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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?"
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
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.
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.
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.
It runs on the Linux kernel, but Tivo had to write all the software themselves. Are you suggesting the average person can write their own PVR software? Get real.
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
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
This guy's whole problem was that he couldn't get linux installed, it says nothing about PVR software. I built a Myth-Tv box (without a floppy drive, I mean seriously thats what hung him up?) using Mandrake 9.2 and Thac's RPMs (http://rpm.nyvalls.se/) with URPMI.
Install was litterally: urpmi mythtv, follow the simple instruction for populating the database, and watch tv. Took about an hour, including putting the cheap ass tv card in the pc, and download time for the software and tv listings.
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
Do what TiVO does with cable boxes -- get an IR blaster. Program the PVR with the codes to change channels on your Sky TV box, and let it change the channels on the STB for you. Any good PVR app will have support for this.
As a side note, TiVO has recently (within the past 6 months or so) started supporting certain cable boxes via the serial port, and they do support many satellite boxes via the serial port as well (just in case you had a TiVO before you got on DirecTV, and didn't want to get the DirecTiVO). However, the IR blaster approach is still required for a lot of cable boxes, and it works.
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.
Quack, quack.
Seems like a good time to mention BYOPVR! Which was launched a few weeks ago.
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
ReplayTV does not run on linux. It runs on an OS called VxWorks. See this review from PC World from a while back or here.
"MCE is a buggy piece of crap (surprise)"
well you say you built a machine for this, which means you used a ilegal copy of it. Did you even use real MCE or the hacked tablet edition? And MCE is designed for specific hardware, if you didn't meet it's requirements to a tee it will be bad. But if you have a proper machine MCE is very solid by all acounts.
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.
... 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.
imho, the web interface to mythtv makes it more useful than any other PVR solution - I don't have to walk into the other room to set up or manage recordings, or can schedule recordings I've forgotten about before leaving on vacation
You mean like myreplaytv.com for ReplayTV users?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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.
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.
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
I'm assuming that he was adding in Sales tax. 7 or 8 percent and you are close to 600 bucks.
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.
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!
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.