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Turning the PC into a Digital Video Recorder
gearfix2 writes "The NYTimes ran this story in today's paper about how to turn the PC into a personal video recorder (a la TiVo)... It's got pretty thorough coverage of PC-based hardware with the conclusion "the TiVo outshines the PC-based systems by being easier to use and by offering more built-in intelligence." Conspicuously absent are El Gato's EyeTV for the mac and SnapStream's Personal Video Station... Anyways, the real question is whether PC PVR will *ever* get there. No one does it quite right yet..."
accurate up to date free TV listings.
able to auto-configure to any cable or satellite setup
dual tuner
program suggestions
season pass
easy interface
video quality
exactlly what is missing in the current PC PVRs?
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I moved across the us recently and decided to ditch all my tubes (tv & monitors). i got a ati tv wonder usd and it's totally kick ass. works off either cable or antenna. plug it into a networked computer, give it a zip code, and voila!, u have tv in that local area. :(
my friend has tivo, and it's cool. but when i get my projector goin (ati also has a remote for this), i'll have a mobile projection system. even a 640x480 projector on a wall will look better than most tubes. i basically gave my tv away. just like the old radios yr granparents mighta dug and have since bitten the technology dust, so will tube tv's.
expect more tv wonder type devices. now, if only it worked on my tibook..
If you are average or even above average consumer and are given the following choice:
1) Go out and buy a $450 ReplayTV that provides 40 hours of record time, network sharing, and was builting from the ground up to be an integrated part of your home theater system.
2) Go out and buy a PC for 300-400 then buy the video capture card, a video card with a TV out, an IR receiver, and software. Then hook it up to your home theater system and always have this odd looking box sitting next to the rest of your equipment.
Gee, I wonder why the PC PVR thing hasn't caught on. We are only now getting to the point where the left over machines we have from new purchases have the performance necessary to handle being a PVR. I've tried to do this a bit myself, and the basic problem I ran into was that my processor just wasn't fast enough to handle the demand. If you have an old PC that's fast enough, it might be worth hacking but otherwise, it's WAY easier and similar priced to just buy a Tivo or ReplayTV.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
There is a fairly neat open source PVR at mythtv.org. It is still rather early in development, but has neat features like an on-screen display, a program guide, pausing and rewinding of live TV, etc. Pretty neat stuff.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout.
I personally own a AIW Radeon 7500 and am *extremely* happy with the advanced features it offers over a Tivo, most notably the ability to save video directly to VCD format, for cheap, easy, longlasting storage...
I used the new ATI A-I-W 8500 for a while and the tools were easy to use. I wouldnt compare it being on par with other solutions out there, but if you wanted a PVR and a Good Video Card thats one way to go.
The Live-Pause feature was quite good and the image jitters once (when it starts recording) and does a good job, but the file sizes were obviously too large (Half an hour of high quality video translates to 3 GB of space).
Where as Nvidia's Personal Cinema, though boasting a superior Chip had the worst software tools. I was surprised to see the Live-Pause feature to be totally useless, where you try to play back the video that got recorded was so jittery and of bad quality that it was practically useless. I wish they would do a better job with their suite of tools next time.
As for me, I would try and see if ATI does some good work with the 9700 A-I-W, coz as for me, thats the card I would buy (till DoomIII fades out and QuakeV gets in).
Rapid Nirvana
User: dummy
Pass: dummy
Works for me as a member login.
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
I've been using Snapstreams' PVR since the Winter Olympics and I've found it to be an amazing tool. It's pretty simple to use through the web interface but the web interface is slightly slow... .Net technology and allows you to surf a tv guide and record straight from that.
Although the version I have currently encodes to WMV (then I use the MS media decoder to convert it to fixed version of wmv and then use virtual dub to convert it to divx) the newest version (Quartz) can encode right to divx =)
If you have an older version then you can upgrade to Quartz for free.
Also in Quartz, there is a service you can buy that uses
But...since I prefer recording shows at custom lengths I find the text interface pretty easy to use (I even recorded all the World Cup games using the PVR).
So...PC PVRs aren't all that bad...at least Snapstream has a good PVR...I suggest it to those who like good software, it's well worth the cost.
internet like monkeys'
"No one does it quite right yet..."
Err, one company does. Stop comparing it to Tivo and just get a Tivo. It's made for its purpose and won't require countless hours of hacking and tweaking and kludging to work. I'm all for building your own and Open Source and blah blah blah, but now and then a product is actually produced for a decent price that does a great job doing what it was made to do.
(But for those who prefer a lot of hacking and tweaking and kludging, you can get a BASH prompt on it and go nuts fiddling with code to your heart's content.)
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When figuring cost, keep in mind that the PVRs are a device and subscription service wheras the PC solution is a one time investment.
Hauppauge has a new card that I've been looking into, and the Navis-Pro is also supposed to be good.
Similar cards were in the thousands of dollars a couple years ago. Now they're around $200... and falling. We're not long before its very easy, very good quality, and very inexpensive. We're not quite there yet though, and for now TiVo and the like and certainly the way to go.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
No one does it quite right yet...
Not yet but soon. Microsoft is working on their version of TiVo. You wonder why the Nforce2 has dual ethernet ports? Well, basically, Microsoft is going to take over the loose ends that are hanging in various markets.
Hollywood doesn't want you copying their crap, the cableco's don't want you using more than a single PC on their crap (without paying extra for it) and Microsoft doesn't want you doing anything without paying for their crap.
In the end, you get a set-top box with a built in web-server, network router, PVR features / AV features, gaming, etc, etc, etc. It is a wonderful idea and will likely take everything by storm. The cableco's will stick one of these MS boxes on your TV for free. In return, you'll be able to rent games and movies from them. If you want to add another PC - no problem - the system will automatically run a wizard which will register the system with the cableco, and most importantly - your bill.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Check out MythTV, from the author of Freeamp. It uses Linux, Qt, and a TV tuner card to provide an entire solution for dropping a box next to your TV. Here are a few features:
Other things such as support for various emulators are on the todo list. The frontend is rather pretty as well.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I gots me one of them there ATI 8500 All-In-Wonder DV cards and I have to say I love it.
Two complaints tho';
1. The TV window has to be the active window for the remote control to work
2. I've had instances with the scheduled recording feature where I've set up the event, closed the scheduler interface (The scheduler still runs in the background), and when the time comes to record the program an error pops up saying that another device is using the tuner.
Somewhat frustrating, but over all the device is a lot of fun.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/
How about this?
I remember being shown "current" research into this a couple years ago (winter 1999-2000) on a campus tour at Carnegie Mellon--anyone remember this? It was called "Informedia", and it promised to monitor closed captioning on all channels for keywords, and record the A/V stream as well as save the closed captioning.
Oh here we go, I found a link to it. Very interesting stuff. As it turns out, the use is to store this video in libraries...it would be recorded from WQED and similar educational stations and accessible for playback later. Very entertaining project, IMO.
Here's an early overview of the project.
"RATIONALE of the Informedia Digital Video Library Goal:
The Informedia(tm) Digital Video Library Project at Carnegie Mellon University is creating a digital library of text, images, videos and audio data available for full content retrieval. The initial testbed will be installed in several K-12 schools and students will use the Informedia System to explore multi-media data for educational purposes. The Informedia system for video libraries goes far beyond the current paradigm of video-on-demand, by retrieving a short video paragraph in response to the user's query.
(Why is this project needed, why now)
Vast digital libraries of information will soon become available on the nation's Information Superhighway as a result of emerging multimedia computing technologies. These libraries will have a profound impact on the conduct of business, professional, and personal activities. However, it is not enough to simply store and play back information as in commercial video-on-demand services. New technology is needed to organize and search these vast data collections, retrieve the most relevant selections, and effectively reuse them.
The Informedia Library project proposes to develop these new technologies and to embed them in a video library system primarily for use in education and training. The nation's schools and industry together spend between $400 and $600 billion per year on education and training, an activity that is 93% labor-intensive, with little change in teacher productivity ratios since the 1800s. The new digital video library technology will allow independent, self-motivated access to information for learning, exploration, and research. This will bring about a revolutionary improvement in the way education and training are delivered and received."
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
I disagree. I've got a Dish Network PVR 501 that works wonderfully.
- All the guide information comes down through the sat signal.
- The hard drive stores the raw MPEG bitstream, not a recompressed version.
- The quality is therefore identical to the live sat broadcast.
- I have a 10-second skip back.
- I have a 30-second skip forward.
- Live pause is perfectly integrated.
- The guide search works great now.
- Built-in on-screen caller ID.
The only things I miss are the ability to change out hard drives for a bigger model, and the ability to dump a show to CD or DVD. These features I can live without. This little box works great.Now if I can just get caller IQ I'll be all set.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
It seems to me that the key missing element is some sort of database of listings. It seems that it ought to be doable -- we have freedb's of CD track names, for example.
A computer with a PVR card is a more complicated replacement for a VCR, and unless you want to edit or share the video, it doesn't give you many advantages. If you just want to watch the show you're going to miss because you're going out, a VCR is a better solution.
TiVo is a lot more than a VCR -- you program it, and you never miss your favorite shows again. You have a pool of programs waiting for you, a queue of shows you like that's available whenever you have the time to watch them.
Imagine coupling all of the funcationality of TiVo with a p2p system -- so you could even get shows that you forgot to record, or earlier episodes of a show you've just discovered.
Kazaa lets you do things that go a long way towards proving the potential of this technology. You can tell kazaa to get some specific episode of south park, and it will, although it might take awhile. But the selection of shows available on kazaa is pretty poor.
If a p2p system shared all the shows that people recorded for themselves, then everything would be available. We'd all end up in jail for copyright violations, but there'd be a lot of good video on the network.
Better yet, the system would be international. We could watch British shows here in the States, or Japanese shows, or whatever.
This stuff has a lot of potential to be insanely great.
I have been working on this very thing the past feww months, and have found that while there is an associated learning curve, there are advantages to using a PC to record over a TiVO.
Since my job requires some travel, I have found that it is a definite boon to collect movies. Using my workstation as a PVR, I am able to capture to the hard drive, do some postprocessing and write a DivX to a 700MB CD-R which I can then take with me and watch on business trips. And its all perfectly legal, since I am archiving for later viewing. On the other hand, getting the same from a TiVo requires modifications of questionable legality. In addition, I can make backup copies of my DVDs on 700MB media so I don't have to risk leaving my DVDs in a hotel room somewhere.
As for the cost issue, if you have a system with the right specs (a modern PC should pretty much do it), then the only additional cost should be a tv capture card, which can be had for $20 or $30 US. The only thing that one could point out is the time cost and the learning curve involved in making the hardware and software do what you want it to. But it is that way with anything. If its worth doing, you're probably going to have to teach yourself.
--Storm
I ditched my vcr months ago. Just get a tv capture card with the bttv848 chip for video in [I recommend the winTV-FM, as it also has a stereo decoder and sound capture dsp on the card, leaving your existing sound card free, about $50 street]
Then, all you need is a good audio sync maintaining capture program like NewVideoRecorder and a good MP4 codec, and you're set! Oh, you probably need a least an athlon 1800 or equivilant, to do realtime 640x480 encoding capture with good deinterlacing. Much weaker systems can easily handle 320x240, which isn't much worse than vhs. Add in a few 80gig drives, a fast CDR, and you've got entertainment bliss.
Did I mention that the hauppage card comes with a remote, and it too is supported. So, sit back on the couch, with the computer hooked up to both record and play to your big screen tv, easily controlled by a remote.
It's being done right now, today, on peoples linux boxes. I've been doing it for over 4 months!
The only bad thing is that, currently, I still find the best application for editing commercials out of shows I want to archive, to be virtualdub [a win32 app]. It runs under wine, sure, but it still kind of hurts to have to do it. At least it's GPLd, though.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
...the magic is in the software-hardware combo, and the money is in the hardware.
Plus supporting only their hardware means many fewer support headaches.
Now, maybe something like TiVo-on-a-PCI-card and TiVo software that only works with that card would fly from a technical standpoint, but then the ability to trade shows would be accessible to the average user. Jack Valenti would pop a vein in his forehead. Right now, it's possible to extract the video from a TiVo only if you're willing to futz under the hood, so the majority of TiVo users can't do it, so it's not THAT big of a concern-- like MP3 trading on Usenet and FTP was, before Napster came along.
And then we're back to support issues. You put a PC TiVo kit on the shelves at CompUSA, you have to hire people to help Joe Idiot User who can barely work Windows but now expects to get his PC and cable box talking nicely to each other.
~Philly
offsetting the subscription cost is the significant additional energy cost to keep the PC running--
Even if you figure it (conservatively) at an additional 100 watts, it comes to something like 35 cents per day-- which comes out within about a dollar per month of the monthly subscription fee
Essentially, the PC solution has you paying your subscription fee to the power company instead of Tivo