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..."

Comments

what would you say are the key features?

[edrugtrader]

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?

Re:what would you say are the key features?

[malfunct]

The reason for this is based on how the two tivo's get thier signal.

The direcTivo just extracts the mpeg stream directly from the sattelite signal, it has no mpeg encoder in the box. Thus its cheap enough to put in 2 recorders because they just dump the stream to disk.

The standalone tivo on the otherhand has a chip for doing mpeg encoding in realtime. It can only process 1 stream at a time. I guess its a price/value call for the tivo company not to include 2 of these in the box.

The one thing I like most about the tivo vs a PC based solution is that the tivo is a sexy little box that does its 1 job very very well. I don't want to have 2 pc's to do that same job. The only big advantage to me for the PC based solution is the fact that it would be far easier to archive the video that I capture.

So let me see if understand...

[sterno]

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.

a linux based PVR you might want to check out

[mazeone]

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.

NYT Registration

[McCart42]

User: dummy
Pass: dummy
Works for me as a member login.

huh?

[NiftyNews]

"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.)

Cost

[imta11]

When figuring cost, keep in mind that the PVRs are a device and subscription service wheras the PC solution is a one time investment.

TiVo still rocks, but...

[sdo1]

... in case TiVo, Inc. goes under, I do take some comfort in the fact that PCs are getting there. The big advance in the last year or so has been advent of inexpensive PCI cards with built-in MPEG2 encoder chips. The key there is the quality is much better than software based mpeg encoding routines. The chips handle 3/2 pulldown and deinterlacing much better, if such things tickle your fancy.

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

Here's a great Linux PVR solution

[oGMo]

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:

• CD ripping and music playback (mp3, ogg, etc.)
• Grabbing TV program information off the web
• IR remote control support

Other things such as support for various emulators are on the todo list. The frontend is rather pretty as well.

Re:Linux PVR

[klaus_g]

http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/

Re:Linux PVR

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

How about this?

I disagree...

[eric2hill]

"No one does it quite right yet..."

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.

The importance of listings, and hooks into p2p

[astrashe]

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.

PVRs vs PCs

[Storm]

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.

It's already easy enough under linux

[sanermind]

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.

Re:Cost--electricity

[endoboy]

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