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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?"
Freevo and linux have been working pretty well for me. Just setup xmltv and go.
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
mythtv.org looks promissing, version 0.8 works well, dunno about the receiver stuff as I just have cable.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
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.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
My question for [you] is[,] "What's worked best for you?"
Tivo
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.
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.
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.
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.
How could you forget MythTV, particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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.
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?
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.
My rights don't need management.
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.
Please help metamoderate.