Slashdot Mirror
New Linux PVR Box
An anonymous reader points to this product from Interact-TV, known as Telly, writing "Cool little box. PVR, stores photos, burns VCDs or DVDs (if you get a DVD burner), serves up stored content on your home network, nice gui, works with some satellite and digital cable boxes, 2.4.18 kernel. Freevo or mythTV can do about the same thing but this one is ready out of the box."
Can you record and store TV programs and later burn them on a CD?
Yes, Telly's Video Library supports an archiving feature. Eventually Telly will support DVD burning; the current MC1000 supports a CD-RW drive. You will be able to expand your unit to include a DVD-RW drive in the near future.
Also you can't pause the live feed which is imo one of the best features of Tivo
Is it possible to pause/rewind/skip-commercials of live TV broadcasts?
Currently not on live TV broadcasts, but once recorded, you can skip 30-second intervals, pause, and rewind.
Actually my DirecTiVo. Beautiful digital signal from the bird so high in the sky straight to disk. No recompresssion. Far higher quality than this or any other PVR (other than DishNetwork's PVR).
Defined by our esteemed parent poster.
I have to agree with the TiVo comment. I have DirecTV TiVo, and I simply love the interface. I only wish that it could use that interface to play DVDs (10 second replay, progress indicator, remote).
Another DVR would have to go a long way to pull me away.
MythTV looks like a good start, but the effort required to get it working is significant, and it doesn't do anything BUT timeshift and record. It can't playback your DVD, VCDs, SVCDs, or Divx CDs, it can't save your recorded shows to CD/DVD, it can't playback music or display images, etc... Once MythTV/Freevo gets all these features, then this current software won't be that impressive.
MythTV has most of these features as add-on modules. MythTV's modular design means that there are an ever-growing number of modules that can be used to extend it's already rich feature-set.
have you seen the tivo home media option? you plug it into your network, then you have access to your MP3 collection to be available to your stereo, you have access to your photos through your TV, if you have multiple tivo's you have access to the programming sotred on the other tivo's. there is one more thing it lets you do but I am at a loss as to what it is.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This is a case of a company hoping a user will just be too lazy to do the work themselves, considering a vast majority of the hardware and software has counterparts available to the consumer.
Find your favorite brand CD-RW drive or DVD drive:
CD/DVD R/RW drivesrange from $35 - $359
Find your favorite case:
mini-itx cases max $112
Find your favorite rounded IDE cables:Rounded IDE cablesmax $10 each
Get your favorite Linux ISO:
List of Linux ISO
Do you want/need a wireless keyboard and remote? Those kits are available too. You can use various handheld devices, learning remotes or dedicated programable remotes. You can also use a wired keyboard and mouse.
Yeah, there are bits and bobbles I have left out. Yeah, you need to install Linux and one of the PVR programs available out there. Yeah, it will suck your time, but you'll know a lot more about your machine, you'll have a machine you can upgrade, change, etc at will. You'll have full controll of the software without any need for hacking, for a lot less.
That is a faster machine, likely a faster HDD, probably higher quality RAM, better cables, your choice of cases and whatever else you want. You could throw in a a 1 or 2 slot PCI riser, a Sigma Designs XCard and Remote and whatever else you want.
It's still $550, you still need to pay s/h and taxes where applicable. However, you can decide to save some money on the ram, the case, or any other part.
Easy to remember...
Composite: Color and lumanence Composited (i.e. smashed) together in the same signal. If it's smashed together, it's hard to take apart resulting in quality loss.
Component: Color and lumanence kept as seperate Components. Not smashed means there's no quality loss (or at least less).
Just for the record, Component != HDTV. HDTV may be delivered via component signal, however analog and standard def digital can also be delivered via component (ala S-Video, SDI).
Interestingly enough, there is composite digital video as well (D2) which is loads better than composite analog (although probabaly not used much anymore). However you still get quality loss after many generations of copying.
All TV is interlaced unless your talking about 100HZ or progressive scan TV's.
The problem with these sets displaying fast motion is that they merge the field together to give one full frame. This is great for a drama, but if you want to watch the footy, then the ball is moving so quick it is in a different position in each field. If you merge these fields together you get an elongated ball. Some of the newer sets have a funky setting to fix this and I have no idea how it works, but it uses some algorithm to determine where the ball should be, and needs a whole seperate chip.
But to answer your question, it does do interlaced outpt, otherwise your TV couldn't display it. So while you PC monitor is de-interlaced, anything getting sent out the TV out part of the card must be interlaced. And if you use an S video cable you should be getting quality that equals your average DVD player. So interlacing is not the be all and end all of TV quality. Go out and buy a digital TV. You know you want to...
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
The Myth TV mailing list suggests that the Hauppage PVR-250 is the best choice. Someone on the list said it can be found for $90 OEM.
record one show while watching another
According to the MythTV site, you'll need two TV tuner cards to do that.
MythTV actually has very mature modules that let you play your music library, your DivX file library, check the weather, browse images. Removeable media support (Playback & reading) is absent.
Sure. Buy the unit and make a formal request in writing for the source code to the GPLed software that you have just purchased in binary form. If requested to do so, provide media (such as a CD-R in modern times, though the GPL mentions tapes) and return postage for that media.
Once you have said source code, you are free to redistribute it (unmodified or modified) under the terms of the GPL.
Until you have the binary, you have NO rights to request the source code under the GPL.
What bothers me most about your comment is the way you think you are somehow entitled to receive the source just because you exist. There is a good balance in the GPL (source needs only be provided to those who have received the binary) and this kind of demand for source code you have no right to receive really puts a black eye on the free software movement.
Have you even bothered to read and understand the GPL? By the sound of your comment, obviously not. Forget about current practice, pretend you are a lawyer for a bit, and read it. Then wait a few days and read it again. Then wait a few weeks and read it again. It's not a particularly difficult document to read, but like anything it helps to read it multiple times to get a better understanding of it. Any programmer with a modest amount of legal experience should be able to grok it. The GPL is something that anybody serious about writing free software should be quite familiar with. Why trust some schmuck's "Reader's Digest" version of it when you can read the real thing?
Um, really?
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
I am at about $500, plus a bit of blood/sweat/tears, for mine. Admittedly, the video card was one I had lying around (an old TNT2 with a broken GPU fan that is still holding up nicely).
Still, the biggest thing holding back MythTV and Freevo is the periodic changes made to the TV listings (the most recent one involved me making manual database changes to get it to change the channel when recording). Until a free, low-bandwidth solution to TV listings is devised (good luck there), this will always be a problem.
If you want to build your own, here's what you can use to get a close approximation to the Telly MC1000:
Cooler Master ATC-620C-BX1 (Black) Desktop Case - 108
Foxconn Allied MicroATX 200W Power Supply - 21
VIA Motherboard and Integrated 1GHz Nehemiah CPU EPIA-M10000 - 178
Western Digital "Special Edition" 80GB Hard drive - 92
Crucial 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM - 42
Lite-On 48x24x48x16 DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive (Black) - 65
I guess you'll have to find a TV Tuner card that's compatible with Linux, and can go in a PCI slot - 100?
I can't find that wireless keyboard, I know I've seen it on NewEgg before though, I don't think it's more than 50
Linux - free
Freevo or MythTV - free
Cables and adapters - 20
Total cost: ~$680
So, if you wanted to save yourself some money, I guess you could do that. Needless to say, you won't get a fancy User's Manual or remote control (unless you manage to get a TV Tuner card with one).
Some notes:
You could not use the VIA integrated mobo/proc thing, and use a MicroATX motherboard and an AMD processor, and use an AGP TV Tuner card.
All of the prices (unless I was guessing) came from NewEgg.com.
I belong to the ______ generation.
If they don't provide the source code with the product, then section 3b of the GPL requires them to provide the source code of the GPL'd software to ANY THIRD PARTY, not just those to whom they have distributed the object code. The written offer of source code only has to be provided to the party to whom they distributed the object code, but that offer must be valid for any third party.
In fact, technically if someone has made a commercial distribution of object code of GPL'd programs, and not accompanied it with either the source code (section 3a) or the offer to provide the source code (section 3b), they are already in violation of the GPL. For noncommercial distribution, there is a third option (section 3c), but that wouldn't apply here.
Where's that $100 Tivo?
Here it is.
But it's $115.
I type this from a dual booter, BeOS and WinXP a P4 with an nVidia card and C-Media sound in it. If you had any interest other than trolling, you could go to bebits.com and see that there are drivers and patches for all that you mention, plus plenty you don't. I dual boot for my pro audio Aardvark Q10 (which *isn't* supported by linux, and a far cry from 'most onboard audio chipsets')
Myth TV may 'be the desktop' but BeOS *is* the desktop - the GUI is BeOS and viceversa. Linux may excel at some stuff, but it still isn't as responsive as BeOS. (God forbid some newbie wants to install or configure something)
OBeOS hardly has five developers, and somehow they have managed more than 5 years of work on their OS. So please get over yourself, and stop believing everything you read on /. and do some (any) research before you troll.
Some people may find that $899 is quite expensive. But if you look at the chassis, you'll notice it is a coolermaster atc-610 (or 620, don't remember). It's is one of the most expensive desktop case around. If you had to buy it new, you'll have to pay $200+ (at least where I live).
You can buy the Coolermaster ATC-610 on newegg.com for $148 or if you can live without an aluminum finish (black would probably look better in your AV rack anyway) you can buy the ATC-620 version for just $108. Plus power supply of course. I imagine that if they buy signifigant quantities of these cases, they would get a nice volume discount.
The $899 pricetag is a really rather high for this kind of hardware (a C3 processor??, please), but I guess you pay for the integration.