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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."
This thing is a small fortune at 900$ plus tax. How do they expect to compete with that kind of barrier to entry? How do they justify that price when everything else I've seen is half that or less in the case of Tivo?
I'll pass thanks.
I can't find anything on the marketing overview page about it being quiet or not. You'd think they would trumpet, so to speak, the fact if it were a quiet box.
Anyone want to start a pool on how long this will last before the MPAA gets them shut down?
I'll take a month...
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
You have not priced out the components being used. It's a Coolermaster aluminum case for one thing, and includes a very nice wireless mouse and keyboard. So it is NOT a "$200 PC" by any means. The mobo/CPU and TV/video card probably cost that much, then you have to add an 80GB drive and DVD/CD-RW combo drive. And although it does run Linux they have their own (closed-source) software on top of that.
However, I have to agree that it does seem very expensive if you value your time at $0/hr and would prefer to build all the hardware and write/install the software yourself from scratch. At the volumes they are producing they are not getting any better prices than you would if you bought the components yourself.
What I wonder about is how this box would stack up compared to the Pioneer/TiVo boxes annnounced a few weeks ago that were supposed to sell for about $1,000. Those had DVD burning built in, the Telly is promising it as a future enhancement.
That's quite relative. It might not sound impressive, but that's probably because you've never attempted to get a Linux box working as a PVR... It might not be software that requires a lot of effort for a programmer to create, but since nothing like it exists in the Open Source world, it is somewhat impressive.
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. For now, since there is nothing else out there like it, it certainly is impresive.
Take a look at Tivo. People are paying truckloads of money for boxes without half the features this thing has. Admitedly, this is missing a couple features Tivo has, but I believe that could be easily fixed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
because that is a stupid idea.
Yep. I think the $99 price point is the magic number to keep the Tivo company going and help popularize the technology before the media companies drive Tivo out of the market with their own branded DVRs which will most likely have some sleeping DRM feature that will one day make that handy commercial skip useless or push ads or who knows what else.
In fact my directivo was $129 at the time. The directv tuner was $60. So for double that I got a Tivo and have been very impressed with the technology since.
A few people I know have echoed similiar statements "Yeah its awesome but I'm not dropping $250 on a kick-ass VCR." Neither would I.
You guys are really missing the point of this device. It's true it's similar to TIVO/ReplayTV but go and read everything in the web site:
;-)
-This is a PVR and DVD player. The only TIVO that has this is the fancy panasonic for 1000$ that hasn't come out yet.
-It's also a cdwriter and can be upgraded to a DVD writer in due time.
-It's network transparent even for Windows/Mac people, no extra usb ethernet needed.
-It's expandable without having to hack it, you can add two hard drives bought of the shelf. I'd put it in the infinite expandable category just for that. BTW the extra space will look like one volume.
-It's standard linux, it has a web server, samba, etc. So it replaces whatever old box that you have lying around as a server, storage or whatever else.
-You can access the interface which seems nicely done both directly and remotely via a web server.
-As a plus it has all kinds of media playing capabilties: video, audio, photos.
-The one linked is the analog one, there is also a digital version for 100$ bucks more.
Finally, and very importantly they give you the SDK for producing your own software, they seem keen on open source and people developing their own little apps. So if you think a feature is missing, heck you can go and program it yourself. Isn't that the most important feature?
That's on the positive side. The one thing that it seems to lack is replay as it records. But that should be fixable if we overflow their mailboxes with requests
Disclaimer: I don't work for them or knew anything about them until I read this post but I've been waiting for just this since forever. It has everything I wanted in a tivo.
Platy
My whole point was, if it had more significant features, people would be willing to get one. It can't really replace VCRs because there is no removable media, nothing you can remove from the unit, keep in storage, or pass on to a friend.
But that's not comparable to a standalone unit that has to do the encoding itself. First off, it's going to be a long time before prices drop that low (computers only recently reached the $200 price point, and Tivos are souped-up computers). Besides, even if they get the hardware down to $100, people are still paying a good deal of money to tivo every month, or spending something like $200 more up front on top of the $100 pricetag. Personally, paying $20/month for Tivo would nearly double my monthly TV expenses, and all for a unit that still can't hope to replace a single VCR...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, we are talking about digitizing any analog video source... Got a million VHS tapes? Hook your VCR up to this baby, and make them all into VCDs that will be small, cheap, easy to backup, and playable on any DVD player (or computer). Or, instead, maybe you just want to push the video file to your computer over the network. Maybe you want to convert your home movies into VCD/SVCDs. Or, maybe you just like Futurama, and want to keep it on a medium that isn't a huge hassle to deal with (everyone knows how horrible VHS tapes are, few know how easy digital is to work with)
At $300, it would be slightly more expensive than the computer system I bought with the TV-tuner card I bought to perform the same tasks, but with this, it'll have a good interface, wouldn't have taken the long setup time, and would certainly be quieter, cooler, use up less power, etc.
If you don't want/need the functionality, that's fine, but don't trash it just because you don't want it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
For starters, I bought a Ultimate TV unit for DirecTV for about $35 after all the rebates. I know you anti-capitalists want 'freedom' to use digital recorders to record staticy broadcast or analog cable.. Yeah, you do that. I'll live in the 2000's, thank you very much. Any digital satellite service is superior to any cable or broadcast network on the planet in regards to quality, quality, and price. Want to argue about that? Ok. Fine. You have reality issues.
Secondly, You could build a AMD K7 box, get a lian li mini ATX case (the new pancake fits in with AV components really well), 100 gig drive, ATI all in wonder pro, DVD, and a good sound card for less than this box -- but have greater performance. Plus you'll have access to all the great PC applications and HDTV outputs ($35 dongle required).
You could also get a used Xbox and a mod chip for 1/5th the price of this thing and get most of the functionality with Xbox Media Player. It also supports HDTV..
I'd suggest not getting excited and feeding the hype for these over-priced hacks. There's just no excuse to spend 900 bucks on something that doesn't do anything ground-breaking.
From the manual, page 17: "While Telly is recording, Telly's TV window goes blank and you can't watch TV. You can use other Telly features like the music library, photo library or TellyPortal."
Arg. Sounds like a step back from my VCR.
Otherwise, the idea is great, the interface looks wonderful. Just a little work needed on the TV watching features and the price.
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