Home-Grown TiVo Stories?

PolyDwarf writes "I'm in the process of figuring out how I'm going to build a homegrown TiVo machine (i.e. a computer sitting next to or in my home electronics stack). My question for is "What's worked best for you?" Most solutions I've researched are great if you have regular cable. However, satellite systems and digital cable boxes seem to present a special challenge, in that the software on the PC needs to know about an IR connector that is then hooked up to the front of the digital cable/satellite box. Who has done a solution like what I'm researching? What cases/processors/memory/TV Card/IR transceiver/OS/software/etc worked out for you? Did the end result justify the pain and hassle?"

Comments

Freevo and linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Freevo and linux have been working pretty well for me. Just setup xmltv and go.

Re:Freevo and linux

[Deffexor]

Freevo can be found here: Freevo

(for those of you who don't know how to use Google yet... ;)

Mini-ITX form factor

[Anonymous Coward]

A great place to look for small form factor machines is over at mini-itx.com, great small form factor stuff. For software, freshmeat.net and a bit of scripting is your friend :D

Re:Mini-ITX form factor

[loucura!]

Mini-itx supports PCI. You can get hardware mpeg decoders.

Re:Mini-ITX form factor

[pardey]

The VIA ME6000 has a hardware MPEG-2 decoder on the board, and I found a review of its performance playing various media types here. Apparently it did pretty well.

mythtv

[Anonymous Coward]

mythtv.org looks promissing, version 0.8 works well, dunno about the receiver stuff as I just have cable.

Re:mythtv

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Yes, I'm very happy with mythtv. With the 0.8 release, it's split between a front-end and a back-end. You can record all your programs on one machine and watch the recordings (or live TV) from any front-end machine, even if the front-end machine doesn't have a tuner card of its own.

Mythtv also has hooks to execute any command you desire to change the channels. Plus a web front-end (mythweb) for viewing program info and recording a program or deleting old recordings.

It doesn't recommend stuff for you to watch and it won't think you're gay if you tape Will & Grace.

Re:MythTV

[nexthec]

A couple of notes
1) Currently there is a project to support the WinTV PVR 250/350 under linux, and issac has purchased one of these. The cool thing is that this card does hardware encoding, so you should be able to use a 600-700 MHz machine for live pauseing.

2) Seperated backend/front end is sorta working. meaching you could have a IDE raid machine with a couple of cards, and have some very basic playback units.

3) It use X, this could be good or bad depending on your POV. Basically it has allowed a lot of modules to be created.

4) the video format is nupple for the regular stuff so archivale is a bit tricky if you want to replay else where.

5) satelite/cable tunner boxes is sorta an on your own project, but a lot of people have done it so community support is out there.

Read avs forums

[scootr1]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s= &forumid=26

They'll be your friend.

Regular cable is best, just because of TV tuner cards.

Also check out http://www.mythtv.com if you want to go the linux route.

My setup

[Kallahar]

I have an old Celeron 433 with an STB TVPCI (BT848 chipset). For software I'm running IULabs IUVCR (their site seems to be down) which changes the channel and sets all the encoding options. Everything captures to AVI, which I then play on that computer or any other on the network (nothing has TV out yet)

For scheduling everything is run through the MS Task Scheduler and is under manual control.

Travis

Re:My setup

[CheapEngineer]

I run IUVCR at the TV station I work at for an Aircheck recorder; set to record in 1 hour chunks, 24hrs a day, ground down to a level that allows me to fit 7 days on a DVD-RW. Not even close to VCR quality, but good enough to make sure commercials aired, audio was okay, transmitter was on the air, etc.

Sweet program, even if it's under Windows.

Buy a Tivo

[pgrote]

How many of these topics will we see?

They are $200 and you save time, money and effort. Even the geek effect isn't worth it this time.

Spend the money and help a company.

Here's a list of sites that can help if you're married to doing this:
Freevo
XMLTV

Re:Buy a Tivo

[niai]

You cannot watch XVID, DIVX, real streams, or wmp streams using your TIVO.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[elmegil]

And you will be stuck paying a monthly fee to the service provider until they go out of business, you may be locked into firmware upgrades which may restrict your ability to do things like skipping commercials, etc.

Personally, I prefer the idea of building something that I know I have full rights to modify as I see fit and don't have to pay perpetual fees for.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[pgrote]

That's great. So, can I have some of the time you have?

It's well worth it for me to have the best device invented since the car FREE MY TIME and no longer FORCE ME TO BE A SLAVE to the TV programming gods.

$4.99 a month and all I had to do was plug it in, connect three cables and turn it on. Kick ass. Count me in.

As for being a more open platform, check out:

Tivo Forums

Re:Buy a Tivo

[merlyn]

You also don't get the quality of the program guide if you don't buy a TiVo and subscribe to their service. I've seen the public ones. No other guide service comes close to what I get from my TiVo.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Quarters]

(cough)yes you can(cough)

TyStudio

That, plus a DVD burner and life is good. Heck, it even lets you cut out the commercials before you burn.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's not so much the expense that is the issue as it is the lack of features. TIVO still stores captured programs in a proprietary (encoded) format that prevents you from directly downloading the content for burning on VCD/SVCD/DVD. It also (unless you purchase one of a series of NIC kits) does not have a NIC natively.

The $200 for a TIVO (which is the low-end version, read "small HD") is not that bad, but then you add more space, a monthly subscription, NIC kit, etc, etc. to get where you want to go and you ARE talking about a lot of money.

My personal favorite is MythTV (www.mythtv.org). It doesn't solve the satelite control issue, but provides for some really nice features. For instance:

1.Record/Playback via NUVRec (easliy ported to MPEG)
2.Web interface (remote scheduling)
3.Game center
4.MP3 player
5.Free channel listings download
6.Multiple TV tuner card (multiple recordings)

The cable t.v. route may not be as bad a deal as you first think. Many traditional cable broadcasts have improved in quality and selection. The quality isnt such a big deal because you're typically playing this back on a T.V. or going to SVCD with it. I will admit that the price cable tv broadcasters want to charge can be outrageuos. One of the biggest advantages is being able to have multiple taps into the cable tv line (no charge) and record multiple shows at once.

All in all I can see many reasons for the effort/hassle of a home-brew TIVO.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[oGMo]

They are $200 and you save time, money and effort. Even the geek effect isn't worth it this time.

It took me at most an hour to hack up a script to record using Ruby and mp1e from RTE. Here it is, and here's a sample listing. Real hard. Not. It finds dupes, conflicts, and can easily support multiple cards just by running multiple instances.

Granted, it doesn't track showtime changes, and it's not fancy at all. But it gets the job done, it was easy to write, it's easy to modify, and it's been recording all the TV I watch for the past few months without a hitch. It cost me an hour of my time.

Spend the money and help a company.

Why would I want to do that? TiVo isn't exactly a "nice" company, either. It might be one thing if these came with open specs for modification, pulling the files off and burning them, and modifying the source to do what I want. But they don't. And they won't.

Here's a list of sites that can help if you're married to doing this:

How could you forget MythTV, particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?

Re:Buy a Tivo

[grungeKid]

How could you forget MythTV [mythtv.org], particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?

That's bullshit, Freevo and MythTV have completely separate codebases (Freevo is built using python + some C parts for display), MythTV is built on C++ and QT.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[ProtonMotiveForce]

You don't know what you're talking about.

TiVo is a "nice" company. They've let customers hack their machines without too much complaint.

Your "open" utopia is nonsensical - if they release the source then they lose business. Why buy their hardware/brand? They are a company, and outside the world of dirty, bitter "source wants to be free!!!!" ners, companies try to make money.

People out there - don't listen to this disgruntled nerd. Buy a TiVo. Keep them afloat - they have a good product (especially the DirecTV version). And he's lying his ass off about the "1 hour" comment.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Mecha[drone]]

I've built a Freevo, built a MythTv box, and will never willingly give up my Tivo...

Re:Buy a Tivo

[billmaly]

I have got to second this!! The Tivo box (hardware) is great, no complaints. But, where the whole idea really shines is in the software/UI/program guide marraige. The way TiVo allows me to search for shows, select alt. viewing times, specify recording quality, the whole package, really and truly makes it worth the $13 a month for the service. Home rolled is nice and all, but for the time and money you will expend, you will not grow a TiVo clone..not even close. Do yourself the favor, buy a TiVo, check it out...if I am wrong, take it back and get your money back, One of the best devices I ever bought!!

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Cramer]

• If you build it yourself it'll do what you want.

No, it will do what ever you know how to make it do (or can get someone else to do for you.)

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Cramer]

The tivo does not store recordings in a "proprietary (encoded) format". It's 100% perfectly spec compliant MPEG. Just because you don't have any software or hardware capable of processing a packetized elemental stream, does not make it proprietary. PES is used for ("live") broadcasting (i.e. where there isn't a nice little file there to be streamed and there isn't time to create one.) As such, almost no PC hardware or software is coded to handle it -- it's more complicated and you're very unlikely to encounter it normally.

(Yes, with the correct codec, one can play tivo mpeg streams right off the drive with ZERO modification. I have an NT 4.0 system that does so just fine.)

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Cramer]

But they're them stinkin' Canadian dollars :-)

Re:Buy a Tivo

[outsider007]

It's well worth it for me to have the best device invented since the car...

to me that's like saying 'the best game invented since russian roulette...'

when there's something on that I want to watch and I won't be home, I just program my vcr to record it. I call it me-vo.

just buy a damn tivo

[Naikrovek]

they're not THAT expensive, and its probably not worth the effort at all to try and duplicate all that functionality.

I suppose its one thing if you want to do this for the purposes of learning how to do it, but if you're going to build it to try and save money, just buy a tivo. you're going to wind up spending as much or more money and a LOT of time fine-tuning everything to your preference, and working out little bugs with a self-built solution.

so, unless this is a project that's more about the journey than the destination, get a tivo.

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[falser]

Yup, don't go the homebrew route if you want to save money and have a robust, simple, solution. I'm in the process of building a freevo/mythtv box. It's a lot of work to get the drivers working, I'm getting poor performance with an AMD 1.4GHz machine, and the software is not ready for prime time. The remote control that comes with the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 is a little flakey - it works, but not all the buttons are functional under Linux. Overall it's just one big expensive pain in the butt.

There are only a few reasons that you might really want to go this route:

1) you already have the spare parts you need
2) you live outside the US where Tivo is unavailable
3) you like spending lots of time getting stuff to work in Linux
4) you absolutely need the extra functionality that Tivo does not give (DVD burning, network capability etc.)

Otherwise, Tivo with the unlimited subscription is cheaper and less hassle.

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[Anonymous Coward]

$13 monthly fee.

Yeah. So? You can also pay $300 for a lifetime subscription. Pays for itself after a couple of years. Two years may be a long time but it's not like we're going to be seeing any major changes in that time.

If TiVo goes out of business, you're screwed.

Depends. I suspect that they will have to take lifetime subscriptions into account and provide support for the expected lifetime of the product (4 years last time I checked).

TiVo doesn't remember what shows you've seen, so it keeps recording the same ones over and over.

It keeps track of the last 28 days of programming. If an episode airs again >28 days later (and your unit is set up to record that program), it will record it again. So what? Nobody's forcing you to watch it again. Delete it.

If you want to record two shows simultaneously and don't have DirecTV, you need to get two TiVos (which is fine) but you also have to pay two monthly fees.

Yeah. So? Multi-tuner home built systems are few and far between. Good luck actually building one and getting it to work well.

TiVo requires a phone line.

Bzzzt! Thanks for playing. Here's a look at our parting gifts. Only the oldest Tivos need a phone line and even those only need it to get upgraded to the current software revision. There are network adaptors for both series 1 and series 2 units. Support is built in for all machines running 3.0 or higher. (4.0 is the current version and many new units are shipping with 3.2.)

It's hard to add storage space to a TiVo. You have to crack the case, remove the existing drive, and replace it with a new one.

Yeah. So? Like that's harder than building a PVR from scratch? Use your head.

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[Nugget]

It's hard to add storage space to a TiVo. You have to crack the case, remove the existing drive, and replace it with a new one.

Please explain how this is more challenging than building an entire machine, hard drive and all, to host one of the opensource solutions?

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[J. Tang]

Just a note to people who still want to have fun hacking away: TiVos run a custom Linux kernel on a PowerPC board. Those lucky enought with a Series 1 TiVo can hack it the kernel to do stuff like providing a bash prompt or run a web server. Those with a Series 2 with Home Media Option (HMO) can write all sorts of applets to their hearts contents; see www.tivo.com/developer to download the API.

To the original poster: Is it really worth it to build your own system if you reside within the TiVo market? Have you considered things like: hardware costs (a fast processor, video capture board, lots of RAM, motherboard, case), software (time to get the kernel + driver working, time to cobble together a UI), and other intangibles (getting a remote to work, fan noise, getting timely scheduling information)?

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[LoadStar]

Just to correct/clarify a few of your points...

• Standalone: $13 monthly fee, or $249 product lifetime. DirecTiVo: $4.99 monthly fee, no product lifetime available.
• If TiVo goes out of business, they have promised to release a "boatanchor" code to the public to allow TiVos to continue to function.
• TiVo will not record the same episode of a show within a 28 day period, unless the user overrides this feature manually, or the episode guide information is missing/incorrect.
• TiVo will delete episodes to free space for new recordings, unless marked "Save Until I Delete." If "SUID" is selected, that episode will not be deleted unless manually deleted by the user. Number of people using the TiVo is irrelevant - if one person deletes the episode without checking with the other, that's not TiVo's fault. And TiVo will delete shows not marked SUID regardless of if 0, 1, 2, or more people have watched the episode.
• Correct - there are no "dual tuner" TiVo's compatible with cable or "over the air." You can, however, record one program while watching another pre-recorded show without a problem.
• TiVo requires a phone line, or you can use an internal NIC for Series I units, or a USB NIC for Series II units. See the TiVo Community Forum for details.
• It's only marginally harder to add space to a TiVo than it is to add space to a "roll your own" PVR. The only additional step required is to "bless" the drive, and you can purchase pre-blessed drives on the internet.

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[amuro98]

Why pay the monthly fee? Pay the lifetime fee and be done with it. Besides, it's cheaper.

If Tivo does go out of business, I can continue using my Tivo as a "dumb" PVR. I just won't have the guide or the features it enabled.

Tivo does remember what it's recorded - to a point. If the same episode (description, etc.) shows up within a certain amount of time, Tivo won't re-record it. You can also tell Tivo not to record reruns. Unfortunatly this relies on the guide data being accurate - something that many of the channels don't do (Comedy Central is particularly bad with The Daily Show, for instance.)

Yes, the multiple people & 1 Tivo problem comes up a lot. Still, what product is perfect? Both Tivo and users have come up with workarounds while Tivo tries to figure out how to solve this.

You can get your Tivo to use your network connection instead. In fact, Tivo prefers this as it's cheaper for them than having your unit call in everyday.

For adding storage, it took me an hour - most of which was spent waiting for the disk copy to finish mirroring the Tivo software from the small 30GB drive, to the larger 60GB drive I bought. Later, I bought a 100GB drive, formatted it, stuck into the Tivo, and the Tivo did the rest. Ooh, that was "hard." Yes, you do have to open the case, and you will violate your warranty doing this, but I fail to see how this is "hard" - especially among a group of folks who can probably assemble PCs while blindfolded and asleep.

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[stickyc]

if you want to save money and have a robust, simple, solution

Don't underestimate the importance of this paragraph. It's one thing to have your desktop machine, which you futz around with constantly go on the fritz, but when you've had a really long shitty day and just wanna sit down and veg in front of a home-made Futurama marathon, the last thing you want is a blank screen with no clue what's going on.

Some guidance

[smalloy]

Some guidance may be found at http://www.avsforum.com Search for "HTPC" (Home theater personal computer). Granted, the basic HTPC goes well beyond Tivo-like functionality and worries about things like progressive-scan DVD output, and doing Tivo-like things with High Definition sources.

The obligatory (proactive) onion url...

[Nugget]

To stave off all the wankers sure to fire up with their superior "I don't watch TV!" pablum, here's the obligatory theonion.com article. Grow up, folks. There's plenty of quality programming out there and PVR's (TiVo included) are a great tool to filter the good stuff out from the worthless programming. Avoiding television because you don't like Survivor is like staying off the Internet because AOL is here. It just means you're incapable of scrutiny.

Don't know how many times I'm going to post this..

[thedbp]

My setup:

G4 500
200 GB internal storage
EyeTV TV tuner (1 coax in and 1 RCA video/audio in)
RCA video in/out
2 S-video out
1 S-video in
1 RCA audio in
1 RCA audio out
1 1/8" stereo miniplug in
1 1/8" stereo miniplug out
SCSI
USB
FireWire
serial x 2
dual ethernet
DVD-RW (Pioneer 104)
Mac OS X Jaguar
Keyspan Remote
drives a 14" VGA and 27" TV
VCD DivX MPEG-4 etc. support
online scheduling w/ TitanTV
Full Internet Access
screen resolution on the TV up to 1024x768
and much much more

sound yummy? Its killer, and I'm putting together a web page w/ all the pics from the assembly and the final product.

Don't worry slashdotters, you'll get a peek at this beauty soon.

Tivo-like

[Gonoff]

He wants a computer based PVR, not TIVO. Happily, TIVO has not copyrighted the concept (yet).

Sounds like you want something small, silent and with one of those nice Hauppage cards - and a really big HDD!

Re:Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn the TV off, the noise goes way down.

Re:What Ever Happened???

[Nugget]

What happened?

VCRs are being replaced by better technology that does more, better, and provide a much more useful experience. VCRs perform only a small portion of what a PVR does that it's really unfair to compare them.

The real win of a PVR is being completely insulated from scheduling and the learning capabilities which are able to record programs which you'll enjoy but aren't aware of yet.

MythTV is great

[foom]

I just built myself a new MythTV (www.mythtv.org) box a few weeks ago with the following hardware:
Shuttle SK41G case+MB+PSU - $250
120GB Maxtor Fluid Dynamic Bearings 5400RPM HD - $130
WinTV dbx model 401 card - $100
Athlon 1800+ (I did not need to get this fast a processor, but I wanted speed left over for other things too) - $60
512MB DDR ram: $70
New remote control: $20
Total: $630

It works great, does ff/rew/pause of live TV, downloads TV listings off free websites, lets you record all showings of a show, has a webserver builtin so you can set recordings remotely, etcetc.

It also looks pretty and works great with a remote control so you really can use it like a set top box.

There are even optional modules for showing the weather, playing MP3s, and running various emulators/games.

It also supports multiple frontends and backends, so you can make an ultimate setup with 10 tuner cards and 20 TVs all connected to the same video storage if you're so inclined.

Re:MythTV is great

[foom]

Compare my box to the price of a TiVo. From Amazon.com: TiVo Series2 80 Hour Digital Video Recorder - $399 - $50 rebate = $350. (I couldn't find the price of a 120 hour TiVo, so I'll give TiVo a little advantage)

Okay, now add the lifetime service fee of $299. Now you're up to $650. Wow look, all of a suddenmy box is cheaper! Or maybe you just want to add two years of service. Well then $12.95/month * 24 months of service fee - oops that's more than the lifetime fee!

But guess what: my box can also play video games, and MP3s. I can get TV shows OFF of it onto other media. It can be a webserver, file server, whatever else I want it to be. It stores my MP3s and can play them. Guess which one's a better deal?

Re:MythTV is great

[foom]

And oops, I forgot to include the Home Media Option which lets you have the webserver capability, that's an additional $99. So the real TiVo is up to $749. Yet, that comes for free with a custom built one.

So the TiVo costs more than $100 more than my box, yet my custom built box does more and won't stop working when TiVo goes out of business.

Re:MythTV is great

[ilsie]

Series 2 40 hour refurbed TiVo- $150 AR
120GB Maxtor Fluid Dynamic Bearings 5400RPM HD - $130 (Just using the same HD you did for clarity)
Lifetime Service- $250
Total : $530

Mine does all kinds of fancy ff/rew/pause, I can easily schedule all recordings, etc., I can have TiVo tell me what to watch (I dont, but I could), I have 30-sec commercial skip, and I have a really nice remote that is extremely well designed and always works.

To be honest, I could really care less about MP3s and emulators and such, I already have a PC and a Mac that can stream MP3s, an Xbox (and a PC and a Mac) that will play emulators/games (and can also stream MP3, vorbis, divx, etc etc etc etc)

MythTV

[pz]

The MythTV Project is what you want. As often noted on Slashdot, it does nearly everything that TiVo does, and a heapload more. It's open source, and under active development ... however, it's not quite at full functionality. The most recent stable release is version 0.8 and while not without some bugs seems to work quite nicely. I've paired it with a AVerTV Studio TV capture card, a Shuttle FV25 mainboard, and a Celeron 1.4 GHz processor. To my understanding, MythTV supports external tuner devices such as satellite systems. Installation/construction is straightforward but not for the faint of heart. Some RPMs exist for certain required components, but much of installation involves the "./configure; make; su; make install" cycle.

IF -- and this is a strong supposition -- you either have spare hardware laying around that's pretty strong (eg, in the GHz range rather than 100s of MHz) or have a weird bent on building your own systems, then by all means roll up your sleeves and dig in! However, if you are looking for the least expensive or easiest alternative, then buy a used or refurbished TiVo.

Cable.

[labratuk]

While the temptation to make a PVR is really great at the moment, what with mythTV and friends getting better and better, it really isn't practical at the moment. At least here in the UK, for me, it isn't.

Why?

All but 4 (well, 4.5 counting ch5) channels are sent through cable for me. Admittedly, those channels do have the better programming on, but it would be somewhat lame not being able to record cable channels.

For instance, I have digital cable (ntl). All the decoding is done in the cable box and shoved through to channel 7 on the tv. This means you can only record from one pre determined cable channel. Unless you somehow set up lirc to send a 'channel change' ir command to the cable box every time it wants to change cable channel. I've thought about this, but it would be tricky and probably unreliable.

The question really is: can I justify building a PVR for just 4 channels?

Re:Cable.

[notNeilCasey]

Many Digital cable receiver/decoders have a serial port on the back that can be connected to your PVR System and controlled by it using a script you'd have to write. Barring that, yes, you can set up a script using lirc to change channels.

From the MythTV FAQ:
Is it possible to have MythTV change the channel on my digital cable/satellite box, instead of my tuner card?

- Yes. In the setup program, under "Input Connections", you can configure a command to run whenever the channel needs to be changed on an input which does not have a tuner. In the 0.7 release, this was a global option in the configuration file, "ExternalChannelCommand".

My Answer For You

[dbretton]

My question for [you] is[,] "What's worked best for you?"

Tivo

Re:Noise

[agilliland]

seems like one good way to cut the noise and design a scalable system is to provide independent frontend and backend systems. I know mythtv does this. This way you can run a "server" that can do all your recordings and store all your media and be as loud as it wants since it will be anywhere in your house on a network. Then you can attach any number of frontend clients to tvs or monitors ... and those can be hacked down mini boxes of all sorts. To keep the noise down you wouldn't use HDD's or many fans, you would just netboot or boot from cd or floppy. There are also some using XBox as a frontend as well. Pretty nifty if you ask me.

How about Alienware?

[valkraider]

Alienware seems to have a good model, looks nice too. Apple needs to bring back the Cube for this very purpose...

Any cheap DVB capture cards?

[tzanger]

That's what's holding me back from going mythtv -- I am on ExpressVu and want to be able to save the MPEG stream directly to HDD or at with a minimum of screwing around.

There are some DVB PCI cards from Germany (ExpressVu is standard DVB, throw in your access card and you're done) but they're on the order of $400!! I've been through the schematics of my old 2700-series receiver and while I can tap off the digital audio, the unencrypted MPEG video stream seems to never leave the custom decrypt/decode chip. :-(

I suppose I could use RCA out and an IR mouse to change channels, but I am really looking for something I can put all in one box and, as I said earlier, not screw around.

Next up: "How can I build my own car?"

[markv242]

"I'm too cheap to purchase an awesome product from a company that needs consumers, so how can I build my own [insert product here]?"

This is -1 Redundant, but just buy a Tivo. The Tivo service alone is worth the subscription fee, and Tivo v2 users who have a Mac will absolutely love the new Media Pack, allowing for Rendezvous discovery of iTunes / iPhoto libraries.

Re:Next up: "How can I build my own car?"

[SuperBanana]

Next up: "How can I build my own car?"

While off-topic, I feel the need to point out something about this comment- it's aburdly ignorant. Believe it or not, a LOT of people feel that no car company makes what THEY want, or they want the experience of going through the design process at any of a number of levels, from "simple" modifications to an existing shell, to really wild stuff or completely custom, hand-formed cars. You see this in particular with motorcycles, because they're easier to make from scratch, and of course, motorcycle enthusiasts are famous for wanting something -unique-; plenty of motorcycle guys would cut their throats before stepping into a Honda Civic(or a Honda bike, for that matter.)

There are lots of kit cars available, including my personal favorite, the Caterham R500. It's based off the famous Lotus Super Seven, weighs half a ton, and has 250 HP(hence a 500hp/ton ratio, and hence the name). It -is- a race car(again, it's basically a Lotus Super Seven), you can get it for $40k, and embarass silly almost every production roadcar made on the planet; it hits 60mph in a little over 3 seconds(it is limited top-speed-wise though, it has the high-speed aerodynamics of a brick), and being so light, it'll easily out-corner -every- production car available today; motorcycles are probably the only thing capable of beating it. The fact that you BUILT your car, versus the "poser" in the 911 twin turbo who "just" bought his car, is icing on the I-just-spanked-your-3x-as-expensive-little-toy cake.

In the slightly-less-extreme category, there are those of us who buy old cars and keep them running. I own a 10+ year old Audi that with a few hundred dollars in modifications has 280hp, all wheel drive, 5-speed(these are getting rarer and rarer-dammit, I don't WANT an automatic!) an ENORMOUS amount of interior space and trunk space, gets about 22-24mpg highway, weighs 3600lb(that's VERY light compared to cars its size today- full-size luxury cars nowadays tip the scale at well over 4,000lb- often much more!) It looks like "some old Audi"(nobody will ever steal it.) I get to blow the doors off most everything save the cream of the crop of sports cars. If I ever get bored and have the money, 330hp is about $2-3k around the corner. Almost everything on the car is easy to understand, and occasionally specialized tools are required, but I can repair almost anything myself with enough determination; I also have plenty of parts sources so I can get almost anything quickly and far below what a mechanic/dealer would charge me.

Re:Noise

[craw]

Check out this site for information about quieting your system.

If you want a Tivo, buy a Tivo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. It works.

I tried to roll my own. I bought an ATI 8500DV specifically because they touted their awesome TV-on-Demand capabilities. Seemed perfect.

8500DV: $235

Until I tried to use the damn thing. Oh. It doesn't work well with my motherboard. I was planning to upgrade anyway.

Refurb motherboard: $50
XP1800+: $95
ATX Case: $40
DDR RAM: $100

Okay. We're up and running. TV-on-Demand works great. Scheduling recordings isn't that good, tho. The software's pretty bad. Can't do anything automatically. Can't clear out old searches. No conflict resolution. Only a week's worth of data. And it sure wasn't cheaper than a Tivo when I figure in the cost of the new PC. But I can handle setting up scheduled recordings once a week. And the live TV stuff is great.

Oh. The live TV stuff stops working if the machine's been running for a few hours. Maybe I should upgrade to the latest drivers and software. Great. Now it doesn't work with one of my games. Try a different version. Now TV-on-Demand is worse. Try a different version. Hey! Finally have a setting that spits out SVCD format. Too bad TV-on-Demand is totally broken now.

And so began the downward spiral. After a few weeks, I just bought a damn Tivo. $200 for the unit, $80 for a network adapter (series 1), $250 for lifetime service. About what I spent on the computer solution with one major difference. IT WORKS. I can leave it alone for days, weeks, months at a time.

HDTV

[WatertonMan]

I couldn't tell if it supports HDTV though. There are several HDTV feeds out now and several PCI HDTV capture/play cards. It seems like a nice intermediate step towards full HDTV. I get a multimedia computer which plays/records HDTV either to a monitor capable of the resolution or to a TV where some card downscales it.

After downloading episodes of 24, Alias, and Smallville which were in HDTV format I really am a believer in it. Fantastic looking, even on my 17" monitor.

Unfortunately the software with the PCI cards I've seen aren't that great and are Windows only. (Sadly none are yet available for my Mac)

Outside US

[IanBevan]

Your comment is fine for people in the US. However here in New Zealand the options are considerably more limited as I expect they are in the vast majority of countries, large and small alike.

I'm sure a bunch of others said it...

[handsomepete]

I have both a Tivo and a homebrew, and unless you have real serious moral obligations to purchasing something from a company instead of building your own, consider getting a Tivo.

Homebrew: All parts (sff case, mb, memory, cpu, tv card, large hdd, etc. using MythTV) = ~$650
+: Yours to do with whatever you please, using actively maintained popular open free software, easily hardware upgradable, fun to play around with, much more software functionality (MythMusic, emulator front end, weather modules, etc.)
-: Hardware failure is your problem, TV software not quite up to par, more expensive, not quite as slick looking (without looking real hard for a decent case), maintainers can stop working whenever they get the urge, good luck getting digital/satellite TV working well with a cheapo TV card

Tivo + Lifetime subscription = ~$600 (add a larger hdd for more money)
+: Company paying people to maintain software and accurate listings, nice to look at, full featured and completely functional, hacker friendly, warranty makes getting a replacement unit easier, software head and shoulders above competition (IMHO YMMV blah blah - I'm sure other posts outline such functionality), it's a device that doesn't care if the power gets yanked on it, is built to support all sorts of television (digital cable, satellite, coax, whatever)
-: Warranty voided if you open it up, no control over software or updates, company controls any and all software, if Tivo goes out of business listings and software are at their mercy (although there's rumors of a Plan B if that should happen), only does the TV thing (unless you feel like paying for the lackluster Home Media option).

Simply put:
Like tinkering? Have a lot of time and money to burn? Roll your own. Otherwise, there's an excellent effortless pvr already available for the same cost. Worst case scenario, buy a Tivo and keep the receipt (choose monthly sub instead of lifetime). Give it a test run. Don't like it? Return it and make a better one.

The real question is: Has anyone started trying to hack together drivers for the Tivo hardware so you can use their box but your own software?

Re:What Ever Happened???

[Evil Adrian]

Even if a person is just "recording stuff" a VCR is a suboptimal solution in the face of constantly shifting network schedules and preemptions. There's a vast chasm of difference between telling a device "I sure like that show 'Ed'. If it comes on (and only if it's a new episode) please record it." and telling a device "record whatever is on channel 9 on Fridays at 8:00pm. If the schedule changes I'll be sure to remember to update it."

Try that for more than two or three programs and you've graduated to needing multiple VCRs or devising a complex tape-changing ritual to ensure they all get recorded.

How often do shows get shifted around to make it an inconvenience, though? It doesn't happen often enough to warrant spending four times the money -- if you think it does, you either watch too much TV or you're too sensitive. ;-)

a no-subscription alternative TiVo-alike ...

[timothy]

Spotted this earlier today in a web advertisment: http://www.lbdata.net/dvr/

I have no idea what OS it runs.

I have no idea if anyone has ever ordered, received, and been happy with one.

I have no idea why it looks like it has built in speaker thingies.

Just the same, it looked like a cool box, so someone out there besides me is probably interested :) Until I am older and more settled, I would like to avoid (to the extent practical) things that require subscriptions, telephone priveleges, etc. I'd pay quite a bit more for a box where the programming / scheduling fee was built in up-front, or (of course, better) didn't exist at all. I can program a VCR, and by extension a DVR, if it has a decent UI ;)

timothy

Re:Looking to build my own Media Center

[Osty]

I'm actually going to use PVR on a box I'm working on for my 2 year old daughter.

Poor kid. At 2 years old, I think she has more than enough to do without having to learn how to use a computer. That will come soon enough. I'd focus more on potty training, socializing with other kids, and learning basic fundamentals (colors, shapes, words, etc). And as far as entertainment goes, I'll bet she'd be happier with a $50 DVD player and a copy of The Little Mermaid than she would with some custom homebrew Linux-based PVR thing.

Priorities, man!

Storage, quality, and ease of use.

[oneiros27]

Personally, I still have a VCR.... three of 'em, in fact, and I use them quite often for making copies of things for other people.

However, I get much better quality making the original dub using a digital recording (well, I've had a few times where it's gone odd, but typically it's a much higher quality, and I don't end up introducing macrovision in there 'till the final run to tape). It's easier to edit out the commercials once, if I'm going to be making multiple copies to tape, or even just changing the playback order.

Oh..and let's not forget storage... I'm recording at about 1G/hr... so with 2x120G drives in my system, I don't have to worry about changing tapes every few hours. [and actually, every show, as when I used to send everything straight to VHS, I tried to keep shows in order on each tape, so some nights, I'd be switching tapes every hour or 30 minutes, and having to get the next one queued up and wait for my VCR to to its recording calibration test in just a minute or so.

Now, I can collect up a few shows, and when I want to dump to tape, I just prep a job to run overnight, or do it right before I leave for work....

hmmm...that reminds me...I was supposed to dub a new copy of Invader Zim for a friend who wore our her tape. (she has a TiVo, but well, she doesn't have enough space on it to keep all of her Zim)

Re:What Ever Happened???

[NanoGator]

"What happened to the days of using a VCR? Yes its not cool or geeky or even the best quality but it certainly suffices for tape delaying a show. Plus a good VCR costs like $60 nowadays with tapes to be had for under a buck. Cheap and a tried a true technology(plus no monthly fee!)."

Hi! New here? Just transferred from the "Doesn't Get It" department?

Re:What Ever Happened???

[ryanr]

I tried this route.

I had trouble with getting my VCR to play one show while recording another. I also had some difficulty getting it to stream video from my home network. I couldn't figure out how to set the IP address on the VCR. It doesn't seem to use DHCP either. I think the IP is hardcoded to 1.2.0.0 or something, but setting my gateway to 1.2.0.1 didn't help, it won't ARP for it.

The commercial skip feature works, but it's pretty slow. Resetting the file to the beginning also takes forever for some reason. The REW button works eventually, but I can't find the slider. At first I thought it was hung, but I just let it sit for 5 minutes, and it finally switched from the REW state to the STOP state.

There's some sort of bug, the media cartridges keep auto-ejecting if I try to record more than 3 hours. There's a low quality mode (mpeg1?) which works for 6 hours, but the quality is just about unusable. This problem is interfering with the monthly show scheduling.

I also can't seem to get it to load any games, browse the web, or play DVDs. I'm not sure how to even load code onto it. Does anyone have an VHS API reference?

Re:What Ever Happened???

[rusty0101]

I understand that there are these manufacturing byproducts of processing trees, called books. They seem to come in varying costs from a couple of dollars, through hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in rare incidents. I understand that the modern distributers like to get between $5 and $25 for a new one, and they don't ask you to pay that much again, should you decide to re-read the book.

Surely they are good enough for you, and you shouldn't be pushing these newfangled VCR's on people.

-Rusty

Why bother? Plenty of great reasons

[Captain Kangaroo]

A number of posters have raised the question of why building your own is worth it. There are a number of great reasons (and FWIW, I own a TiVo and love it):

1) It's likely that you can get some of the features you want more quickly by using something based on open source. If it doesn't have what you want, you can just add it!

2) The idea of having the people that produce or distribute the content having any control over how it's watched really annoys me. It's my TV, and I'll watch it the way I want. Does this happen? You bet: DirecTV controls the features that get added to your TiVo at home.

3) You can archive everything. Hard disk space is really cheap. It's pretty easy to imagine a huge collection of movies that you just skim from your feed. Sure, you can hook a PVR up to a recordable DVD, but you really want this to be built automagically.

4) Nobody's monitoring what you watch. Sure, TiVo has a nice privacy policy, but the fact that such info is even collected scares me.

Re:Cutting out commercials?

[rusty0101]

TiVo does not do this. RePlay 4000 supposedly did this, though since neither I, nor anyone I know has a 4000, I don't know how well that works.

As I understand it, most of the programs out there use blank monitoring. Before and after a section of the program, there will be blank space of two or three frames that programs that try to remove commercials key on.

The problem is that unless one of these frames happens to concide with a keyframe in the mpeg stream, they are extreamly hard to find in that stream. As a result it is sometimes disasterously ineffective. It may very nicely catch the begining of the commercial block, but miss the end, and start the stream at the begining of the next commercial block.

I seem to recall a few years ago that in Japan, they had a work around on some VCRs that would monitor the audio stream. Since most commercials (at the time) were recorded in mono, and programs were in stereo, the VCRs would automatically pause when the audio stream went to mono, and resume when it went back to stereo.

The only thing that I am aware of that would make sense to try similar to that would be to monitor close captioning, as most locally produced commercials that I have seen do not have captions. It also seems to be hit or miss for nationally produced commercials.

Good luck.

-Rusty

not worth it

[blaine]

I built a homebrew Tivo. I did so mainly because I had a bunch of parts around, and I felt like seeing what I could do with it.

On the one hand, it was kind of fun getting set up.

On the other hand, it took a hell of a lot of time, the video quality was substandard, and it was a pain in the ass to set the programming. I couldn't do good compression in realtime, so I had to save in crappy MJPEG compression and then later recompress in batches. Even with a 80GB scratch drive in it, the thing was always battling for more space due to the large initial files.

Did I mention that 2 or 3 different times, kernel upgrades broke my TV card?

I eventually dismantled the system. I'm considering buying a real Tivo soon, but even if I don't, I will not be making another homebrew one. It just isn't worth the time and effort. The V1 Tivos can be configured so you can pull the video right off via ethernet, and people are working on that functionality for the V2 ones. And if you care about playing DivX and stuff like that, mod an XBox. You can play pretty much anything on them, with a lot less effort.

Re:Buy a Tivo - NOT!!!

[earthforce_1]

I live in Canada - TiVo is not supported here, for love or money. Besides, I would prefer a totally DRM free and open, networkable appliance. I am really looking forward to seeing HDTV and time-shifting support.

I wish these open source projects would pool their efforts - I hate to see duplication of effort between Myth TV and Freevo.

Re:Don't know how many times I'm going to post thi

[thedbp]

Not bad video from the EyeTV. its straight to MPEG-1, so you have to edit it in the EyeTV app, and its about 650MB per hour. Equivalent to VHS quality (LP). And the VCDs that you can burn w/ Toast play in almost any recent DVD player and honestly don't look too bad. I put some South Parks on a VCD and took them to my mom's house and her big ass 40" HDTV, and to be honest it didn't look or sound all that bad. I mean, we're not talking DVD by any standard, but definitely worthwhile.

Plus I can put my 4 favorite zombie flix on one data DVD.

Re:Opening the case

[Nugget]

I haven't used a TiVo machine before, but I'd assume that...

So what compelled you to reply, then? Good lord, man.

TiVos use the same phillips head screws that a PC uses. You may, at your option, replace them with thumbscrews if a screwdriver poses too much of a barrier to you.

Windows XP Media Center

[SrlKlr]

I am really surprised that no one has mentioned Windows XP Media Center. It has one thing that many other apps lack, the easy User Interface. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/

Right now you still have to buy Media Center box from a vendor like HP, but the OS is already on the filesharing networks and someone release a hack to any XP Pro machine to turn it into a Media Center. (Its on sharereactor.com - an emule network)

I am putting together a high end entertainment system for my non-technical Dad and this seemed to make the most sense.

Also, Anandtech did a nice review: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1766

Re:Windows XP Media Center

[Billly Gates]

The reason you need an HP box is because its drm-ed. I think I will stick with a tivo thank you.

Finally, the solution. :-)

[gozar]

Get a ReplayTV and DVArchive. You use the ReplayTV to schedule and record your shows and DVArchive to backup the shows and watch them in other locations. You can also watch shows on the ReplayTV from the DVArchive machine (or multiple DVArchive machines).

DVArchive can be set up to automatically download the shows from the ReplayTV. I haven't looked into whether MythTV supports DVArchive though.

P.S. Someone was asking about regular cable and Satellite. The ReplayTV has two inputs (although you can only record one show at a time) so I have one setup for my Dish Network box and the other for my local cable. The ReplayTV grabs both guides and unifies them for viewing and recording.

My experiences

[Lurgen]

I built a system up for exactly this purpose - DVD playback, MP3, TV tuning, Cable-TV tuning, digital VCR, etc. I wasn't happy with the typical DVD player's support for less "mainstream" formats either (such as DivX, MPEG4, SVCD, etc), so I was pretty motivated to find a better solution.

In the end I gave up on the TV tuning part of the project. I ended up with a dead-silent machine that can play almost any sound or video codec with perfect quality, but could not find a decent solution to the TV tuning functionality.

Quality was my first real problem with the TV signal. Even the software supplied with the Leadtek TV-2000XP resulted in lousy picture quality. The UI was awful too! I didn't want a monitor, so I was depending heavily on my TV out support.

The second problem was that the UI was never really intended to be used as a VCR replacement. It's like nobody ever seriously considered that I didn't want a keyboard or mouse (just a remote).

Finally, drivers were buggy, crashes were frequent, and I gave up.

On the other hand, I now have the best DVD player on the market. Picture quality is better than any commercially available DVD player. The digital audio output supports standards that my amp can't begin to decode (Dolby Digital 7.1 is a little too advanced for my amp).

My advice to anybody trying this sort of project is to focus on the achievable first - TV tuning is not yet mature enough to be a viable option.

Buy yourself a Realmagic X-Card, a copy of JovePlayer (easily the best DVD player application in the world, but requires the X-Card), and build the machine. Then look at extending the functionality as the software/hardware matures.

Lurgen.

The most important bits...
RealMagic X-Card
Jove Player
Zalman CNPS-6000Cu (silence is golden)
Seagate 60GB hard disk (nice and quiet)

Why I Won't Buy A Tivo

[kevina]

In responce to the many "Just buy a Tivo" posts. Here is why I won't but a Tivo:

It is a closed system in which Tivo Inc dictates what I can do with it not me. For example I can't transfer shows over the network onto my computer, something which they were probably never allow due to MPAA and the like pressure. You can hack it do what you want to a certain extent, however the legality is questionable. Furthermore, it seams that Tivo Inc can even instruct it to record a show, without the users consent, as it did for BBC in Britan.

I want an open system in which I can control and add software to, legally.

ShowShifter Works Best for me.

[lordfoul]

I own a Tivo and 2 ReplayTvs They are great Machines. About a Year and a half ago I moved to Thailand and had to come up with a PC based alternative. I Found that most programs out there were very light on features except Showshifter. Showshifter works an ir Blaster (RedRat) to control my Sat Box. It recompresses my shows to divx after it records them (there are other formats to choose from). The best part was I built everything using 3 year old parts (except for the RedRat) that I had lying around (PIII667, ATi AIW). Total cost 70$.

SM

A great solution, the Creative Digital VCR

[cheapgrlz]

I use the Creative digital VCR. It is super solid on my AMD 1.4, 512 ram, 120GB, and win2k. It has a scheduler, no guide though. I love it it does MPEG-2 encoding on the fly. only uses 26% of CPU when on full screen. and 3% for standby mode, even while recording! I really like it and it is worth the $80 you can find it for.

Linux Video Disk Recorder

[Ridgelift]

The most promising I've seen is the Linux Video Disk Recorder

I especially like the idea of installing multiple MPEG cards to record multiple channels at the same time.

Re:Digital Cable is possible, but not yet

[SiliconJesus101]

Once you get into digital CATV, channels (in the classical sense) become irrelevant. In the digital cable world a channel is nothing more than a 6Mhz strip of badwidth that can in reality transmit approximately 10 "channels" to your TV. What this means is that if you are watching "channel 13" it is most likely NOT running in the standard 211.2500 to 215.7500 Mhz range as your old TV tuner does. Channel 13 will in fact be far higher up...likely above the 500Mhz range where 256 QAM is used to essentially stuff 10 channels of MPEG compressed, groomer allocated digital on what used to be 1 channel of analog. Of course you do have a limitation in the fact that 256 QAM is capable of approximately 48.81 Mbps of data....depending on who you talk to. A groomer box essentially figures out what channels have higher bitrates and tries to pair them up with lower bitrate channels. Trying to stuff 10 action packed sports channels onto one 6Mhz strip won't work too well as your bitrate needs increase dramatically in high motion encoding. The breakdown for HD channels is approximately 2 per analog channel.

In my area we have HD HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and all of our local channels that broadcast in HD. Granted, the HD boxes are like gold and are very hard to get ahold of (waiting list)....but it is offered.

So....I guess in summary....what your digital cable box says on it for a channel actually has nothing to do with true "channels" as you know them. The Discovery Channel, for example, could be reallocated to a different band if it was deemed necessary to move it for bitrate reasons. It would just be too hard to ensure that a standard will be devoloped that will account for different channel lineups in different regions and among different cable carriers etc.

Re:Buy a Tivo and get SCREWED!

[linux11]

And not getting the "quality" of TiVo subscription service is exactly what I want.

I got TiVo when they where still advertizing their product and promoting the "Season Pass" feature as something you set and don't have to worry about, the TiVo will automatically record the season even if their is scheduling changes. The reality is, if there is a hick-up in the TiVo subscription service then the TiVo might just automatically delete the season pass in mid-season. I had a season pass for Buffy on Chicago's WGN channel 9 be deleted four times until I sold off the TiVo crap machine. Each time I called support to complain they gave me the run around:

Me: Why does this keep happening?

TiVo "support": What is your cable company? They must have notified us that you aren't getting the WGN line-up through your cable any more.

Me: I'm using standard antenna.

TiVo "support": Huh?

Me: Rabbit ears. Over the air free broadcast. Standard antenna. No cable service.

TiVo "support": Oh, then our guide data supplier must have thought that the channel went off-air. You know that TV channels come and go, right?

Me: Who is your guide data supplier?

TiVo "support": Zap2It

Me: So, your telling me that Zap2It, a Chicago Tribune affilated company had throught that Chicago WGN channel 9, another Chicago Tribune affilated company had gone off-air?

TiVo "support": This will have to answered by a line-up specialist.

Me: Can you have one get in touch with me?

My voice mail later had a message that the specialist could see that the line-up data was working again and to call if I had any further questions. I called back and left a message asking what was being done to keep the problem which had occured three times already from happening again. While the "specialist" never called back, I got my answer a week later when the season pass/line-up deleted for the forth time.

ANYTHING is better than the TiVo rip off for "Nature of Television disclaimer-ed" program guide "data" or the lack of data.

And how to ensure that my season passes aren't auto-deleted again by TiVo wasn't answered in their "You ask, we answer" segment. Should have been "You ask, we blow you off (or scape-goat on Zap2It)."

Btw, another feature advertized at the time I got my TiVo was that the TiVo would continue to improve for free through software updates without anything additional having to be done by the TiVo owner than plugging in the phone line. Home Media Option sounds like a software update. Getting the USB ethernet adapter is listed as an **seprate** pre-request to getting HMO. They aren't billing for the hardware for HMO so they must be billing for the software update. So... lets see:

Advertized claim: Season Passes will record an entire season of programs regardless of scheduling changes.

Actual truth: TiVo reserves the right under the "Nature of Television disclaimer" for the Season Pass to be auto-deleted in the middle of the season.

Advertized claim: Software updates are free with nothing additional required of the TiVo owner.

Actual truth: TiVo charges $100 plus $50 for each additional TiVo.

At what point does TiVo become guilty of fraud?

And all TiVo has done is *REDUCE* a computer to a PVR. Several things that can be quickly and easily done has been artifically excluded from TiVo. For example, in addition to getting guide data, it would make sense for TiVo to provide offline web browsing. Even a cheap old Palm III running Avantgo or a cheap alpha pager makes it easier to get the weather or sport scores than a TiVo does. And while the TiVo requires your zip code as part of activating your service, to get the weather, you still need to record it. And think about the possiblities on a networked PVR that have been artifically put aside by TiVo HMO. A TiVo will send/recieve mpeg streams from another TiVo but not to any other computer? Why shouldn't I be able to stream a VCD through my PVR as easily as an audio MP3 or view a JPG? As a customer, do I really get to decide where the line is drawn in the sand as to what my PVR can do?

Re:Wrong approach.

[thud2000]

Living human brain, eh? Hmmmmm... I'll need a case mod for that, I guess. Back to the lab!