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Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute?
thepuma writes "Since I'm cheap, and don't want to pay monthly fees to Tivo, I am researching building my own low-budget Personal Video Recorder and player. Free software options include Freevo and MythTV. Hardware options are the main cost factor. How would you go about building the perfect low-budget PVR?" We've looked at similar questions before, but the guts of such a system (both hardware and software) have been improving -- MythTV, for instance, now supports Hauppauge's PVR-350 card. How would you build a system like this now?
I use myth (mainly because it supports live tv while freevo doesn't.) It's a decent program, but still somewhat buggy. I find it crashes on occasion, and compiling can be a nightmare at times. With a fast processor (I have an Athlon XP1800) you can easily encode and decode without having to use a hardware mpeg card. The setup process is somewhat painful, and sometimes confusing. I think Myth is great for a DIY'er, but not ready for a consumer solution.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
...has a great article on just this subject.
...I just came for the free beer.
Actually you probably can not get much cheaper than DirecTivo.
If you are a new sub. you can get the DirecTivo for about $50, and with a DirecTivo you only pay $4.99/month for the Tivo service (and that is for the account not the number of boxes). For me in my area DirecTV is MUCH cheaper than cable. Also the quality of a DirecTivo is far superior than any other option available for non-HDTV PVRs. It records the direct MPEG stream no encoded done on the box. Also the DirecTivo can record 2 shows at a time!
Course if you want to do it yourself you can and it would be fun, however it would most likely not be as stable, quality not as good. And you probably wont save much money if you already have cable or directv.
I use mythtv, I have 1 backend server with a Hauppauge pvr-250 and a OLD win-tv card in it, it has 1GB of ram, 3x120GB harddisks, and an amd2500+. The two cards allow me to record two shows at once, lets two people on two different frontends watch two different channels, or picture in picture. This computer has more power than mythtv needs, you can use something with alot less power. Especally if you get a hardware tv capture card.
When I am recording off my old win-tv capture card and I am in gnome running mozilla, etc. I can tell a big difference in video quality as when I am not doing anything on the computer. So if you have a slow computer, you want to use X/mozilla/etc, or just want better video quallity get a hardware video capture card (happauge pvr 250/350). A pII 400mhz would do very very well with a pvr 250/350.
My main frontend is a Xbox with gentoo installed. If you have a Xbox and you are as disappointed as I was with the games the xbox is your best bet for a front end for a TV. It "fits" beside the tv, I mean who wants a tower computer beside the tv anyways? Also some guy made a xbox-linux/mythtv distro. I haven't tried it but it looks really neat.
My other front end is a laptop with 802.11g card in it. I must say mythtv does QUITE well wireless.
Sure they do. I am using this functionality on my MythTV box right now.
When MythTV wants to change channel on the cable box, it calls a user-definable external script. I use LIRC to emit the IR control codes to switch channels on my General Instruments cable box.
- CPU: Athlon XP 2400
- MB: Some random Gigabyte motherboard, about $60
- Case: I splurged here and got an HTPC-looking Cooler Master ATC-610
- Video: GeForce2 MX 440
- Capture: Hauppage WinTV PVR 250
- 120MB IDE HD
- 802.11 wireless card
- DVD-ROM/CDRW drive
In total, I spent around $700. This is clearly not cheap compared to a TiVo, but I can do a lot of things that a typical TiVo can't and I don't have any service fees to pay. If I really wanted to save money, here's what I would have done:To be really useful, a homemade pvr has to solve the problem of obtaining program listings.
May I direct your attention to this.
This is currently what MythTV uses.
Regards
elFarto
It took a bit of work to get going, and I probably spent a total of about $500-$600.
BUT!
There is no subscription fee - TV listings are downloaded via XMLTV.
I can store CDs and DVDs on the HD.
I can run multiple front-ends, enabling me to watch TV/recordings on another machine on the network.
I can update recording settings through a very friendly HTTP interface.
I can extract and re-encode recorded shows.
In addition, people have written lots of groovy addons, including:
A MAME frontend
A CallerID module (when the phone rings, callerid information is displayed onscreen!)
A weather report module
The possibilities are endless.
Not true (about the processor) - The Hauppauge PVR-350 and PVR-250 do all the processing onboard.
Here's a good resource: HTPCNews.com
really?
Coolermaster component case atc-620 -$88.00
Motherboard with processor and integrated items-99.00
128 meg of ram $28.00
120 Gig hard drive - $99.00
OEM-boxed PVR-250 capture/tuner card $80.00
IR reciever + remote that is lirc compatable $40.00
$434.00 + tax
all from my local computer shoppe. It would have been cheaper if I went looking on ebay for the parts.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've researched this a little bit before. IIRC, it works out to about $6 or $7 a month. There are a tremendous number of variables so it is difficult to predict a particular situation. for instance, many of the "old" PCs that people toss in the corner as headless file servers don't support idling. Rather than go into a low power state, the CPU runs at full power in a noop loop. Sometimes older machines don't spin down the disk properly either. Newer machines should go to a low power state much more readily, but will require much more power while they are running.
The grandparent post was correct that running an old pentium as a firewall rather than buying a LinkSys box for $50 is a foolish economy. Of course, if one requires capabilities that the simple box doesn't provide - that is a different story.
I'm a fan of the VIA mini-itx systems for "always on" applications. With judicious use of eBay, one should be able to assemble a decent low power system for less than $300. I'm told that the 1 GHz Nehemiah based systems have good integer performance but not so good floating point performance. Think of them as about a 500 MHz Pentium equiv. Great little machines for a home file and print server, and they are practically silent aside from being good for the electric bill. If you run a mini-itx as your server/web-browser/email box and only use that Dual Athlon machine when you are actually gaming, you should see a noticable drop in your electric bill.
Your math is somewhat flawed. Tivo ($149) + lifetime ($299) = $448 + TAX. That's only if you get the 40 GB version, add $100 for the 80 GB.
You're better off spending that $100 on a larger hard disk (bout 100GB for $100), and hacking it in.
You negelect to tell people one thing: Standard warranty on any Tivo/DirecTivo is 90 DAYS. Tivo lifetime subscription is linked to the box. Day 91, if your box burns up, you're out the whole bill. The only way you can transfer your subscription is if the box dies and is REPLACED BY THE MANUFACTURER UNDER WARRANTY. Many, many people have been burned by this.
I am a Tivo (series 1) owner. I'm going to build a MythTV box because I can't bring myself to blow another $500 on a single use box that I can't even web browse or play DVD's on. If the experiment fails, I have a PC for my daughter. If it works, I still have a PC for my daughter that also happens to record TV.
"Though I don't know why you would buy lifetime service instead of paying the $4/month for service through DirecTV"
Actually, for the Directv/Tivo unit, you can't. There is no lifetime service option with Directv/Tivo, only the Tivo standalone units. You have to pay $5/month to Directv, who presumably shares some of that with Tivo. Plus, if you sign up for the full DTV package (HBO,Starz,etc) the $5 fee is waived.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
The reasoning for the different items are as follows:
A similar model of the motherboard got good reviews by Toms Hardware Guide (yes, I know some people in /. hate Tom). The integrated sound on this board was recommended to me by an ALSA developer. It's also got SATA, LAN, USB and Firewire and, as a nice bonus, both coax and optical digital sound outputs.
Samsung...didn't matter much as long as it had DVD and CD-RW capabilities, black front was a nice touch though.
WAG311GE, one of few cards that support A, B and G wireless networking. Supported in Linux by the MadWifi drivers, unfortunately not truly open source, but neither are any other ABG card drivers.
Intel processor, I usually like Athlons but temperature (and thereby cooling requirements) is much more important in this box than speed.
Hauppage, well supported by MythTV and able to do MPEG2 recording and playback in hardware.
MSI GeForce, has VGA, DVI and TV-Out, also fanless and really cheap. Closed drivers but that's kinda hard to avoid.
Maxtor drive, I really wanted a more quiet Seagate but the SATA models were kind of impossible to find in any nearby store for decent prices. Also most stores seemed to have the ones with the least storage capacity.
Coolermaster, the case isn't "designed" to be a HTPC case (such as this one) which means it doesn't have the same silly price tag. It was also the exact same width as my stereo components (well, 3mm wider) and similar color.
Now all I have to do is wait...
You are aware that you can buy a tivo unit with built in DVD burner for under $700, right?
p hp?masterid=1361996&ut=c0373404f6bde38f&found=2&se arch=DVR-810H
http://www.pioneerburner.com/
http://devsdeals.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.
Is your video editing and gaming that you can do on pretty much any PC woth the extra $1800? Didn't think so...
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Knoppmyth is a fully installable Knoppix(debian) distro with mythtv. Knoppmyth is a pvr, has tv with a guide to your local cable/sat provider, weather, news, a dvd playing, an mp3 player (and indexing, by group and album, with visualizations), cd ripper with artist and title lookup, emulator frontend, and vcd player.
You can burn the iso, assemble your pvr/media machine, boot of the iso, provide a few usernames and passwords and Knoppmyth will partition and install everything you need to get MythTV running on your system including mysql, xmltv, mythtv. As a bonus you get the magic of apt-get to install almost anything else you might want. The fontend program is very nicely done and it supports remote controls and external channel changers too.
-dameron
I started looking into a replacement PVR solution when my DishNetwork sub ran up. My wife and I were hooked on the Dish501 PVR and hadn't watched TV bound to a schedule in more than a year. Our local cable provider (TW-Rochester) gave us a great deal on all the digital offerings with HBO @ 25.99 /mo for 12 months. Sounded like a good idea. I went on board with their PVR "solution", the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000.
Has anyone else used one of these clearly beta units? Ack!
That lasted about 3 weeks. So I sat down and looked at our needs and our options:
- Two tuners (the only nice feature of the SA8000)
- Intelligent recording options (record once/series/all)
- Sufficient storage (enough to fit the entire Tour De France: 20 stages x 3hrs. That was our unit of measurement. YMMV)
- Ability to record network channels (NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox)
- HighDef is a nice-to-have
Options:
- DirectTV with DirectTivo (No Rochester locals then) (~$550 for Series2 unit with big HD)
- DishNetwork with the Dish921 (High Def! Have to lie to get Plattsburgh locals) ($1000+)
- DishNetwork with the Dish721 (Have to lie to get Plattsburgh locals) ($500)
- Time Warner with SA8000 (Ack!) ($5 + $9 rental/mo)
- DIY box (???)
Wife gave the project a green light, and I bought the parts to build it. Motherboard with integrated LAN and VGA, $100; AthlonXP 1800+, $50; PVR250 Tuner cards, $130 x2; Wireless mouse & keyboard, $40. I already had a case and 120Gb drive.
It took a bit of work and a weekend to get it running the first time (Myth 0.11). Thanks so much to Jarod's guide. I tweaked it and broke some stuff about 3 weeks later, and rebuilt it. Only took 8 hrs that time.
Tweaked stuff again and broke it again. I should realize that it's a TV device, not a playtoy. This time I rebuilt it in 3 hrs. (That included restoring a backup of the programs saved on the HD.) ATRPMS with apt-get (thanks Axel) makes it a breeze.
It's been fine for the last month. It sits quietly mounted between floor joists in the basement crawlspace storage, where it is keep quite cool. As a bonus over Tivo, it has a picture gallery viewer of all the PCs in our house, it runs MAME and ZSnes, plays MP3s and shows the weather.
Thanks Issac and all the developers who put so much hardwork into a great project. Your efforts are very appreciated.
By the way: The best part about this being an open source, Linux based project? When there's a problem with the app and I'm not at home, I can ssh to it and fix it remotely. No more trying to explain things over the phone!
I have a MythTV box so I speak from experience.
You *SHOULD* build a MythTV box IF:
- You are an experienced Linux user, have some extra hardware lying around (or money is no object), and are looking for a fun and interesting project to mess around with.
- You are an inexperienced Linux user, have some extra hardware lying around (or money is no object), and are looking for a fun and interesting project to learn Linux with.
- You are not one of the above, but absolutely must have the single best Multimedia Convergence box you can possibly have at all costs.
You should *NOT* build a MythTV box IF:
- You are an inexperienced Linux, user and have no money and no hardware lying around.
- You have no interest in learning Linux.
- You are an experienced Linux user, have no money and no extra hardware lying around.
- You want something that works now, not something that is sorta great now, but will be absolutely great later.
This exactly what I've been telling my friends when they get jealous of my MythTV box. I suspect in about a year or so, building a MythTV box will be a LOT simpler. Until then, follow my guideline above.
Bryan
Yeah, I have to say, anyone who doesn't like this feature is probably a misinformed idiot. TiVo doesn't delete your shows to record "Suggestions", it doesn't refuse to record one of your shows either. All TiVo is doing is saying "Hey, you have some free hard drive space, and I'm just sitting here idle, I might as well put some content on that space for you, in case you run out of things to watch later".
I really don't understand what's creepy or annoying about that feature, the box is going to be powered on anyhow, there's absolutely no reason not to use that feature.
And, if for some reason you don't like it, as the previous poster said, you can EASILY disable it. You go into the Settings menu, and just tell it not to record Suggestions.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein