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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..."
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.
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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.
"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.
How about this?
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.
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
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