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Build Your Own Linux PVR
linuxwrangler writes "A few weeks ago Russell Pavlicek, Infoworld's 'Open Source' columnist mentioned a personal linux video time-shifter (PVR) he built. In response to reader requests he has now posted a page describing the project." Escaping the monthly fees of TiVo is a good motivation -- and the total cost here isn't bad either.
Sorry, the remote is a packard bell (not much better). Its the extra tv feature that supports X-10.
I do believe it is not an x-10 remote...
ah, here: "Added Packard Bell IR remote (under US$10; removes need for USB mouse)"
There you go. Next time read the article more carefully...
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
It's curious that there's no reference to Freevo.
For something /. worthy, check out New series 2 Tivo for $199
MythTV works quite a bit better than this one does. Check it out here.
XMLTV should od the trick.
The recording rate of the TV capture card appears to max out at 15 frames per second. If I were intending to archive these programs forever, I'd probably invest in a better card. But for timeshifting shows like the evening news from France (for my wife) and The Red Green Show (for me), 15 fps is adequate.
15 FPS, I'd hardly call that adequate for 30 FPS NTSC television, but to each his own I suppose.
doesn't TiVo already run linux?
If i'm not mistaken, TiVo is pretty much a linux box running on PPC hardware.
With the current Christmas sales around the country, I'm sure you can get the real thing cheap.
DirecTivo is the best... it has a satellite decoder built right in... now show me how to build one of those, and I'll be impressed... but until then, I can't easily change channels on my sat reciever with my pc, and I don't feel like forking out huge amounts of money for two tv tuner cards and two sat receivers just so I can watch one channel and record another...
Tivo still has a place in the market... shrinking yes, but it's not cost effective to try and replace it's functionality... at least not yet...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Use vcr
/dev/video
Here are my settings: (works very well)
[defaults]
quality = 100
keyframes = 15
audiobitrate = 128
framerate = 29.97
audiomode = stereo
resolution = 384x288
codec = DivX 4.0
norm = NTSC
source = Television
grabdevice =
freqtab = us-cable
Correct
Also, even more importantly, as I understand -- it is difficult (or impossible?) to simply take out the recorded file and transfer them to another computer or burn it to CD/DVD media... Such ability is a BIG plus in my opinion.
Impossible, no. Difficult, sort of. It's kind of hard to get started, but once you know what you're doing it isn't so bad. It does take a while to transfer the data over the network to a computer for reencoding/burning.
Finally gradual upgrade is possible in the custom system... I believe replacing the hard drive in TiVo is difficult and expensive... So don't discard custom system just yet.
Replacing the hard drive (or adding another, as is more common) is neither difficult nor expensive, especially if one has the skills to set some homebrew system up. Tivo uses standard IDE drives (5400rpm even). You do have to open it up and put the drives in a computer to set it up, but there are step-by-step instructions floating around for the entire process.
While the main appeal to most people to purchase a TiVo is its timeshifting ability, there is far more to its featureset than just the way it pauses live TV. Anyone who thinks that TiVo is just a digital VCR hasn't really looked at one closely enough to understand the flexibility that it grants you.
"And I don't like the concept of having my destiny linked with the fortunes of the supplying company. I don't need a US$300 doorstop if the TiVo company should someday fail. Hey, if Enron and Worldcom can end up in the toilet, you have to allow for the fact that no one company will be around forever."
I think TiVo has stated that should they go under, they'd supply the current users with some facility to allow the units to continue to function.
"It should also be capable of creating images that can be burned on Video CDs (VCD)."
This is an ability I know someone has hacked into their TiVo. In addition, the new version of WinDVD allows you to view a stream at 1.2x the speed of broadcast, letting you shave down a 60 minute program to 30 minutes or so (after eliminating commercials).
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Plus it's progressive scan, so actually losing 75% of the original 60 frame interlaced NTSC source. This system was definitely designed by a computer guy, not a video guy (as honorable and deep a form of geekhood as any).
:).
He really wants something that can do interlaced capture, like MPEG-2 or some of the higher profile versions of MPEG-4. I believe this is supported in the current CVS of Xvid, at least experimentally. MPEG-4 would give a LOT smaller file sizes than MPEG-2 at the same quality.
Or, since VCD is his goal, he could capture straight to ffmpeg in a VCD compatible profile. Or use SVCD MPEG-2, which would be higher quality, and could still fit a half-hour show on a 800 MB CD-ROM.
Windows Media 9 has great, free, integrated capture that can do interlaced, but that'd be hardly Linux friendly
My video compression blog
Both companies have seen the market for this data shrink as more people move to Dish Network and DirecTV, systems which have their own in-house listings service, bundled with the decoder boxes.
While there is (limited) competition in the TV listings market, and the profit margins are thin -- it takes a lot of time and effort to not only collect and validate the information from various sources and put it into a single standard format, but also (attempt to) clean up errors, typos, and general inconsistency across all the different data sources.
I have heard hints that TMS is considering offering "hobbyist" licensing for their local lineup and listings, perhaps eventually giving a free/cheap service to get "legal" access to the same online listings database as is currently offered for some smart remote controls.
I don't have any problems getting 30fps, but I am using 1Ghz Athlon for my home made PVR. I have experimented with this a bit, for me, 15fps doesn't cut it, 24-25 is exceptable, but for truly smooth video that isn't hard to watch, I need to hit 30fps.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Monthly fee? Do the math. The 40 hour Tivo plus a lifetime subscription is about a hundred bucks more than this homebuilt thing. It'd take far more than $100 of my time just to assemble the parts for a home-built system and that doesn't include configuration.
Can't get the video out is difficult/impossible? I've got hundreds of VCDs that say otherwise. It's a somewhat annoying process but it only takes a few minutes to set up a day's worth of conversion once the video is extracted and, once the extraction software is set up on the Tivo, getting the files on your PC is as hard as picking the shows and clicking "get". The setup is a hell of a lot simpler than building a linux system from scratch.
Upgrading a drive is difficult? What the hell do you call building a Linux PVR?!? Expensive? How so? They use IDE drives. Same ones you stick in your computer. If your skills are good enough to even consider building your own Linux PVR, you don't need to pay someone else to set up the drive for you.
Looking for an alternative to XAWTV's streamer utility, I happened across MPlayer's 'mencoder' utility which can grab from v4l too.
My 'rec' script now contains something like:
-oac mp3lame -lameopts br=160:cbr
-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
-ofps 29.97 -o $f.avi &
You can't buy a TiVo or ReplayTV without a subscription. You used to be able to, but now that's impossible. It is part of the initial agreement.
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research." - Einstein
I looked at this a few months ago.
Startdate is unix time (number of SECONDS since midnight Jan 1, 1970) rounded to midnight.
As in: time-time%(60*60*24)
"You could hack the program a bit and add a button that lets you Zap a show to a standard DVD-R."
I know someone who's currently archiving all of his TiVo's shows to his computer and subsequently to VCD/DVD. It takes a bit of know how, but it's already been done for TiVo units.
"You could use NFS and make a similar pc with a WiFi card in it, but minimal hard drive and a TV out card and have the view your recorded shows on any tv. Or start watching it in the living room, pause and go to the bedroom to finish."
I actually do this now, with video and remote sender/receiver units (total about $80), eliminating the cost of
The flipside of the advantages of the homegrown solution is that TiVo has welcomed users hacking their units. This hacker-friendly mentality has snowballed into a large community of customers doing who-knows-what with their units (i.e. getting Caller-ID info on their televisions through the TiVo).
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
DirecTivo units, as well as MS's UlitmateTV, can do this now. The disadvantage with the former is that DirecTV is required. I'm not sure about UltimateTV, because, really, I'd rather not...
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
You would have to use a card by Winnov or OptiBase - then you could get your MPEG encoding done for you.
You'd pay about $400 for the card alone, though.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Policy change. Early on, you could buy a TiVo and then decide whether or not you wanted to subscribe to the service, but you can't anymore.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=67473
Albiet, the parser gets Canadian channels, would be easily changed to get free ones from tvguide.com or gist, etc.
Ahem.....
click here
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
This TV-Now thing looks to be a better bet. It's not free but that (to me) is not a bad thing--you'll have somebody to complain to if it doesn't work or the listings are incorrect.
TV scheduling data for your cable system is already available on your cable feed ... its called "guide plus" and its available in the same scanline that carries closed caption text. This data is used in some TVs and DVD players that support "guide plus".
If you search google for more info, there are a few resources out there with technical details on how to read this data.
The data includes time, duration, genre, category, and show information.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Since MJPEG isn't particularly processor-intensive, it's almost as simple to use a dumb card and software such as VirtualDub to capture the video with the MJPEG or Huffyuv codec.
:-)
;-)
Huffyuv is a lossless RLE codec that puts very little strain on the CPU but provides realtime compression of up to 3.2:1.
This will cost you 8-9GB/hour in diskspace, but the resulting files are very high quality and can be edited right down to the individual frame level (MPEG editors often limit you to key frame cuts).
I've created some very nice videos using the Huffyuv/VirtualDub/TMPGenc software combo. If you work at it, you can get about 45mins of virtually broadcast-quality video on a single 700MB CDR.
The downside is that even on a 2GHz processor, TMPGenc will take about 4 hours of CPU time to encode a single hour of video to MPEG-2 in high-quality format.
One advantage of a "smart" card such as the Hauppauge PVR-250 is that you can capture using realtime MPEG-2 encoding with a very high bitrate then transcode that down to SVCD bitrates in the background later on.
There's no way you're going to be able to capture in realtime and use a non-realtime MPEG-encoder in the background simultaneously with a dumb card.
The bottom line is that this whole area of video capture, encoding, Tivo-like functionality and the like is fraught with compromises.
That's not so much because the hardware/software isn't up to the job -- it's more that a PC is a far more flexible box than a regular Tivo so you're constantly coming up with "this too" wishes.
The PC system I'm working on is already a very multi-faceted system that offers:
* PVR functionality (including Tivo-like timeshift
* SVCD/VCD burning capabilities
* FM radio recording and burning to MP3 or audio CD
* a Net-radio capability
* Great games
* CD/DVD/MP3 player functionality
* Web-surfing and email
Plus you could add (although I never would of course):
* Videocrypt decoding -- watch some Pay-TV broadcasts for free!
* DVD ripping -- transcoding DVD disks to SVCD on CDR.
* CD ripping/burning -- copying commercial music CDs to CDR
There's a whole bunch of funcationality that makes such a machine a great addition to the entertainment rack. Unfortunately some functions are best served by Windows, some best served by Linux. Some are best served by dumb capture cards, some by smart ones.
Oh, what a wonderful nightmare
Here is some more info... the "guide plus" (or sometimes "guide+" data is carried in the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) ... to get started, read this: http://www.robson.org/gary/writing/icce98.html.
Then,go here: http://www.robson.org/gary/captioning/index.html
Then, if you still need more info, try searching with the keywords "vbi" "guide" "caption", etc
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Instant TiVO.... Oh wait, for Linux .....
Try, http://gatos.sourceforge.net/ or ftp://ftp.xig.com/pub/3Ddemos/extras/README.xvamp
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Time Warner has started to offer their own PVR for $5 a month. It includes two tuners (for recording two shows at once), it can hold 50 hours, it works directly with an on-screen guide, and I highly doubt TW is going out of business anytime soon. Hopefully more cable providers will pick up on this venture.
If anyone's interested, there's also an article on this is the November 2002 Popular Science.
http://freevo.sourceforge.net
EXCELENT PVR software, i've used it. Actually, i haven't tried the recording part, but everything i have tried (playing movies, mp3s, photo gallery) was worked great. Has an awsome interface too. It would be GREAT for one of those anandtec boxes.... the sv24 or whatever it is.
I'm not drunk, I'm just in touch with pi.
So if you can't really use a TiVO without a subscription
You can if it's an old enough TiVo. You just need to: A) find one that originally came with 1.3, B) find a 1.3 image you can put onto the drive.
It makes you wonder if these comments were actually posted BY Tivo
No, they were posted by people with a clue.
I would love to purchase or build a PVR. But I have absolutely no interest in adding to my monthly bills
Then you have several choices.
1) Build your own/buy a HTPC solution. Understand that, currently, it's simply not as good - the UI is poor, the scheeduling isn't as good, and it's not as easy to integrate or be used by others. On the upside, it'll be a lot easier to rip digital video for archive purposes than a TiVo (but not a Replay).
2) Buy an old TiVo from eBay, get an image, deal with the annoy screens.
3) Buy a new TiVo, purchase a lifetime subscription. For $250 it's done. You're looking at a sum-total cost of $450 at this moment for a basic TiVo ($200 for the box, $250 for the sub) and that's it.
4) Buy a new DirecTiVo (if you have DirecTV), and if you have the TotalChoice Premier package then the $5/mo fee is waived.
5) Buy a ReplayTV -- the cost of the subscription is included.
In any of the above situations your monthly bills have not changed.
All these comments saying it isnt as good as TiVO are totally off-topic and are just clogging up the discussion
No they're not. If you believe that build-your-own is as good a solution as a TiVo, you're wrong. It's not. The example given in this article isn't even a good implementation -- you can build one that does a helluva lot better job, but it's still not as good.
If you want to talk about paranoia regarding TiVo/Replay "watching you" then that's another thing (not that I buy into the level of paranoia that concerns people). If you want to talk about worrying about the company folding, that's a valid issue as well. But whining about increased monthly fees is just bullshit - it means you haven't done your homework and are talking out of your ass.
Hmm,
I'm not impressed.
My own creation is a lot better:
full PAL resolution, full FPS, and
no fans whatsoever -> zero noise.
It's at:
http://www.stolk.info/server/
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/