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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."
Now that I have a TiVo I could never give it up. But the fact this offers network connectivity, 5.1 digital out, and composite video is quite impressive. The price may seem a little steep, but a new TiVo with a lifetime subscription is about 650-700, but this box is subscription free.
The real question is the interface going to be able to compete with TiVo? The ability to do season-passes are (IMO) what will make it or break it.
Mike
If they push the envelope like they claim they will, this will be one excellent box. At $899.00, it's pricey for all but the serious buyers... however it's tough to come in cheaper for a do-it-yourself solution.
-sid
Buy your Telly MC1000 Home Entertainment Server today for only $899.00
Hell, pick up three or four.
Until these things cost the same as a VCR I couldn't possibly justify paying the price.
Of course, I am just about to justify the price of cable, so I guess I'm already a step behind most couch jockeys. It's just that the return of Ren and Stimpy is such an enticing reason to get cable.
Bad choice for a trademarked name?
Here in the UK, "telly" is the generic term for television.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The specs include a TV tuner and analog S-Video/Composite inputs. $899 is an OK price to pay for an integrated box, but most people (i dunno, I do) probably have enough parts laying around to make something exactly like this out of common parts.
And, analog mpeg-2 capture isn't exactly something to be proud of. Hardware mpeg2 encoder cards can be picked up for $100 these days, and this "DVR" doesn't offer any of the advanced features such as skipping during live shows, etc, so why pay more for almost standard PC hardware?
Now if this supported hdtv recording via firewire, or direct mpeg2 recording off dish network or whatever is today's digital satellite system, that would make it worth the money.
Analog mpeg2 DVRs dont impress me anymore, too much quality loss, not enough features to make me switch from using a normal PC for similar capture tasks.
This one's really cool, I have planned to build my own system based on MythTV, and that's exactly the chassi I had in mind, it looks so HiFi.
http://coolermaster.com/case/p620.htm
running linux is not free!
unless you call all the man-hours making it run on the machine worthless.
You can get network connectivity with a non-authorized ethernet card for Tivos. Do a google search, I think they run about 60 bucks. As far as composite out goes, maybe a video geek can help out here, but considering the source (cable/satellite) it may just be that the law of diminishing returns kicks in real hard after a point and its may not be worth it.
I kinda dig the standard directivo. Dual tuners, S-Video out, etc. I'd much rather see a cheaper tivo that doesn't hurt the pocketbook too much than just more feature creep.
From the website:
>Buy your Telly MC1000 Home Entertainment Server today for only $899.00
Err no thanks. Where's that $100 Tivo?
From the description of their "media OS" based on Linux, http://interact-tv.com/EOS.php, I noticed something...
ItvXUL: XML based description language for describing itvgui based applications.
Does that mean their UI is based on http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/?
Since it has network connectivity couldn't you just copy the video to your main PC and burn a DVD there (assuming you have a DVD burner on your main PC)?
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Any ideas?
I'm curious about the bugs I've seen in my DirecTiVo and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen them too. The unit is a new HNS HDVR2.
1) When turning on the unit and going straight to the "now playing" list, when you play something, there is no audio. To get audio, you must go to "live tv" and then back to your show on the playlist.
2) When using the fast-forward (or the skip 30) features, the audio will drop out for a few seconds sometime after you resume playing at normal speed. It seems to happen every time and only mutes the sound for about 2 or 3 seconds.
3) Sometimes while scrolling through the "now playing list" the unit will hang. It will continue to queue up all the buttons you press but will not respond to any of them for 10 to 15 seconds.
4) The "please wait" screen seems to stay on the screen for a very very long time. Sometimes it's there for 30 seconds or more.
5) Not so much a bug as a but a lack of features. How do you find the remaining recording capacity? (You don't!)
How do you sort the "now playing" list by something other than the date recorded? (You don't!)
These problems make the unit very annoying to use.
Sounds like a neat unit, but I have one question...
TV-Out cards (or video cards with TV-out) generally deinterlace the signal in the process of converting the signal to something that the TV can understand.
The advantage of this is that the picture can easily be scaled to handle overscan. But the disadvantage is that the image quality, especially in panning scenes, is compromised. An interlaced NTSC signal will display 59.94 fields per second. This will allow for smooth motion, especially in the example of a scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen. When the signal is deinterlaced, that rate is cut in half to 29.97 and there can be blurring in areas of fast motion.
If this unit is using standard PC hardware, then it is likely deinterlacing the output. If so, it would make a pretty poor replacment for a DVD player. So much for an all-in-one solution...
Does this Telly unit have true interlaced TV output? If so, how is it achieved?
Beos is already in use professionally as a audio scheduler (Tunetracker), I see no reason that video can't be added.
Of special note, using Beos would allow you to 'roll your own' on *much* cheaper hardware than Win or Linux - an old Pentium 233/64 ram most likely could handle the job, since it is ass-fast on old boxen. Add a big ol' harddrive and you're in bidness.
Yeah, duh.
I was clearly talking about the current price of VCRs. You're just pointing out exactly what my problem with the technology is: that it is still too costly to adopt.
This Telly device does seem expensive. What's exciting is the prospect of better, cheaper, and more mainstream products to come.
When this concept becomes mainstream things will really get cool.
It took mp3 players to legitimize the mp3 format and show consumers that audio cd's are limiting. It will take PVR/media playing hardware to do the same for movies and tv.
A comparable TIVO would cost you the following:
TIVO Series2 - $349.00
Non-transferable lifetime subscription - $299.00
Network Interface - $100.00
DVD/CD burner - Unavailable
TOTAL ------> $748.00
Telly 80GB DVR - $899.00
So $150.00 buys you:
1. Privacy (nobody downloading your viewing habits)
2. A cd burner
3. Easy upgrades
4. Unmatched hackability
I for one was excited about this box becuae it does give me more freedom. I ABOSLUTELY FSCKN HATE the idea of subscriptions (on top of my already high cable bill) for a TV guide. The idea that one day there will be more ads with TIVO and that it takes an act of god to hack your TIVO are all reasons to consider this.
Could you do a similar thing for less? Sure, but this is designed to be a consumer device. In terms of cost of ownership, I think it is VERY comparable to the latest TIVO's.
If the SVCD's are of a good quality (think good quality VHS that doesn't degrade over time) then this box has a place for home video archiving. Also as pointed out there are a lot of future ideas and extensions coming down the line.
My guess is that this box even supports SSH connections and looks like a Linux box all the way. Sounds like a great deal to me.
When somebody makes this the size of a small DVD player and sells it for $249 at Wal-Mart, then it will take off.
I think you have a lot of us "anti-capitalists" and our open-source fanaticism all wrong. For many of us, the sticking point is *not* price, whether it be music or video recorders. The value is in our own ability to maintain/upgrade/customize whatever we have, and have the confidence that if anything at all goes wrong, we aren't held hostage at bugpoint at someone else's mercy. That's a good way to get raped.
Its just a philosophy. Some of us are very uncomfortable with the idea that somebody else controls something we have. Its bad enough the government traces us and taxes us on our homes, cars, and jobs. But if there is anything the electrical power brokers in California have taught me, its don't let myself get cornered. Don't let businessmen ever get you in a spot where you have to do whatever they say in order to "protect" your investment. Our California governor Gray Davis made like a nice guy and gave in to all the guys who knew how to play him like a fiddle. Where did that get us? Was that Pro-Capitalism? Or was that greed and control gone horribly wrong?
I don't like the idea of being a sharecropper.
Nor do I want to try to build a long-term investment with ephemeral building blocks.
If its a nice box, well designed, open source, etc, its worth the price. I don't expect to be subsidized by someone else who had a plan to force me into other business with them. I consider myself honest, but I have every expectation they be honest with me. Open source to me means they are willing to be completely honest with me and are holding no surprises. Its all on the table, subject to any verification I feel I need to do. In most cases, I probably won't verify anything at all, but should something not work as I expect, I may have to verify something.
I wrote another post in another forum regarding my disappointment with a termite contractor. Nowhere did I say I was unhappy about price.. no, I was mostly lamenting on my inability to verify the quality and quantity of termiticide used. I have no problem with paying the man for work done, but when I have a fast one pulled on me, it really pisses me off. Do you think it would minimize the number of "fast ones" a termite contractor could pull on the public if he knew that the product he used could be verified? How would it look in a jury trial should one of his customers, who discovered his house had been "treated" with water asked the company to assume the costs of replacing the termite-damaged lumber in his house? Or, am I just being "anti-capitalist" here by suggesting that someone's work be open for verification?
I am delighted to see this in Linux, as I fundamentally do not trust Microsoft. Nor do I trust that mechanic who claims he's going to work on my car, but goes to great lengths to make damn sure I can not observe nor verify his work. And I don't trust that termite guy either. ( But if he had given me a sample in my jug, then upon my suspicion something's wrong, I sent it off to my friend, and he found pyrethrins in the proper strength, my opinion of that contractor today would be completely different. )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
That's the nail in the coffin on this one. I couldn't believe it when I read it. TO skip commercials, you have to record an entire program, then watch it.
Pricewise it's right about on the money (read some of the other posts making comparisons). It's not as cheap as some used POS Tivo or Replay, but compared to buying the comparable Tivo w/ subscription and a DVD player, it's pretty close.
The problem is that its not a true home theatre PC - It's clearly not designed to push hi-def displays, doesn't mention anything about pre-tweaked resolutions etc... The folks who are going to buy something like this want the perfect box, and this isn't it, so they end up just building it themselves, and (here come the flames) the near universal consensus is that XP is currently the best way to drive a HTPC - vastly more options for Codecs, tweakers, etc... Continuous stable driver support for all the mpeg2 encoders and high end audio cards, etc...
You CAN do this with Linux, sure. You CAN do anything with Linux, but sometimes Linux is not actually the best tool for the job.