give stuff away for just the cost of a SASE. If you want easy to find stuff, it's on DVD, which is a few clicks away from Gnutella.

This is not, in reality, a terrifying technology. It may, however, be a semi-killer app for Linux... "Can you do this under Windows? Oh, yeah, well can you write it out to VCD or DVD?"

--
Evan