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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
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.
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
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).
Hell I can build an "almost" top of the line PC for that. The software doesn't look all that impressive and it is still a PC that doesn't look like an entertainment center applaince. Reading the specs of a VIA C3 sub 1 GHz processor with 256 megs of 2100 Ram. This thing is a $200 PC for almost a grand.
But it runs linux, wait no, that's free.
Seems like quite the not good deal ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Cool.. but my Xbox does that as well...
Why hasn't a company come out with an adult version of the PVR?
Name it the "Porn-O-Tron" or "Porn-O-Matic"
Include a subscription business model with various channels of varying fetishes, etc. and market it as just that. Tie it all together and the customers will flood the place...ok bad pun but you get the idea.
You could even tie in various adult products that plug into the box and someone on the other end could operate them for $19 a minute. Virtual Spanktravision might even be a better name or sub-brand as long as it doesn't canabalize the main brand.
Porn is BIG business and why hasn't a visionary other than myself come up with this?
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Who loves ya Baby?
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 $100 Tivo?
From the description of their "media OS" based on Linux, http://interact-tv.com/EOS.php, I noticed something...
ItvXUL: XML based description language for describing itvgui based applications.
Does that mean their UI is based on http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/?
You guys are really missing the point of this device. It's true it's similar to TIVO/ReplayTV but go and read everything in the web site:
;-)
-This is a PVR and DVD player. The only TIVO that has this is the fancy panasonic for 1000$ 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
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?
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.
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]