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Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute?

Posted by timothy on from the this-is-my-anything-box dept.

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?

5 of 743 comments (clear)

  1. Budget by Teckla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  2. Guide Information by Kentamanos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  3. This is how I built my "Tivo" by Bishop639 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    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 .deb packages since I was using the
    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

  4. Re:I have a Myth box by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The important thing for me is that the WAF is high (wife acceptance factor).

    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.

  5. Re:Don't do it for cost by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?