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Build Your Own PVR
An anonymous reader submits: "One geek's trials and tribulations of buying a ReplayTV, hating it, and deciding to build his own Linux PVR from nothing. The first try sinks into the swamp (hardware problems). The second try sinks into the swamp (more hardware problems). The third try... you get the idea. But success, finally, based on SageTV, a Windows PVR client. Makes you wonder if current Linux PVR apps are just too much of a pain to get working well?"
Build Your Own PVR
I don't have the time! Stop pressuring me!
You can't take the sky from me...
I have to say it is a lot of pain.. especially for those not too akin to linux like myself.. I admit to being an advanced user of windows, but nearly none of the knowledge transfers over..
I commend this company for doing it in windows, but at the same time, I think what he's doing is stupid: selling software to run with windows seems to be going out of style.. especially since you can do it all and more with linux all for free.. it's just so much harder. We'll wait and see if this catches on....
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I still want one that supports Sky TV in the UK. I could take the output from the decoder box but then anything I wanted to record I would have to set the box and the PVR, defeating the purpose.
Anyone know how to put a Sky signal straight from the dish into a PC? They use some obscure encryption so even when you pay for a viewing card you cant use it.
www.mythtv.org the best PVR ever... it does everything, great UI, great support (pchdtv card, HARDWARE MPEG2 encoder/tuner cards.) Absolutley great functionality and pretty to boot! I think this answers this articles question!
Home Sweet Home Linux
It seems the submitter forgot that the "best" PVR is already running Linux...
I had occasion to build both a Windows and a Linux HTPC for a recent book. The Linux one took longer for some of the steps, and I had to do some hairy troubleshooting, but it is perfectly possible. MythTV is pretty impressive, actually. The DVD ripping on the Linux side was much nicer.
From the article: "Tivo costs about $250. Plus another $299 for a lifetime service subscription. That is $600 beans. Not cheap."
Actualy, I make that about $549... thats about $51 short of his beans count...
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
There was an Ask Slashdot on this very topic not so long ago:
Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute?
Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
Tivo didn't seem to have that much trouble buiding a Linux PVR. Isn't one person's experience too small a sample for such a broad comment?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
After looking around at alternatives to Tivo, I settled on MythTV [MythTV.org]. Lots of plugins (DVD, Video, etc) and surprisingly stable.
I run an Epia Nehemiah 1Ghz w/512 MB RAM with a Hauppauge PVR 350. The web front end makes all my Tivo using coworkers drool. Yes, it was a pain in the rear to get everything working, but in the end, I gained some knowledge and have one neat little system.
Uh, yeah, what a pain. While you're playing around with your hobby, I'll be enjoying today's barrage of re-runs, semi-commercial free. Just buy the damn thing.
Excuse me, but I don't think MythTV is that hard to get working. Try harder next time. Maybe you didn't *click* hard0enough.
Now you can finally be free of the arbitrary restrictions of proprietary software! Save money by avoiding costly OS licenses! Build your own Tivo-like device, using.. Windows?!?
Reminds me of people who combine two or three pre-packaged foods in a bowl and call it a "recipe".
...deciding to build his own Linux PVR from nothing.
You'd think that using nothing he wouldn't have anything to troubleshoot.
The guy gave up on a floppy not found error, which when added to his comments on a video card he gave up on, leads me to believe that he wasn't really that experianced with Linux.
This isn't a flame or anything, but this article doesn't reflect at all the state of Linux PVR.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
Trying to coax Linux into working on a do-it-yourself system is NOTHING like Linux being used in an embedded fashion on a turnkey solution like TiVo.
How many "Build your own PVR!" articles have we seen in the past few months?
The SAME ANSWERS come up:
* "Why? Tivo is affordable"
* "MythTV!"
* "TV sucks!"
* "ATI All-In-Wonder!"
* other sourceforge suggestion...
For those who don't know... as I: personal video recorder A personal video recorder (PVR) is an interactive TV recording device, in essence a sophisticated set-top box with recording capability (although it is not necessarily kept on top of the television set). Vendors and media also refer to the units by these names: digital video recorder (DVR); personal TV receiver (PTR); personal video station (PVS); and hard disk recorder (HDR). -BW
I tried building my own "Tivo"-like box too in Linux. It eventually cost a bit more than buying a Tivo, but I use it as my DVD burning and mp3 jukebox in addition to MythTV.
Installed Debian on it with similar hardware as the author of the article had. I had no problems whatsoever, though I've been using Linux since '98.
If you want just a Tivo box for cheap, I don't suggest doing it unless you want shady quality. Get a damned good TV Card (like the PVR-250 which does encoding on the hardware - this is around $120 alone), and a huge hard drive, and a good amount of memory. If you have the PVR-250, you don't need such a powerful CPU as the MPEG encoding is handled by the PVR.
All in all, it was worth the time. I never have to look back and it's simply an amazing solution. I've been using Myth for about 8 months and it never stops to amaze me.
Here's a do it yourself windows setup: http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pvr/
Ok, Ok...
First of all, I get the idea this person is not a veteran of the linux industry. He does a good job of navigating through what are essentially basic problems.
I don't think its worthy to mention he had his jumpers wrong... everyone makes a jumper mistake and it is fairly easy to diagnose.
His major fault.... He purchased a Win-TV 250. This card is pretty good actually with onboard hardware mpeg2 encoding. (I own a 250 as well as a vanilla hauppage win-tv) The drawback to the Win-TV 250 is it does not have tv out. He should have spent a couple extra bucks and got the 350.
The next big mistake was relying on some integrated tv out solution. It's been my experience that onboard has the tendency to be slightly different then their off board branded brotherin. Thus, I can easily see why he had some troubles.
He said it himself, he suffers from some impulse buying habbits. I think a little more research on compatability would have turned up better linux results. Personally, I went into the linux pvr project with absolutely no starting knowledge other then getting my hauppage card working a long long time ago. (out of the box support made it no chore). However, knowing nothing about the task prompted me to research, research and well... read more.
I wish he had tried a Knoppix MythTV Live CD as I would like to have seen the results. ie. used knoppix CD and it worked! (probably not with the odd video out)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Anyone who can't properly hook up an IDE disk (check the jumpers BEFORE you install it) shouldn't be attempting to both build a computer and install an OS they've never tried before under a deadline.
He also did a horrible job on research and homework. He could have probably slapped a KnoppMyth CD in the drive and been done in record time.
I'd say -- this guy simply didn't have the basic computer and Linux skills to do anything but install pre-packaged software. He ended up with the solution that fit that skillset the best.
No offense, but he wasn't ready to try a do-it-yourself solution. A consumer solution *is* the best for someone with the limited time he had available (self-imposed deadlines) and knowledge level.
+++OK ATH
Of course he didn't like ReplayTV, he should have bought a TiVo in the first place!!!
So the writer spent dozens upon dozens of hours building, tearing down, rebuilding and troubleshooting something that's going to be less reliable and more expensive than a TiVo? DirecTV with TiVo is $100 plus $5 a month, not $600 I can just hear his wife now, "Matt! I JUST want to watch American Idol! Can I PLEASE watch American Idol? Why is there no sound? How come the picture looks bad? Why do I have to reboot the computer just to watch TV? What's a General Protection Fault? Wait! Something just popped up on the TV that says 'NIMDA' what's NIMDA? The TV said 'C: drive full' while I was watching the Trading Spaces Marathon! MATTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!" Dude - just buy the TiVo and you're done. Seriously.
One wonders, if you are going to venture into building something like this, with a confessed lack of competency and patience, would failure not be a certain outcome?
When one feels the need to document at length the oh-so-advanced topic of repeatedly screwing up the jumper settings on your hard drive, this becomes more an article on basic computer construction skills than anything about PVRs. I won't get into "the instructions said 'use a screwdriver.'" He ditched the entire linux idea because he couldn't disable the floppy seek. Please.
If he cant the thing to boot linux, hes not a geek. Period. Further proof, instead of trying out Fbsd which supports happuage he runs to MickySoft. done.. end.. he sucks
6. Conclusions
This is only my second day as a PVR equipped husband and already my wife has forgotten about TiVo. She watches episodes of Charmed and the Gilmore Girls and grins as she fast forwards through commercials. As for me, I have been spending quality time with John Stewart - his show on the Iowa Caucases was not to be missed.
Yes, this little project ended up being a little more pricey than I had expected, about $800 total, but I am left with an expandable and powerful system capable of doing a lot more than any TiVo can do. Perhaps the whole thing was silly. After all, VCR's basically do the same thing right?
Hey, kudos to him for getting it working. Most of the stories I've read in this genre end up with the author buying a ReplayTV or TiVO because his creation failed the spouse test. Or just wouldn't work reliably. According to the conclusion, wifey is as happy as a clam.
But:
Soon the sound started falling behind the movement of his lips. That was no good. Plus his body blurred when he moved. My hero, John Stewart was jittery and smeared. The wife grumbled.
So, we have $800 for a TiVO with a relatively unreliable guide with less info, no auto-commercial skip (as in 50XX series ReplayTV's), lots of fans and noise, 3x the power use, and picture quality issues that will be fixed Real Soon Now:
After all of this, the picture was better, but John Stewart still looked unintentionally silly.
Apparently, the next version (2) of Sage will be available in early February 2004, and these picture adjustment issues will be much easier to grapple with.
In my experience, SageTV always has image quality and sync problems (and they always blame the OS, or the video card, or cosmic radiation, etc. -- I got a refund). I really do want to make my own PVR one day, but I'm afraid the time is not yet right. Almost, but not quite.
everything in moderation
By the sounds of it this the guy did't have much (or really any) experience with linux. He simply wanted to slap a bunch of stuff together, and hope that the designers of Fedora & whaterver else he used could make everything "magically work." That belief lends its self to someone who should pay for an out of the box solution.
./ers time with whiners.
I can slap a lot of hardware together and try and run any number of systems on it, but if I'm not willing to WORK through problems, they will all fail.
Don't waste
the linux people just havent had time to copy it properly yet. New, useful ideas first appear in easy-to-use form on Windows and are either sanitations of byzantine unix apps, or are quickly ported into an insanely byzantine linux app with no docs and little support. It's nice to see that this guy eventually bit the bullet and did it the easy way. Yes I run linux, but I don't try to do dumb stuff that it wasn't designed for with it.
Umm, did he even get linux to boot? Admitedly I just skimmed, but it sounds like he installed fedora, had it not boot because he didn't have a floppy, (which deserves it's own wtf since I don't think I have a working floppy and have never had a problem), and called it quits for linux before he ever got to mythTV, freevo, etc.
I do security
If that's his math skill, no wonder he kept failing...
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Both TiVo and Replay run on the Linux operating system
TiVo does run Linux, but Replay uses some embedded realtime OS. Definitely not Linux.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Despite being a penguinista, my experiences with getting the ivtv driver to work with The Hauppage PVR 250 PCI cards were rather hopeless regardless of the distro I employed.
I finally broke down and installed SageTV on a Win2K box and have been very happy ever since. I'm using two PVR 250 capture/compression cards, an NVIDIA GeForce 5200 and a Fortissimo 7.1 (just for the TOSlink output) on an Athalon 2000+ system using an IRman universal IR recivever which makes the system think It's a tivo to allow for my universal remote to support it. One tuner is connected to the output of my cable box to allow access to the digital tier and HBO using an Actisys IR-200L.
The overall result is spectacular, I never have recording conflicts, flawless sound and picture quality, and I can back off shows to DVD with the Ulead MovieFactory package which comes with the PVR-250. I can also view the Mpeg files from my other computers as well. The SageTV package also serves as an MP3 and DVD Player. When the remote is not enough VNC works flawlessly. Quite indispensable given my schedule, and its addicted me to Inuyasha as well!
Excellent software, 'tho I intend to revisit mythtv when a mini-distro is available.
While it is very true that building a linux based PVR system can be difficult it is well worth it. I am constantly impressed with my MythTV system. The base functionality along with the various modules make it, in my opinion, the best homebrew PVR available.
Every new release comes with more useful features. From using it as an mp3 player to having it tell you who is calling on your Caller ID, it is pretty amazing. But don't get me wrong. It took me about 3 weeks to get it to work. I started using Redhat as the base system but ended up with KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth makes installation a snap.
So I'd like to build a MythTV box at some point. The problem I'm having is that it doesn't seem that you can pick up an affordable fanless PC anywhere yet. It looks like I can get an encoder card that works so that I don't need too much compute power. Any ideas?
http://www.snapstream.com
This is the software I use. It is another that is windows based, it supports all the major cards. It can also do some limited commercial skipping, and can transcode the recordings into other formats and sizes. The best part is you can log into their programming services http://www.snapstream.net from any computer and schedule your PC to record something. You can also see what you are scheduled to record along with what you have recorded via a webinterface from anywhere also. I guess that is standard anymore though as is the ability to watch live TV over the net as well.
as you certainly can build agreat PVR box from linux if you do five or ten minutes of actual research.
That said though.. a lot of comments say "Why not just buy a TiVO?"
Well, you are right. IF the TiVO features are what you want, and you live in the US, then by all meants,get tivo...
Many of us don't live there, and tivo is basically useless...
plus with a mythtv box or something, you can do a lot more than just Tv recording... add in DVD/MP3 ripping, burning, MAME/Snes emulators / weather / RSS news watcher / picure browsing / etc, plus whatever else you think of (home security monitoring, multiple capture cards, etc..._)
IT's a project, and fun.
What has about Freevo [http://freevo.sourceforge.net/]? I believe that it is a good option, resemblance to MythTV.
What about Freevo?
I've found it to boast similar features, however it works great on lower hardware specs than MythTV.
It's using the ever-popular mplayer (pre-configured - so anyone lacking the intestinal fortitude to configure mplayer can get it going as a no-brainer!), with mencoder for capture.
Add to that the slideshow (for your digital camera images or pR0n collection), MAME support and so forth and it becomes a great option!
I setup one of those crappy "BookPC" machines with MythTV, however it struggled with high-res DivX;-) playback. Upgrading the CPU was not an option (i810 chipset), so I swapped to Freevo and it worked a treat.
After trying mythtv for a while and not finding episode information I switched to snapstream. http://www.snapstream.com They go by BeyondTV now. It supports the hauppauge PVR cards and their remote controls. It support remote programming and configuration. It even streams the shows your record. Anyway, I am very happy with their product. It is $69.99 but worth it to me. It has free guide information and also supports episode information and many features like tivo for finding and recording programs. It also has a commercial detection algorythm that will mark the shows you record so that you can see where the commercials are.
windows is a bit easier to manage when you have problems (because there are so many problems with it, most people who would build one are probably very experienced in fixing problems with windows) also, linux has always had major issues with drivers. always has, and always will.
----
djzooky.com
I Like Cheese.
And then when he switched to Windows, everything "magically" worked! Linux is still a decade behind the rest of the OS world.
"Makes you wonder if current Linux PVR apps are just too much of a pain to get working well?"
kill -9 the heretic
Quack, quack.
wow I haven't seen this troll for a while
Digital video is still fairly new, tech-wise, and it's still rapidly changing (MPEG4, HDTV, new codecs). Plus, you're trying to perform a specialized task on top of a generalized platform - which is naturally going to be more complex then a dedicated solution would be.
So between the rapidly changing codec terrain, the scads of possible devices, varying levels of operating system support, and the fact that pushing video around is an order of magnitude (or two) more demanding then audio - I'm not surprised that not everyone can do it. I've tried off and on for the past 5 years or so, with varying success depending on how patient I was and how much cash I was willing to sink into products.
While I don't have personal experience with Apple's video products, they or Adobe will probably be the first ones to truly make it as easy as audio. Some of that has already happened, which means that everyone else will probably catch up in a year or two. But I wouldn't be surprised if it took until 2005/2006 for video on the desktop to be as easy as audio on the desktop. Audio CD ripping/encoding was somewhat mysterious even 3 years ago, now it's pretty commonplace.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
ATI's software gives you access to local TV listings and schedules. The software that comes with the card allows you to capture to MPEG2 so that you can burn it straight to DVD.
Several months before I got the card, I used my grandfather's ReplayTV to record a show that was on at 4:00am and later I took my PC to his house and captured the movie with my ATI card and WHAM I now have a DVD of the movie.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Freevo was not a pain to set up. Far from it - it went really well. I was up and running about an hour after first install, and was fully tweaked out just a couple of hours after that.
and an ATI TV Wonder Pro (not an All-In-Wonder - that one doesn't work with MythTV) - had a horrible time getting modules loaded, etc. All sorts of issues. Spent 2-3 weeks on it, using various distributions. The issue was the chip on the TV Wonder.
Ended up just going back to the ATI Multimedia Center that shipped with the card and Win2k. I don't have shifting, but it's not the end of the world.
SageTV supports the Hauppauge cards - MythTV should be a breeze to get working with one of those.
This guy is such a pussy. He puts a picture of mythtv's main screen in his project without ever having used it. He quit after fedora core one (good choice for something that'll be on all the time.. because it's so stable...) quit on him and then ditches to windows. If he had more carefully researched his distro choices he would have stumbled upon knoppmyth www.mysettopbox.tv and would have had a working system in about half an hour. I've been running R4 of knoppmyth stock (updated xmltv, but that's it) for a couple of months now with no issues and I love it. it blows away the two windows programs he mentioned.
It amazes me when I keep hearing people rave about the hauppage PVR line of capture cards. Here in australia, if you buy WHOLESALE from the ONLY authorised distributor, A hauppage PVR 350 cost's $440 + TAX (that is $484 cost price) Add 20-25% markup for retail pricing and it is getting AWFULLY expensive. Compare this to the price of other hardware ? Athlon XP 2000+ CPU ($90 + TAX) Epox 8K9A7I m/b (kt400A chipset) $84 + tax, 256Mb ddr (66+ tax) now that is $240 + tax ($264) I also can then hook up TWO Brooktree based tuner for about $50 + tax each.... EG i can build a WHOLE computer with Gigahertz of power or I can have a pvr350.. Kinda makes them WAAAAAY overpriced. Seeing as an Athlon 2600+ system can encode DIVX at 25fps I am sure it can encode Multiple streams in simpler MPEG2.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
Is it good, or is it whack?
you sure you don't work for SCO cause you managed to twist his article around really well. Sage works fine for him and the video and audio has no problems - the wife grumbling was due to MYTH screwing up his video and audio sync.
--------- If its possible it will happen, If its impossible it will just take longer
I built my own PVR on Linux, and while it was some work to get everything setup correctly at first, it works great now.
:)
:)
Hardware setup: I use a haupage WinTV card for capture, a GeForceMX for playback (S-Video out to my TV), 2 sounds cards (so I can play and record at the same time), and tons of disk space
Software: mencoder run from cron, a script to update crontab, XMLtv for the listings, and a script behind a little webpage to search for shows and mark them to be recorded.
Piece o'cake
here. I've been using MythTV under Mandrake for over a year now with none of the problems you described including commercial skip. With the combination of Zalman fan for the noise and WinTV-PVR-250 for the high quality hardware Mpeg 1/2 encoding you should be set. If your waiting, this is it. And you get a hell of a lot more functionality (and upgradability) for your buck. And if Linux gaming keeps picking up the way it has, you can kiss that Xbox goodbye too.
Quack, quack.
'tho I use SageTV on a self built box, my comments are even more salient with regard to MythTV. I can configure to my specific needs and desires, don't get another bill in the mail and am free to do whatever I want to the content. Just the network acessibility of my box is worth it, viewing shows with VLC and controlling SageTV with VNC is flat out sublime.
Why is this article on Slashdot. He didn't even use linux for it. And he PAID for software to do what he wanted, a true nerd who have programmed it himself.
Can we mod a whole story down?
Got Extra Money?
His major fault.... He purchased a Win-TV 250. This card is pretty good actually with onboard hardware mpeg2 encoding. (I own a 250 as well as a vanilla hauppage win-tv) The drawback to the Win-TV 250 is it does not have tv out. He should have spent a couple extra bucks and got the 350.
The WinTV-PVR-250 is well supported in MythTV which is currently the most mature linux based PVR package and from experience I would recommend a VGA to NTSC video converter WAY before I'd recommend using any cards video out. They will give you much better quality, little perks you don't know you'll need like in hardware under and over scan and can easily be picked up for under an hundered (extra) dollars.
Quack, quack.
And you can even have picture-in-picture with your All In Wonder. Works great, and now I can record one show while watching another.
The Hauppauge PVR350 is an affordable Mpeg2 hardware encoder
installing ivtv driver (for your hauppauge) is a pain in the neck but once done it's the most stable thing I ever saw.
For programming your TV shows (hear some drum rolls): the "at" program with some personal bash scripts
bash> at 23:00
sh> tvrecord60 37
sh>
job 114 at 23:00...
I've used linux for the past four years and love it to death but I've spent a lot of the last four years trying to get PVR functionality to work in various distro's. I've never been able to get any scheduling solution to work in linux, I've tried Freevo, mythtv, xawdecode's record feature and have had no luck. Loading tv programming via xmltv and mysql is a joke. I want to be able to do something as easy as windows where I login to www.titantv.com and click on a damned show icon and it schedules, titles, and records the show for me. This works flawlessly on my Windows partition every time(I can record at whatever resolution/format I want too) and it only cost me about sixty bucks for the Pinnacle card. What's sad is this is about the only thing I use my home PC for(i'm a laptop road-warrior) anymore so I just said screw linux and don't even bother anymore. Comparing this to tivo isn't appropriate either because Tivo isn't running a linux distro, it's a dedicated embedded device that does ONE thing, when you only have to do one thing it's really easy to do it well. One of the nice things about my windows config is I can vnc in from the road or work and schedule shows:) Now if only I could stream it out as easily...
word to herb on the curb bitches.
VGA to NTSC video converter and any good quality video card. You'll get much better video then I've seen coming from most graphic cards TV out (by a long shot) and hardware over/underscan to help fit your video perfectly to your screen. They cost under a $100 so it'll probably save you money too.
Quack, quack.
I know this goes against building a Linux PVR--but I have a second computer that sits around recording TV daily running XP, handling file backups, and running Apache. I have an ancient ATI TV Wonder PCI card that records simply using the ATI Multimedia Center software (mpeg-4 compression). Recorded TV is dumped into a shared folder that can be accessed by my roommates, and managing duplicate shows and weekly recording is all done with Windows Scheduler and batch files...it's not difficult to set up at all, and best of all, it works almost flawlessly.
SCO -- heh, that's so funny. Anyway, so how do you explain this direct quote then:
Apparently, the next version (2) of Sage will be available in early February 2004, and these picture adjustment issues will be much easier to grapple with.
If it "works fine", why is he looking forward to an update?
Read the article -- I'm not the one who twisted things. That was my point, actually -- that the relatively glowing conclusion seemed rather unwarranted in context of the rest of the article.
everything in moderation
Seems like a good time to mention BYOPVR! Which was launched a few weeks ago.
the wife grumbling was due to MYTH screwing up his video and audio sync.
No it wasn't - he couldn't even get Myth going cause the floppy drive didn't work. I know you fanboys won't like to hear this, but what kind of retarded OS won't boot cause of the floppy drives? What genius decided that?
Anyway, it was the SnapStream crap that had the sync errors.
I built my own PVR last year, but even with MyHTPC it failed the spouse test badly. So when I saw those $150 ReplayTVs for sale in Radio Shack I pounced on them. I bought two. At $150 they deliver amazingly good MPEG-2 capture so for the same price as a PVR-250 I get free guide and streaming.
Contrary to the experiences described in this article, my ReplayTVs work flawlessly. Plugged in to the home network, DHCP served them up IPs, they downloaded their info and updated their software. They use uPnP to auto-discover other ReplayTVs on the network and integrate them very well in their on-screen UI.
In fact the UI is a big win - it passes the spouse test easily. Browsing material on the base machine, from another ReplayTV, or from the PC file server is takes a single button push. The ReplayTVs handle program contention intelligently, offering to offload a conflicted recording slot to a "spare" ReplayTV on the network.
The clever Java program DVArchive uses uPnP to imitate a ReplayTV and enables you to upload, stream, or move recorded content from the auto-discovered ReplayTVs. In effect, each ReplayTV acts like a big, external MPEG-2 capture card with lots of ports and functionality.
All ReplayTVs on the network can, of course, stream from any DVArchive-equipped file server to any ReplayTV.
You can even schedule DVArchive to automatically grab recorded material from the ReplayTVs on a batch basis, providing an easy way to create large archives. I have set up some watched folders where new material gets automatically batch encoded to MPEG-4 (xvid) for archiving.
There's a big user community associated with DVArchive.
All in all I am very satisfied with my ReplayTV setup. It is totally integrated into my home media setup (1 TB RAID-5 file server) and works effortlessly. The ReplayTVs automatically skip adverts (works pretty well) and there's an active between ReplayTV units. Useful if you want to pick up a season half-way through.
I avoided Tivo, partly because of cost, but mainly because of its incipient DRM. I was afraid I would have to expend significant effort to create a spouse-friendly PVR system but thankfully my networked ReplayTVs have obviated this requirement for a while.
Da Blog
The thing I've never understood about Tivo/Replay or even the 'roll your own' PVR's is how do they access the premium channels? I assume they don't. I mean.. nowadays, the digital cable boxes are pretty much required to see 1/2 your channels. What is the point of a PVR that can only see 1/2 (or less) of the channels I subscribe to? And.. if I had to leave it on Channel 3 and navigate everything with the other remote.. then that's just stupid. Much easier to pay TWC $5 / month for their PVR solution. Am I missing something?
Does anyone here use MythTV with a 9800 AIW model? I read that it doesn't support it if I use ATI's Linux drivers.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
On a windows system, I've tried a few different solutions for the software. Snapstream and Showshifter are pretty good. The best front end I've found was Myhtpc.net
It's a freeware project with a great community of support. You have to tinker with it more and use some third party apps, but you can cusomize anything (weather, news, mame...) Another great source of info on PRV systems is at Ruel.net
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
I have a linux based PVR.
/etc. Then type ls. You see nothing, because you have to configure ls to allow you to see /etc.
It wasn't difficult to configure at all. But then, I'm a seasoned unix user and I've used linux and freebsd for awhile.
The thing that concerns me is that for some reason there's a mode of thought throughout most slashdot articles as of late (2-3 years) that linux should be as easy to use as windows. Do you really want this to be the case?
Think of it.
A kernel that configures itself but leaves very few tuning options.
Ls, instead of being a few tens to a hundred k in size, is instead 100 meg in size and has a security patch released for it every week or so.
You install linux and do a cd
Then we can integrate DMCA stuff into gcc to make sure that you aren't compiling and running anything you shouldn't be.
Getting the point? Why should it be as easy as windows? Are you guys that desperate to kiss linus' ass and drive the linux 'market share' up that you need to kowtow to the needs of every retard that it hopelessly lost unless they have the newest KDE installed?
For fuck's sake.
Anyway, back on PVR's.
I use mythtv. I have a pinnacle pctv pro and a DVD player in my box. I splurged and bought a $45 sb live! card. It took me a day of compiling and configuring on gentoo, and things were running fine. A few more days of tinkering and I have a n64/snes console/pvr/dvd player/mp3 player that shares my windows mp3 collection.
Not hard, but then I'm not an idiot.
Do *you* have to be?
Over my Christmas break, I bent under the pressure of my father to get MythTV installed and running. He bought the hardware (we got a 160GB HDD, and some old cards off of eBay--total cost, $200). I then proceeded to install MythTV. I decided to go with the KnoppMyth distro (www.mysettopbox.tv), which is a Knoppix install customized for MythTV--it is nice to have something autodetect and install all your hardware.
Fast forward about two weeks, and I had finally gotten it running. After all sorts of odd problems (ALSA always muting on reboot, XMLTV looping itself indefinitely, and a host of others), it ran. It certainly was NOT something to do if you havent used Linux before, or if you arent looking for a project. I had and was, so it was good for me. That said, I was most impressed with MythTV. I was expecting to be in a sort of perpetual beta state, never looking polished or done--but it broke that mold. It was very well done, looked great, ran great... I had no complaints. I am now looking at building another one to bring with me to school.
Thanks to a great program called DVArchive, you can actually use a PC to 'spoof' as a ReplayTV device, and even use some remote control features right from the PC interface. (DVArchive offers a remote control window that controls the PVR directly) Unfortunately, integration with MythTV may be difficult as the author of DVArchive has not responded to messages about releasing source code or specifications again, even though the project is hosted at SourceForge.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Will MythTV record HDTV programs?
right the update as he states is for contrast and hue not for voice sync or anything major.
--------- If its possible it will happen, If its impossible it will just take longer
Bought a panansonic unit (no broadband, but includes lifetime subscription) for $160 on ebay. Spent $70 on a 120 gig drive. Upgraded to 120 hour unit pretty painlessly. Spouse freakin' loves it. I will never NOT have a PVR again barring serious fininacial difficulties.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Plain and simple, the Linux userland development tools are broken. Oh yes, more flamebait! Mod the bastard down for beating on Linux!
The reality of the Linux situation is...there's one kernel. The interface has been solid and well defined for years. The only people allowed to hack the code are heavily reviewed, and ridiculed if they FU.
Now look at userland...if you have the stomach to do it. A multitude of half-finished, partially documented toolkits, and for each toolkit, a plethora of half-finished applications, all claiming to be "beta" or "production" quality, yet they crash at nearly every opportunity. That's not beta, it's pre-alpha.
Now you go to the user's help mailing list for application XYZ that doesn't work, and the first thing the developers want is full stack straces, rebuilding everything with debugging symbols, etc...sure, some user just spent 6 hours downloading binaries and libs to try the app, now he has to get all the source, much of which has drifted since the binaries released and will no longer build together, etc...yeah right!
Linux at the core is a wonder, everything else is sorely in need of some type of consensus on how to move forward. The people who disagree need to get off their high horse and do the right thing, meeting halfway as necessary. This stuff just sucks right now, and it needs leadership to suck less.
Finally, people need to stop duplicating projects. Finding ten broken projects on sourceforge is horrifying, when one considers that if this group of developers had worked together, the way the kernel people worked together, they would have a kick-ass, full featured app instead of a bunch of crippled, crashing, steaming turds.
There is only one rock solid, high quality, well documented user application development environment available for Linux. It's at netbeans.org
Check out myHTPC. It has an amazing community of support surrounding it, with plugins, players, etc for it... and currently it's still free until myHTPC 2 comes out. http://www.myhtpc.net
In Canada, what's the best option today for PVRs if we don't get Bell ExpressVu's mega-expensive PVR sattelite option?
Good on him; I hope he continues to spend some time learning how to use Linux, and then writes about his successes.
Why run such an application under Windows in the first place? And building your own isn't very practical. Aside from the satisfaction of doing something from scratch, it's not very economical to roll your own. You can get a Tivo unit from DirectTV for $99 that works flawlessly - start with something solid and then mod it if you want, but I don't see much economic incentive to do this. OTOH, I'm very happy with my Tivo. It's amazing how this dramatically changes the role of television in your life. If you don't have a PVR, get one, but you'll save a lot of money and time picking up a commercial unit than trying to build one from scratch.
you're now lovers instead?
This isnt an article to show how to make your own PVR or even how much of a bad idea it is. Its a freakin article about how inept the author is at building a computer.
Okay, he admitted to making some wrong purchases, but does it have to be so bad? His choice of the Asus Pundit case was wrong. Too cramped, no room for a second RAM stick, blah blah blah. There is no need to go on and on about how it took forever to install everything into the case.
Then the hard drive didn't work. Is this something that I have to look forward to when I build my own PVR? No, because this is not related to a PVR, its his dumb ass forgetting to check the setup and then telling the whole world his stupid little mistake. No biggie, he could have just as easily left it out. So he finally boots up Fedora for the first time. Guess what, it doesnt work. So he gives up. Does that mean its hard? No, it means it messed up somewhere and he has no patience. With all his 1337 knowledge of OSS, could he not have tried to boot from a DyneBolic LiveCD distro? How about Knoppix, MandrakeMove, Damn Small Linux, Gentoo. In the infamous words of Timmy, "I mean come on"
So he goes to windows. Not a horrible choice. I dont actually use any linux distro myself. Im still using windows as my main box and a part time PVR when needed. But even a nix newbie like me knows there are other options than trying Fedora once and giving up. Ive never even installed linux on a box yet.
Since he ended up using windows, he could have blown his money better on an ATi All in Wonder card. Throw in a ATi TV Wonder in there for good measure and youve got a great tivo using included software. Youve got a remote, PVR functions, MPEG4 and many other encoding options from low quality to dvd quality, free programming guide (Gemstar GuidePLUS), on screen programming info, live tv server (via newly implemented Easy Share), scheduled recording, PiP and more. Obviously not the perfect choice for those who want OSS but a good functional and easy solution. I know, its what I use and its usually painless.
I think this article was pointless. Whats the point if youre not going to give up so easily? IMO This article isnt worth slashdotting. Its a diary of someone who needs to spend more time learning computers.
~Tommy Boomfiger http://www.gotapex.com/forums
On the bright side because they just can't admit they're idiots you can sell them the same thing half a dozen times.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I don't think this guy bought a separate license for winxp. If you go pro, that brings his pvr to $1000.
The cost of a TiVo, big picture, is negligible. For the cost of a moderate video card, you get an entire PC, dedicated to doing nothing but recording the TV that interests you. The monthly fee is worth every penny, it allows you to schedule and cross check and search for content that the average person simply does not have the time to find on their own. Consider the time spent building your own that is still trying to be a TiVo, and the choice is clear, TiVo rulez.
Do yourself the favor, save your time and probably money, and just buy the damn thing. Thank me later, I know you will.
In any event, you might want to remove that sand from your vagina.
Reaaaaaaaal mature
You can't take the sky from me...
Ok this is a bit off topic. I have a All-in-wonder 7500 which came with MMC 7. It is OK for watching TV but it will not do a scheduled recording - everything hangs. ATI wants $10 to upgrade to MMC 8. Is it worth it? Is it more stable, etc...
I have two ReplayTV units. I have had very few problems. Initially, I had an occasional lockup, but a software upgrade seems to have corrected that problem. The automagic commercial skip is great. I wish a Tivo "Season Pass" feature was avaialble, but overall I think it is a fine PVR.
Still, I am planning on building my own system running MythTV. Why? I want to record HDTV programming, I want multiple tuners, and I want the satisfaction of setting the unit up myself.
30 years ago I would have been soldering together a Heathkit system. Today the equivalent is roll your own PVR.
Wakeup call guys, linux is still too hard to use. If it takes a professional like me several minutes to track down a problem, you can be guaranteed that a novice user will last only as long as his initial install is stable - and how many installs are initially stable - before he/she migrates back to Windows.
GBPVR is pretty new, Windows based and darned nice looking to boot. Written by a buddy of mine, it shows what you can do in a few weeks when you put your mind to it..
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
You can use the downloadable 8.x parts on your card, just without the DVD portion. My 8500DV came with 7.x, too, and I downloaded and ran 8.x on it just fine until recently upgrading to an AIW 9600. Depending on your system, 8.x may use more resources than you like, but it does has a lot of new features including MPEG4 in the latest releases.
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
... thanks for wasting my time.
This isn't an article about how Linux 'Tivo-like' software is unsuitable, unavailable or too difficult to use or configure - it's about how this particular person couldn't get past the BIOS 'no floppy controller found' message when rebooting and therefore gave up on Linux completely. There's absolutely NOTHING useful in that article for anyone interested in doing something similar with Linux.
"When I booted up the unit, I found that neither my CD/DVD Drive, nor my Hard Disk were recognized...Two hours later God spoke to me...look at the back of the hard drive and compare the jumper positions...Jumpers are little brackets that must be moved to tell a piece of hardware what role it will play as part of your computer."
to make a long story short, brain surgeon guy had the hd set to slave so it wouldn't boot. Like, duh. Course it took him 2 hours to realize it and God had to tell him too.
No offense guy, but MythTV wasn't designed for you. Get a Tivo. You'll be happier. It's simple. Pretty buttons.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
After reading this, I lost all faith in this guy's opinion: A few sites recommended that I use the Fedora installation disks and find a utility called"Grub" to disallow Linux from searching for my nonexistant floppy drive.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I did it and it was simple as pie. Only problem was that my pos tv card didn't have a builtin encoder an my computer was too slow to record, but that was by no means a linux/mythtv problem.
By the way, i have an eteTV PVR for my mac, is there any software out there that's better than what's ncluded with the eyetv? I miss mythtv's record this whenever its on option. eetv seems only able to be programmed per timeslot.
something on linux being overly difficult? thats umpossible
I've had my Radeon All in Wonder working since mid 2002. It does a beautiful job of recording TV in both Mpeg2 and DivX format. I use a Pioneer DVD burner to create DVD's that I can play in any compatible console player. The only qualm I have with the it is that the included software to let you view TV listings doesn't work, or at least not without switching the input to the built-in tuner. I really don't know why the thing even has a tuner at this point. Who in their right mind is going to use an RF input instead of the composite or s-video?
Now some of you may be wondering how I'm doing this. Well I'm doing it under Windows 2000 is how. When there is a Linux solution that works as well I may switch, but I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid a good solution just because it runs on top of Windows. People who make choices based upon emotionally driven ideology instead of practical considerations usually don't get as far as people who do the opposite. So while I may prefer Linux to Windows in general, my preference is based upon the technical and social merits of Linux, not upon some quasi-religious hatred of Windows.
I work with someone who is at least as good as I am with Unix, and is most likely far better. Her superiors are wanting her to support Windows now as well and she is fit to be tied. Her hatred of M$ and Windows is such that she just can't do it. Unfortunately Windows is not going anywhere. Refusing to deal with it doesn't make it go away, it just makes its presence that much more of a problem. It is better to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If I can't make windows jump then that makes me that much less powerful a hacker (!=Cracker) and that much less valuable to whomever I work for.
I think having a Linux PVR solution would be great, but going out of one's way to use alpha and beta quality stuff that is a pain to get configured and working just to avoid using Windows is pretty damned silly unless you're one of the developers.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
What would you think about a DVI output to an LCD projector? Like this card on a supported motherboard...
Like the guy linked to, I've had some accuracy problems with the ReplayTV channel guide myself. Typically, I call ReplayTV tech support, and they call my cable provider and get it sorted out. I'm not sure how it is he failed to get that sorted out - shouldn't have been hard.
On top of that, his wanting to record the Daily Show and Gilmore Girls without regard for date and time is just silly - Daily Show airs the same episode four times during the day, and there's no reason to get all four, and Gilmore Girls only airs once a week.
So, yeah. He's a whiny little geek.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
ExtremeTech has a good recent article on building your own home theater PC (basically, a high end PC-based PVR). Nice configuration they got there. I'm thinking of doing something similar, but with the Antec Overture case.
replace you, with we
Riight, hue and contrast are irrelevant to a video recording application. My bad.
everything in moderation
For $99 he coulda had a 40 GB TiVo that hooks up to satellite, PLUS the satellite dish. TiVo service is $5 per month through DirecTV. Sorta a no-brainer.
I signed up for DirecTV and got a 35 hour Tivo for 50 bucks, plus five bucks a month for service on top of that. That's $110 for the first year.
If that ain't low budget, I don't know what is...
I've seen a Linux-based home theatre PC (HTPC). html
:)
that might work as a base:
http://johan.sunset-utopia.homeip.net/htpc
It's got emulators, DVD/VCD playing and other
necessities. Necessary if you're an utter geek,
that is
Does Myth TV come with a remote that runs said computer PVR?
I think that you can make a machine all day long that does things like that, but a relative is NOT SCARED to run the Tivo when I come over to the house, they don't think that they are going to break it.
If I put a beige box next to my TV and say to my relatives, "this is the remote that runs the computer/TV" they are going to say, "look, can I just watch TV in your bedroom? American Idol is coming on."
It just doesn't seem like booting your beige box to watch TV will make my relatives happy... however, surfing the web on TV would probably rule big time.
I did realize the DVarchive wan't the PVR (might have read it after I'd posted the first paragraph). It looks like a great idea for the Tivo (better then hacking it to get the same effect).
As for the rest of the questions I think the answer is YES (mainly). When I set a program to record the options are:
Dont record this program
Record this program in this timeslot everyweek
Record this program when its shown on this channel
Record this program when its shown anywhere
As for more advance/wild card searches I've never needed it and I don't know if they are planned (or implemented). MythWeb will let you access the program guide and schedule recordings via your favorite web browser from anywhere that you've permitted access to the computer running it. It sounds like you've got a pretty good setup already though. MythTV will do almost everything you need (and some you haven't specifically mentioned) but with the added headache of doing it in an operating system you might not (or might!) be as familiar with. If you where starting from scratch and didn't already have a working system in place I'd recommend you read over the feature set and see if anything you see is an absolute must have. But you've already pioneered your system under XP. Cost is about what you'd figure and depends mostly on what type of hardware you have laying around. Software is all gratis. The scan converter would be arond $70 and extra WinTV-PVR-250's around $120 (each) I think. Add at least one BIG hard drive and this isn't as inexpensive as a Tivo. But I got pretty sick of doing all of my multimedia from my computer and between that and the upgradability this suits me my television has as much horsepower as my personal PC!
Anyhow, you've got a great sounding setup. Hows Tivo handle Mp3's and web browsing?
Quack, quack.
I've just finished building a mythtv-based system, and agree with several other posters that hardware choice is absolutely critial.
a l and http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=TvOutHo wto
I'm normally hardware and distribution agnostic, but had very good results with the following combo:
* Fedora FC1
* Axel T's apt-rpm of mythtv-suite and ivtv drivers (nothing better than an apt-get install mythtv-suite, and watching it go...)
* The following hardware from www.minipc.com.au:
* Shuttle SN45G nForce2 Ultra
* Athlon 2700+
* 512 Mb 333 RAM
* 120Gb HDD, 8MB, Seagate
* Mitsubishi DVD +/-R/RW
* Hauppauge PVR-350
* Follow the bouncing ball from http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/, http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=TvOutP
The shuttle is VERY quiet, and works great with mythtv. Some key 'gotchas' I encountered on the way:
* Have the nvidia drivers handy on a CD after installation, or the network card won't work.
* Make sure you're date/time is set correctly on your system (several hours stuffing around with TV guide data and XMLTV before I caught the fact that I was 1 year off!)
* The Australian default channel positions are often replicated higher up in the spectrum - the 'higher' versions may be the defaults for your area.. I was starting to worry that my tuner card was a dud.
For anyone that wants a one-system mythtv box, I'd recommend grabbing the same specs (probably from the same location if you're in Oz - prices were pretty good for Australia).
Red.
So this random guy on the internet takes two hours to figure out what the master/slave jumpers are for and somehow that translates into Linux PVRs are just too hard?
Sheesh.
I rebuilt my system twice and tried 3 times. on linux I got mythtv installed and running with alot of problems but it finally worked. However I ran into a huge problem. THere was no driver for my capture card and so I had to use a generic one which for some ungodly reason didnt allow me to change the channels.
Then I ran windows and installed myhtpc and after a very long time I got it working. However I ran into the same problem the builtin function to change the channel didnt work no matter what I did. I eventually scraped the projects because it was to much trouble.
Hmm. If you just wait until a special, you can get a PVR w/ dual tuners for free by switching your video provider (CAT/SAT).. There's always some special going on by one of the major companies. Yeah, you'll get a 12 month contract, but whoopee-do.
$29/mo x 12mo = $348.00. That's for a year of basic satellite service (~125 channels) with a 40 hour unit for 'free'. As the PVR prices continue to tumble, you'll find that PVR units will become standard-with-service in a couple of years.
Sure, "hacking" is fun, but only when it's improving something and learning in the process. I know Linux/BSD as well as I ever care to, so there's nothing new to learn by typing 'rpm -i Myth' or 'make install' and edit a conf file, or two, after building a new box. I've seen too many people refer to this as hacking, thus my mention of it. Don't call it that unless you are writing your own code or have either utilized a soldering gun or dremmel in your project.
Don't get me wrong, I am not critizing people's efforts. I think it's great that folks are using this to learn something new. But, it hardly replaces a set-top PVR or saves any money.
Here's the reasons, as I see them:
Multiple tuners - lets you record one show while watching another, record two shows while watching another previously recorded one. This issue has only ever been responded to with "You watch too much TV" cracks, but I watch about 4 hours a week and have two series with over-lapping schedules. If I had one tuner, I would miss one of them.
Realtime encoding/decoding - This goes with the multiple tuners issue. My unit can encode two shows at once while playing a third one back. This is all done without any slowdowns on a dinky CPU.
Remotes - A task specific remote. VCR style controls, never have to touch a keyboard. No dead buttons. No extra buttons.
Wife/child friendly - If it crashes, the most you ever do is pull the card and power cycle. Boots in 15 seconds and picks up where it left off (recording or playing back), no loss in material except for the off-time. I don't want them having to worry about ever having to see a console or have any bugs surface that can't be fixed by a power cycle or press of a button on the remote.
No fuss in the event of a failure - If a lease or in warranty: Call your SAT/CAT provider and they will Fed Ex you a whole new unit in the even of a failure. If it's old and you own it, then simply take advantage of the market and switch providers for 12 months, get a free new one.
I know some folks are very dependant or faithful to one provider. Don't be. They all just want your money, just because one has a cooler name and you like blue icons better, that doesn't mean you need to not play the market. There's plenty of money to be saved and the tactic of branding is just that, a marketing tactic. Shop around, get cool stuff for nothing, enjoy!
rampy is going to hate me for /. effecting this site.
Yeah, I bet that was his BIOS shutting down after not finding a floppy.o. Also explains why the SAME HARDWARE worked with Windows. Dipshit.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The guy who wrote this article is not all that intelligent, is he? I have MythTV and RH9 running on almost the same hardware he described. It is playing my music right now. I have lots of DVDs, and it plays all of them. In addition, Gentoo and several other distros are reported to work with his setup.
I also know for a fact that Fedora Core does not fail to install because it lacks a floppy drive because no computer I have built -- ever -- has had a floppy drive (yes, people thought I was completely insane in 1998, but floppy drives were as useless then as they are now). I installed Fedora Core on a floppyless PC last month, and it has been working great since then.
Is this guy a Microsuck employee or something? Only one of MS' employees could be so incompetent.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I would agree that the Linux install could be easier, but that's not the problem here. The problem is the guy isn't comfortable building a computer.
He didn't even know what a hard drive jumper was until he tried it and the BIOS didn't recognize the drive. He even put a picture of the jumper diagram on his site! Wow, how informative. I mean, the label is on the drive itself!
Clearly, he is not the type to build a computer on his own.
I did this yesterday except I used yum. All it took was "yum install mythtv-suite" to install. After that I loaded the database into MySQL, ran setup for the backend, and downloaded the program guide data... Then I started up MythTV configured it the way I wanted! The whole thing took 30 minutes and it works perfectly. I do have an issue /w mythbrowser crashing whenever I try to run it but that's a minor thing I'll get working in the next few days. Now I'm an experenced Linux user but I'd never done anything with Myth before. I should also mention that I already had ALSA setup from when I loaded the 2.6 kernel.
Ok, not that this is legal or anything - but has anyone considered cloning the serial number in the chip on the TiVo motherboard? Is thing just a socketed EPROM, or is it much more complex than that?
It seems like if this was possible, someone could at least xfer their lifetime subscription to any other receiver they purchased later.
He said he used the 'popular' Jarod's guide to set up mythtv. I've never heard of it and I've had myth running for some time now. I completely agree the old versions of mythtv were a pain to set up, but the new versions are very easy to set up and the instructions are pretty darned clear off the myth site. If he had just read the darned myth instructions and used Redhat 9 he should have made it ok.
Just a quick plug for the PVR Hardware Database at http://pvrhw.goldfish.org :) It contains a database of people's homebuilt PVR systems and their experiences which can help when deciding on what hardware to buy and what software to use.
You really don't want NTSC composite out. It is a sucky standard anyway designed for ease of decoding by discrete electronics in the fifties. It is one thing when that is the way it came in, but definitely not for DVDs. In anycase, an NTSC decode/recode will not be optimal and most TVs have S-Vodeo or RGB in.
It's all about the binaries!
I don't give a fuck how hard it is to configure (nothing wrong with config file or dialog, fuck, there's even dialog based config file editors...) or compile, as long as the developers are kind enough to provide binaries for dumbasses like me, i'm happy (if it works, fuck it. if you want to be a geek, be a geek and do it yourself, otherwise be fucking happy)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
how much did that set you back, if you don't mind me asking.
Tivo would eventually notice more than one call per day from the same serial number. Once, twice OK. But every single day? Say it leaks on the net and suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of clones all calling. Worse if two or more call at the same time. Sheesh. Like getting a bullhorn and shouting "Look at me, I'm stealing service! LOOK AT ME DAMMIT! HEY!"
Wouldn't take Tivo long to figure it out and nuke the original serial, at which point they all die. Input a new one? OK, they'll see that too.
I was thinking of building myself some kind of PVR too. I suppose I could have got myself a Sky Plus box, only this would have meant getting a dish -- and I happen to think they're ugly, compared to a cable buried discreetly under the pavement. I had the specs in my mind, and went out looking for parts.
Then in Dixons, I found the Philips DVDR-70 DVD+RW recorder. At 279.99, I snapped it up. This machine needs the more expensive DVD+RW discs. It can also use DVD+Rs, but the functionality is a bit more limited with one-time media. There are only two SCARTs, and you'll need both of them for the TV and the satellite/cable decoder; but it does have audio/video/SV ins on the front {meant for a camcorder so designated CAM1} which you can use in an emergency, and audio/video/SV outs around the back. As you would expect on any DVD player, the TV SCART has RGB out; but unlike a VCR the auxiliary SCART has RGB in.
Chapter points are added automatically during recording, or you can add them by hand - and the ability to block certain chapters allows you to implement a form of ad-skipping, which is vital for most cable/satellite recordings. The picure is rock-solid even at six-hour compression. It will play MP3 audio CDs through your TV or hi-fi, but not multisession discs - you'll have to burn them in one go. This should mean those annoying copy-protected discs will play fine, though, and there's no mention of disabling the digital audio out during certain kinds of playback {but I haven't been able to test this}.
Downsides? No HDD so you can't record and play back at the same time, and the picture blanks out while the machine is busy. No RF modulator, so you have to use the A/V connections; but you'd be throwing away the advantages of DVD anyway. And I didn't build it myself.
Conclusion: Worth the price, and you'll soon get to live with the quirks. Expect newer models to answer them anyway.
****
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I work in a post production company and the majority of our desktops are now running Linux (a mix of Redhat 7.3 and Fedora Core).
One of the things I've noticed is that the Linux systems are not very reliable when it comes to keeping video and audio in sync when playing movies, flash and the like.
Now, I know that some people obviously have got it working with their installations, but I've not seen it work myself and it does seem it's rather the luck of the draw whether you'll end up with box that can sync or not.
Yeah, like it's MythTV's fault that Fedora Linux didn't recognize his lack of a floppy drive.
I have to wonder if Knoppix would have successfully automagically configured his hardware.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
"Still, I did not want to give in to my indulgent North American lifestyle so quickly."
There's a huge tipoff that this guy has never been outside North America. Chances are he considers a trip to Canada and exotic foreign adventure.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
This guy had a problem configuring ReplayTV (couldn't figure out how to program it to deal with two channel 13's) so then he made a leap of faith.......How exactly did he think he could build a Linux PVR? I mean really I'm stumped here. Linux is a mature operating system, but it is not forr the brain dead, and those who give up after a couple of configuration problems.
TANSTAAFL
Truthfully, as a TiVo user, I could do quite a bit of what you describe if I wanted to take the time to do so. Mind you, there's much you list that it could not do but I have a DVD player and a computer at home and truthfully will not spend the time required to make it an all-in-one solution.
For example, I did like the concept of programming my TiVo from the office so I installed a NIC and an HTTP daemon . Interestingly I've used it more to show people that it could be done than having done much actual program scheduling with it...reminds me of my "web-enabled" phone.
Anyhow, I guess my point is sometimes some folks don't want or care for an all-in-one geek-toy.
There is no date for the article.
Replay TV now has a three year subscription included. After that, it is $.99 a month. That's right, not $12 a MONTH, $12 a YEAR.
One year ago, I recommended that my sister buy a ReplayTV. Right after that, it was announced they were getting sold. I nearly crapped myself at getting her to make an investment in what seemed to now be a shaky product. I had heard of the outsourcing CS to India and that it was BAD.
Well, it took her nearly 6 months to hook it up properly (from her own laziness) and when she did, she found she had thrown away the IR blaster (which lets ReplayTV change channels for you). She called them up and within 5 minutes, they were sending her one free.
Also, I have found that Replay's channel guide service is great. They have had new channel lineups before my cable system impliments it. And I am not in a merto area. 4 years ago, when my cable company got sold and the channel lineup got tweaked, I did have to call in to let them know I had a new cable company and it wasn't available in the choices. Within 24 hours, the new choice was up there. I certainly didn't expect that.
Replay is also known for swapping out units even after warranties expire.
While I am a faithful Replay owner (5 years and my 2020 is still running perfectly) I would certainly recommend a TIVO before I would suggest to anyone I know (other than myself and one other person) that they roll their own.
This guy didn't seem to try very hard at all.
And it really wasn't that hard. I initially tried compiling everything myself, but that was a bit much for a noob. The RedHat/Fedora install guide from Jarod just can't be beat for ease of installation.
As for stability : I've got a backend server that does my recordings and NEVER goes down. Ever. I don't even worry about it.
Wife factor : I've also got a TiVo, which is hard to beat here, but with a good remote control, MythTV isn't too bad. And she loves the commercial skipping and the weather module.
OK, so hook up the cable or rabbit ears to it, set the timer, put a tape in, and record that second show your PVR is missing the old fashioned way. Granted, this won't work in all cases (e.g. two programs on non-broadcast digital cable channels), but I've been watching every "conflicting" episode of Ed, Enterprise, The West Wing, and Jake 2.0 all year this way.
* no trademark intended
And adds much, much more.
Multiple tuners - There are people on the MythTV mailing list who run *quadruple* PVR-250 hardware MPEG encoders in their backend box.
Realtime encoding/decoding - See above. MythTV works great with the following boards:
Hauppauge PVR-x50
Yuan MPG600
Avermedia M179
Remotes: Myth works great with my PVR-350's remote.
Family friendly - Set up the box right, and all you need is a power cycle to reset a Myth box too.
The only disadvantage is you need to deal with it if there's a failure.
Advantages over a cable/sat box:
Add as much hard drive space as you want. The average cable/sat PVR box comes with a 40-80 gig HD. I have 200.
Standard filesystem and file format - My Myth box stores standard MPEG-2 program streams on an ext3 filesystem. Cable/sat PVR systems do everything they can to keep you away from the video. I can burn my Myth files directly to DVD with a 5-line shell script. (The Myth devs are working on integrating this functionality into Myth)
Ability to stream over a network: TiVo's latest entries into this arena are client-only. If you want, you can set up a Myth backend server in your basement, and have thin clients on every TV in your house you want to watch video on. Now that the Hauppauge MediaMVP is out, expect support for it to be integrated into Myth within 2-3 months. That's $85 per additional frontend, folks.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
No one supports HDTV PVR at this point in time.
MythTV works well with the pcHDTV HD-2000 ATSC tuner board for recording of ATSC transmissions.
Once I get my antenna up out of the attic and onto the roof, this is the Next Step for my Myth box. (Right now my reception is too borderline to think about buyin another HD card, I was dumb and blew $300 on a MyHD...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I wish I could find a Windows or Linux PVR that would do Canadian guide listings. Anyone know of one?? Could care less if it's windows or linux open or closed source. I just need someone.
for me the quest is all about the archiving.
I just invested in an Athlon 64 system so that I can in divx realtime. My plan is to capture everything this way and archive to DVD. And I hope to play back in a KISS type player that plays divx.
I have several cards, ATI is fussy. Cleanest is the Nvidia based personal cinema cards. Also avoid VIA chipset Audio - scratchy.
www.snapstream.com now features "NEW Canadian TV Listings".
And they'll sell you an IR Blaster for controlling your sat receiver.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
A couple of years back we had an IR blaster connected to snapstream controlling a sony sky box - it worked pretty well. Similarly we've got a tivo controlling a panasonic sky box now.
Some of the telewest boxes use a funky frequency (some deviant form of irda i think) and dont work with ir blasters - but from what i've heard you can get telewest to replace it since it doesn't work with your universal remote.
Easier way: Clone the downloaded data between the units. Then both units have the downloads, and there is only one call to the server per diem.
..it pulls Canadian guide listings with xmltv.
-- I speak only for myself.
" It wasn't difficult to configure at all. But then, I'm a seasoned unix user and I've used linux and freebsd for awhile."
/etc. Then type ls. You see nothing, because you have to configure ls to allow you to see /etc.
.debs that have been precompiled by someone else///
/etc to get my config files right, but I would also LOVE have them all provided with (or within) a GUI configurator...setup.exe, .deb, no much difference.
I'm not. I'm a noob.
"The thing that concerns me is that for some reason there's a mode of thought throughout most slashdot articles as of late (2-3 years) that linux should be as easy to use as windows. Do you really want this to be the case?
Think of it.
A kernel that configures itself but leaves very few tuning options."
"Ls, instead of being a few tens to a hundred k in size, is instead 100 meg in size and has a security patch released for it every week or so.
You install linux and do a cd
Then we can integrate DMCA stuff into gcc to make sure that you aren't compiling and running anything you shouldn't be."
remember, if I'm installing software on debian, I AM ROOT anyhow...
And compiling a kernel is mostly understanding what it does, so you need a quite good doc or background to do it.
Just that it IS quite complicated (or can seem complicated) if you are just a noob, or even half-linux educated ( =>can do his own kernel compile, can recover ON HIS OWN from his kernel crash 8p yes, I know the requisites 8)
first, don't go extremes...there is a difference between, say, make config, make menuconfig and make xconfig. I just prefer the cosy "almost all in one" make xconfig to the make config that is sure to bring me Major RSI just after compiling one kernel.
the "setup.exe" solution has its advantages, as long as you, the developer or the UI maker provides an interface with "almost" all options and the how-to to do without the GUI.
remember, if I'm installing software on debian, I AM ROOT anyhow...an easier way to configure (think make xconfig again) all the parameters, with a nice how-to on the webpage next to it or integrated together is nothing to spit on.
I'm a debian user, so I already use a nice autoinstaller system, that does most of the configuration on its own.
This system is based on trust. I'm installing
I still have to fiddle in
I just takes someone to take on and make an UI.
Maybe it should even become an almost mandatory
procedure if Linux wants to go to larger masses, the possibility to have the CHOICE, as in only installing what I need, but of doing it "Half-Assed" with a GUI and the help file being displayed on the nice interface, or Hardcore with vi or Emacs over ssh and ripping though XF86config by heart...
I want to have both.
My other nick is Knewbie_One_Kenewbie, Debian Knight v0.0-1-beta...
I'm ready to take any help when I install something I don't fully comprehend 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Lee, while I more or less agree with your tone (relax, do whatever's asked of you, get good at both, etc), I do have one argument against windows you seem to overlook. I collected the following data on one client's server farm:
One array of servers: 400 running solaris and linux. 2 admins
The other array: 130 windows servers. 10 admins
Pager alerts in one month (unix/linux): 6
Pager alerts in one month (windows): 38
Even knowing I can pick up some windows techie for half or a third of what a good unix admin costs salarywise, Windows *still* costs more. And the windows admins fight/barter/complain about pager duty on weekends. The Unix guys generally can take a 2am call, repair issues via remote shell, and be back asleep in under an hour.
At a prior small firm, we were going to be running a bit close to the ragged edge: no failover hardware and a demand for fairly high availability. The ceo wanted windows. The lead said: fine, but you carry the pager and fix it when it goes down. Boss fumed, techie stood firm and we got unix. Nobody ever regretted it.
So, tell me again why I shouldn't get a bit religious? Am I *supposed* to enjoy working weekends and dealing with all the manpower overhead and unreliability? As in any other field, a company's willingness to buy the proper/best tools is a good way to gauge how committed to excellence they are.
(anon post: life's too short to get sued or losing a client just for saying too much about a customer... plausible deniability counts!)
If you're running Linux and you don't want to mess around with a database but you still want a PVR, you can use furious_tv and ftv_gnome (the GNOME front end for furious_tv, hosted at the same site).
True story.
Linux isn't really a desktop, it's more of an embedded system development kit. If you consider it this way, you're expectations will be set better.
I have a mythtv 2-tuner setup, and you can read about my mythtv setup experience. Most of the problem setting this up had to do with odd driver-kernel version problems which don't exist in the same ways on Windows.
Obviously having vendor supplied drivers would be great, but that's not going to happen until Linux kernel drivers are not a moving target. However, Linux kernel developers seem to intentionally avoid making binary driver standards as some kind of 'pro open source' politics. It's a shame.
Why is this modded up? It's not insightful at all, meanspirited, and contributes nothing usefull. It definitely shouldnt be at +5.
My experience with SageTV has been uniformly good. Using PVR-250's as my capture compression device I have had no problems with audio/video desynchronization. One factor which may operate in my favor is that I installed WinDVD to provide DVD play, and configured Sage TV to employ the Intervideo CODEC in conjuntion w/ hardware acceleration (Nvidia 5200). In this configuration SageTV has rock solid image quality and a/v sync. In addition, unlike my Leadtek 2000XP capture card, the resulting MPEG files generate perfectly synced DVDs.
Those of us who don't have directTV don't have that option. New tivos are more expensive. Heck, the guide info alone is $300. All of a sudden a roll-your-own doesn't look so bad anymore, does it? Especially if you've already got a box lying around doing nothing--something many geeks have. I could easily build a MythTV setup for under $650, which is what a tivo would cost me.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Hi guys,
FWIW I recently started a site dedicated to discussing the merits, prattfalls, and techniques/hardware/software/etc...
anyways build your own PVR community site
Would love it if any slashdotters want to drop by and discuss either their existing PVR or future PVR projects...
Thanks!
E.
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