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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?
try hacking together a more advanced version of TVPlus?
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
If budget is important, consider estimating electricity costs in a do-it-yourself solution. You might be surprised how much money worth of electricity a PC can use in just a year.
As an example, I've seen people "save money" by reusing old PC's as firewalls instead of buying a cheap $50 unit that does the same job. They're spending more money in electricity than it would have cost to buy the dedicated unit.
-Teckla
Isn't the biggest problem STILL programming guide information? Don't things like XMLTV use web sites that sometimes block IP's from using them?
I agree, it's actually not that cheap to build one from scratch. I looked into this a few months ago and found it would cost as much as a Tivo, if not more. Asus Pundit ~200 CPU ~150 RAM ~100 Hard Drive ~100 PVR card ~200 Total ~750
What you want to look at is not competing with what is there, but do what the future holds. I have a server that is doing VLC and can see ripped DVD's (my own) or listen to music via my computers or via the linux client that I run on the Telly. When KDE 3.2 is out fully, I will be using lirc to handle the dvd's/Music correctly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
yeah, if all you want to do is PVR, then just buying a TiVO makes sense. But if you really want a convergence device to tie your tv into the network -- tivo can't compete.
with a roll-your-own, you could add all sorts of functionality:
. streaming non-mpeg2 video clips from across the network
. listening to your mp3 collection on your living-room sound system
. watching a slideshow of digicam vacation pics . firing up an emulator and enjoying some pong
. actually web browsing from a fully functional machine (add wireless keyboard for full effect)...
Tivo is fine functionality, but there's no reason to stop there. not when Tivo + lifetime subscription ~= cost of rolling your own
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Don't forget wireless keyboard and mouse to control from your cushy couch :).
Anybody who is trying to save money by building a TiVo substitute is going to end up losing in the end.
Do it because you love to hack, do it for the satisfaction, do it for the feature set, but trying to save money is not going to work here.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Try the Video Disk Recorder. You can download it here.
This is a FREE and completely non-commercial project. Any information posted on these pages is freely available to anybody. All source code published here is protected by the GNU general public licence.
Features include (copy & paste):
* Operation entirely via DVB card's On Screen Display and infrared control (LIRC/RCU) or keyboard
* Support for multiple DVB cards (up to four, at least one full featured card with video out required) and "conditional access" (CICAM)
* Channel groups
* EPG display by channel or by time ("What's on now/next")
* Timers: Programming via EPG or manually, priority/lifetime model, single-shot or repeating timers which use EPG subtitle info as recording's title additionally
* Recording storage on disk: Automatically splitting of recording into files (2GB), support for multiple storage directories (may be spread over multiple disks), support for hierarchical storage
* Support for multiple audio tracks and Dolby Digital
* Instant recording
* Playback modes normal, pause, fast forward/backward (multi speed), jump to specific location, jump 60 seconds
* Support for editing recordings (with I-frame accuracy: ~1/2 second)
* Multiple language support
* Support for executing system commands and displaying output on screen
* Network support (SVDRP): Manage timers and recordings via telnet
* Automatic shutdown/wakeup (with certain mainboards)
* Support for automatically executing commands upon recording start/end and editing recordings
New in version 1.2
* Instant Time Shift
* Plugin interface (see the list of available plugins).
* Additional remote control keys
* Macros can be assigned to remote control keys
* Multiple recordings on the same device
* Simultaneous recording and replay on the primary device
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
With that said, I will only buy a PVR if it has the following options:
1. Built-in DVD player that does VCD/SVCDs, Divx and Xvid.
2. 10/100 ethernet
3. Standard network file system access to my recordings with NFS and Samba file sharing.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
You can get a DirecTivo for less than $50 and only pay $5/month for Tivo service. So for your nice PVR-computer price of $200, you can get a Tivo and over 2 years of service. Plus that $5/month covers all the Tivo receivers you have.
I built a MythTV box and went the Mini-ITX route for $500. I paid more for the small size, considering I could have gotten more CPU power, etc. for less money.
.deb packages since I was using the
For case, I used the Morex Cubid 2699R. It's about the size of a 12" pizza box (much smaller than the VCR that it replaced!), and uses a 50W external power supply, which *significantly* cuts down on noise. My hard drive is the biggest contibutor to noise with this setup. I got my case for about $80 US.
I keep it in my TV cabinet without an attached mouse, keyboard, or monitor. Just connected to TV and my LAN, and controlled via remote control.
You can see pics and a review of its older cousin at:
http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/2688R/
As for the rest, I got:
Motherboard:
VIA EPIA M10000 ($150-$160 US) - Has onboard ethernet, 5.1 audio, video,
and one PCI slot. Processor is already on it. Processesor has
exceptionally low power requirements (compared to high-end AMD/Intel).
Memory:
Crucial 512mb DDR (if you do decide on the 2699R case, make sure the RAM
height is below 34mm or it won't fit - the Crucial fit just fine)
Tuner:
Hauppauge PVR-350 (less than $200 via pricewatch.com)
Its included remote works really well under LIRC
DVD:
Some generic slimline DVD player for $55.
If you get the 2699R case, you need a slimline which means more $$
Note that as of current date, MythDVD and MythVideo don't work
with the PVR-350, so you won't be able to watch DVD's (yet).
Hard drive:
I used an old IBM drive laying around, I plan on upgrading to a Seagate Barracuda which is rated at 20dB while idling.
Now the pros and cons of my setup:
Pros:
Very small, very quiet
PVR-350 with the Epia M10000 uses only 3% (!!!) CPU utilization during
playback and record
Front of case has firewire/usb connections if I need later on
Even without MythDVD or MythVideo support, it's already better than a
commercial Tivo because (1) I can record at higher bitrate and resolution,
and (2) I have direct access to the recorded videos, so that (3) I can
archive to DivX or DVD...
Cons:
No DVD or avi/quicktime/etc. file playback since I've using a PVR-350 (hopefully soon though!)
I couldn't use the already built 0.11
PVR-350. I ended up compiling both IVTV and MythTV CVS instead.
Since there's no attached keyboard/mouse/monitor, I need to ssh from
a different computer on the network, but I actually prefer it this way
Hope that helps
Which HD tuner do you use? Would you recommend it? How is the image quality? How much did it cost?
Thanks,-Turkey
I call FUD. People have been saying that Tivo will go out of business for years. Has it happened yet? Nope, they're still going strong, with Tivo devices topping many Christmas lists this year. Series 2 Tivos support USB ethernet adapters. No phone line needed. Statistics? Yeah, they know you rented Spice last night. Big deal, so does the cable company, Spice, and a million other middlemen. Lack of expansion? Are you referring to hard disk expansion? You can easily upgrade or put in a second drive.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Ok, I'm a couple hundred posts too late to get moderated to a level at which anyone will read this, but here goes. I had always been facinated by recording television and doing video capture. Way back in the day (ok, 7 years ago) I started with a Zoran chip composite capture card and broadcast my home game-playing table to the internet for people who'd watch me play Magic: the Gathering. (Yes, I'm a colossal geek...) Fast forward to the last couple of years. Being the last geek on my block without a dedicated PVR and with Microsoft pushing out Media Center, and with me being a MSDN+Select customer, I thought I'd try it out. You can easily skip the rest of this and just go to AVSFORUMS. They have a message board you can't possibly keep up with :)
I purchased the Hauppauge PVR-250 (which, essentially is the 350 without radio), and gave it a try as a fulltime device behind one of the AV switches on my Pioneer (read: noisy) receivers. Media Center did just peachy. The interface is slicky and it just FEELS like a media center. But I was stuck with ASF files that took too much work to convert to a readable format for other people.
So, I looked into Snapstream. Snapstream was, essentially, Media Center with the ability to record native DVD and SVCD formats, and the ability (recently) to overnight downsample to DiVX;) for archiving.
But it wasn't quite right.
So, I turned next to my cable company's integrated DVR solution. Cox peddles the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 for another $10 a month, and with it, I get two-tuners and a good, but worse feature set than either of the software packages.
So, let me say this, if you NEED, and I don't just mean once to impress your mother upstairs out of the basement, to burn DVDs of your TV programs, or unless you NEED to archive lots of TV to DiVX;) or some other handy archive format, don't build yourself a PVR except as a hobby or to do it.
Get a TiVo. Get a DirecTiVo. Get the Cox PVR. You'll get it for much cheaper than that $150+ capture card, the $100 hard drive, the $50 video card with good looking TV-out and the $100 motherboard and case. Oh, and that case -- don't expect to enjoy watching TV unless you've purchased SILENT parts for your PC. Zalman coolers and Panflow fans aren't cheap. You won't have to fuss with overscan or underscan from your video card on your too-old no-DVI input TV either. You'll have about 200 less wires in your living room too. You also don't have to wonder what channel your TiVo accidentally used the IR-remote to change your TV too. Did it get 10 or 100 today? /shrug. I hope I got 24 and not Maricopa County Educational Television...
Anyway, if you're a geek, and I am, and you have to play with the video you catpure, go software, or at least choose an off-the-shelf PVR that lets you add a network card.
If not, for the love of god, suck up $7 or $10 a month (cheaper still than buying PVR hardware) and get the benefits of dual-tuner capture and integrated CLEAN LOOKING -----SILENT----- hardware for your TV watching experience. And, for the love of god, unless you have a TV that doubles as a PC monitor, stop trying to watch TV on it. You're going to be disappointed.
[This isn't to say that you can't ultra-geek it, build a nice home theater box, in an expensive case, using quiet parts, and connect it to your TV that's already suitable for DVI inputs and have a BETTER solution that includes DVD playing, MAME playing, etc. -- but the reality is that unless you're going into the DEEP END of the hobby -- that's right -- hobby, you're much better off with going to X-Mart and getting a TiVo, or just calling your cable company.]
What would be cool is if DirecTV would allow someone to build a PC Card Tuner. Then you are right you could just pull the stream directly off the dish. I don't see this ever happening though. :(
My boy, my boy!
I guess my WAF is pretty high. I wanted to take mine down to rebuild it with the PVR-250 cards and erase whatever it has recorded (about 500 shows) but my wife freaked out and offered to buy me a DVD writer for Christmas if I'd back up her shows. I reluctantly accepted her offer. :-/ I guess it got accepted pretty good for what I had originally setup as a toy project to catch Seinfeld episodes I had missed in first-run.
Then there's the noise factor. Tivos are whisper quiet... To make a PC that quiet wou can easily add another $100 onto the base price. I use a Zalman cooler, even satisfied the girlfriend.
Quack, quack.
With urpmi and Easy Urpmi and Thac's configured properly (follow instructions). You can install it in a few minute, with no compiling.
urpmi mythtv
Thats xmltv and everything.
Quack, quack.
I completely agree with this. The only way rolling your own can be considered cheaper is if you price your time at $0/hr.
Let's say you want a small, quiet machine that makes no more noise than your old VCR. That right there rules out most off-the-shelf systems. You'll need to go with something like a Via M10000 motherboard ($175), a quiet mini-ITX case ($85), a 160 gig hard drive ($100 if you're lucky and get rebates), 512 megs of RAM ($100), keyboard/mouse ($25), and tuner card ($50), and CD-ROM ($25).
Wow. Not even started and you've spent $560 plus tax/shipping.
"But I've already got a fast computer!"
I'm sure you do but what happens when you want to play a game? Sorry. Can't play UT right now. I'm recording Springer and I don't want to get any dropped frames. I've got a half hour window coming up at 9:30, tho.
And even if you've got a spare machine sitting around that can do this and you don't mind drawing 100+ watts 24/7, all of the software packages have quirks and bugs. You simply won't be able to "set it and forget it". Somethig will crash, you'll need to install a security update, one of the programs will have a memory leak.
Bottom line: If you want a Tivo, get a tivo. And get the lifetime service. Schmucks pay monthly. If you ever decide Tivo's not for you, you'll recover 100% of the lifetime subscription cost when you sell on ebay. Probably more since they bump the price up $50 every couple of years. My $250 subscription would now add $300 to the value of my unit if I sold it on ebay. Same with people who got it back at the $199 price point. It's better than gold.
The things I see in your list that MythTV doesn't do is recording shows based on your viewing habits which is one of the things I find repulsive about TiVo
As the above poster mentioned, it's easily disabled, but I really gotta say I love this feature, once properly trained. I know that at any time, I can put some seinfeld or simpsons rerun on because I've tought my tivo to go ahead and record these or similar shows whenever it can.
Hmm.. I skip commercials on my DirecTiVo. I've never gotten a legal threat for hacking and extending my unit (yes, I've modified it, which I consider control), I don't have any desire to burn throwaway shows to DVD-R, and if I did I'd get a DVD recorder and hook it up to my TiVo, and there's no way you're getting a digital stream to a hard drive in a viewable manner without DRM right now, with software that is free or commercially available. You aren't going to get anywhere close to the picture quality on a home built unit compared to a DirecTiVo, because you have to decode and reencode the signal; Plus, you still have the DRM in your reciever anyway.
Most of all, none of this addresses the fact that the only reason this guy said he wanted to build his own was price.... And that's what I was talking about. You're not going to get a cable or sattelite company to subsidise your hardware if you build it yourself. He's probably paying for cable anyway, so why turn down free money?
This is totally beside the point and has nothing to do with the PVR discussion. What legitimate use does a hacked smart card have on the DirecTV network? Why shouldn't a company sue or press charges against a user who is not only violating their terms of service, but also depriving them of revenue by using such a device?
Actually, it's neither off-topic nor beside the point. DirectTV hasn't been suing people for having hacked smart cards... they've been suing people for buy smart card writers, which are only used for hacking smart cards in incredibly rare instances. It's EXACTLY the same as if MPAA were suing owners of DVD recorders, with no proof (even indirect) of any illegal activity. I have two smart card writers sitting on my desk now, and I've never owned a dish of any type. You should understand what you're ranting about before you post. DirecTV has , in fact, been extremely obnoxious in that regard.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
MythTV has something that I haven't seen from any of the commercial players: MythWeb. Fully configuratble recording/list browsing/etc in a nice web interface (don't trust the screenshots on the MythTV website - they're old and out of date, and I haven't had time to make any of the new version). My MythTV box is rarely used for actually watching TV these days. I set up what I want to record via MythWeb, and archive shows to SVCD to be watched later on my dvd player.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Seriously... what is your problem?
MythTV is not *THAT* hard to set up. I see people on the mailing list complaining about it all the time. And usually, the reply that gets them fixed is a pointer to the appropriate place in the documentation.
I have about six months work in my MythTV box, and I only got the parts a few weeks ago. I subscribed to the mailing list for about five months before I even attempted to start the project because I had heard stories of how horrendous it was to install. I printed out a hard copy of the documentation, and two different installation tutorials. Even after that, I read through all that about three times over.
Preparation is everything, I have found. You cant expect to have something of TiVo quality without putting in a lot of work your self. You have to remember that TiVo has employed a lot of people for a long time to get where it is, and it is very far from perfect as well.
About the best thing you can do to help yourself is to subscribe to the mailing list and learn from other peoples mistakes. Here's a hint in case you didn't already get it: The #1 mistake is not reading the documentation, which lists every dependancy that you need to fulfill.
If I were to be completely honest with myself, I would be forced to concede that nobody should ever build a MythTV machine because they think it will be cheaper. It probably wont be. In fact, 99.999% of the time if you are making a dedicated box it will not be. But if someone is looking for something they can change, something they can upgrade, something for a hobby, then THAT is the person who should use MythTV.
Personally, I don't regret a single minute that I've put into my MythTV box. If I did, I think I would have to question why I was doing it in the first place. IMHO, saving money is not a good enough reason.
Disclaimer: I did save money when I built my MythTV box. I managed to find a quiet dual proc PIII 633 for $100 and two AverMedia M179's for $50 a piece. That, after trying not to buy a PVR-250 for several months. Patience is indeed a virtue. Luckily, what I lack in patience I also lack in fiscal terms too.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
I'm on my 3rd TIVO currently. The first 2 died after over a year of use. I purchased a new TIVO each time and payed for a lifetime subscription to the service since TIVO will not transfer the subscription to a new TIVO. Now my current TIVO's modem is dead. I switched to using my LAN and cable modem to connect to the TIVO service and that worked for a while until I moved. Then I had to go through the setup. It seems you have to have the modem working to finish the TIVO setup. Therefore, I'm in a catch 22. I cannot use the TIVO until I finish the setup. I cannot finish the setup without the modem working. The modem is integrated on the motherboard so I cannot replace it without replacing the motherboard.
I could buy another TIVO and the subscription but after three bad TIVOs I'm not inclined to do so. I could send it back to the manufacturer.
Perhaps I should just build my own. At least I could replace parts as needed when they go bad. I've avoided using Linux up to this point since it isn't necessary for my work. The question is, is it worth it? Should I just forget about owning a DVR? I really like selecting shows to record and letting the TIVO figure out the times the show is on and automatically recording for me. How about my cable set top box? My TIVO can control it so I can record the digital channels. Is that feature possible with a home made DVR?
History is so yesterday!
Then here's a response to you:
Problems with SageTV:
--Matthew
What t.v. tuner card do you use? What chipset is your motherboard? How do you find CPU usage on your XP1800?
I ask because I have an XP 1700 that I might use for something like this. However, I have an older Haupauge card and the card is darn unstable. Crashes regularly, even in Windows, and has done with two different motherboard chipsets (both VIA, however). Also, the driver support from Haupauge was terrible. The Linux driver was in a different league as far as quality, compared to the Windows 2k and XP drivers from the manufacturer.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Yes, but that only has a very limited capability to edit the video as well as only burn using a single format (in pioneers case, DVD-R/RW) whereas I can do DVD -/+ R/RW. Also, don't forget that the ability to apply low pass filters to the audio and video before burning to DVD does a great job in cleaning up the video/audio signal before putting it on media.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I am about to retire my current PC (P3 733, 384MB RAM, 140GB, SBLive -- running Gentoo Linux), and was seriously considering turning it into a Tivo-like device. My question (which I assume others have as well) is what do I need to do to a standard existing PC to turn it into a PVR? I know I need to buy a PVR card (I was looking at the Hauppauge ones), but is there anything else I need? Do I need a video card with video out to connect the box to a TV, or will the PVR card handle this? If I don't want to only use a TV, can I view the content easily on my monitor? What if I want it to work with a remote control? Is this possible (especially under Linux)? Anything connected to my TV had better be remote-control operated :-).
I would greatly prefer to stay with Linux, but I would be willing to switch distros if that would make setup easier.
P.S. I am a student, so I don't have any electricity costs. The university pays the electric bills, so I don't really care that having a PC on all the time costs a few extra dollars per month.
Direct TV's PVR with TiVo service is the way to go, I think they are running a promo on it for new service, and unlinke anything else here, it's a TiVo, requires no hacking, and a 3 room system is $99, the recorded stream never goes analog until you watch it, and it blows anything else out of the water that does the D-A-D-A conversion.
For the anti-subscription people.....
As far as the subscription, well are you paying for cable? If so you pay for it all day long, even when you're not home, you do pay for the Tivo all day long as well, but it's recording what you programmed it with, as well as stuff it thinks you might like.
If you like to hack - do the hack - if you like to watch commercial-free tv with an easy to use interface - get the TiVo - which you can still hack if you like.
Add it up, do the math, the hack is more expensive for everyone but the unemployed.