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?"

Comments

What, no TiVo?

[LimpGuppy]

It seems the submitter forgot that the "best" PVR is already running Linux...

Re:What, no TiVo?

[pfunkmallone]

That's what I was wondering...this guy was impressed with his friends Tivo. He then went out, bought Replay and decided he hated it. Then, went out and spent a bunch of cash on another computer?

Why not just by a Tivo? At his rate, it would have saved him time and money (assuming he couldn't return the Replay).

My Series 1 absolutely rocks. 120GB drive in it, with Tivoweb. Sure, there are things I wish it would do, but then again...what it DOES do, it does REALLY WELL.

After a couple of month of the monthly $12 fee, I learned that my TV watching had changed forever, and I sprung for the lifetime subscription before they bumped it up from $250 to $300. I've got backups of the software...but I absolutely dread the day my hardware dies (I hope I outlive it).

Re:What, no TiVo?

[sammy baby]

No: his wife asks the question several times, which rather leads one to believe that he never answers her.

Come to think of it, the entire article could be summed up thusly:

"A friend of mine had Tivo, which I decided I wanted, but I didn't want to shell out $600 for the whole nine yards. So first I went with a cheap option which didn't work. Then I went with a cheaper option which also didn't work. Then I went with a more expensive option which worked, but badly. Finally, I tried something which worked, and although I spent $800 on it, it at least does some things that the Tivo doesn't, so I don't have to feel like a complete tool for not just buying a Tivo in the first place like my wife asked me to."

Uh, Tivo?

[macemoneta]

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?

what's wrong with this picture?

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Linux problems?

[Welsh Dwarf]

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.

Re:Linux problems?

[74nova]

And then the moral of the story is that Linux PVRs are not ready for prime time?!

yes. regardless of his skill level, the point is that linux didnt work out of the box, but the windows stuff did. windows is crap, but more often than not, it works right away. your mileage may vary is the case with any linux project, in my opinion. any OS for that matter. ive been relatively pleased with XP, but i sure wish i didnt need it and could use my debian install at work more.

i love linux, i can deal with windows. the fact remains that in my experience (which i think is relatively common)most of the time windows is easier.

having said all that, i think im just gonna buy a pvr. this all looks like too much hassle. sure, i can make a chevy astro van relatively nice, but for the effort, another car might be a better choice.

Re:Linux problems?

[uradu]

> the point is that linux didnt work out of the box, but the windows stuff did

Uh, not really. Windows itself maybe did, but his first attempt at a Windows PVR didn't. Besides, only once have I failed to boot Linux successfully on the first try, and that was this week with a MandrakeMove CD on a Dell Latitude. Knoppix worked fine on that same machine.

> having said all that, i think im just gonna buy a pvr

I've had TiVo for several years myself, despite being quite comfortable with Linux and Windows. For one, back then MythTV wasn't even a glimmer in its creator's eye, and furthermore I made the discovery long ago that wives aren't particularly tolerant of slipping IS schedules. Fiddling with a mosaic of software to do what TiVo does might eventually work, but by that time she will have long lost interest in the whole PVR thing. My office is full of half-started projects that eventually got preempted by others, and those by others...

This is worse than a dupe

[EvilStein]

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...

Impatient Incompetence

[C10H14N2]

"Though I still hope to improve my Linux competency someday, I seem not to have the patience."

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.

Re:MythTV

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

This poor guy gave up, when he couldn't solve a floppy seek on boot error...

He couldn't get past booting linux on the thing - not exactly a stunning indictment of MythTV!

Not Very (Linux) Geeky...

[schwep]

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.

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 ./ers time with whiners.

Re:no...

[bogie]

You get that out of Steve Balmer's handbook or what?

"Yes I run linux, but I don't try to do dumb stuff that it wasn't designed for with it."

For someone who "says" they run Linux you sure have one hell of a negative attitude about it.

Re:MYTHTV does this allready!

[prockcore]

Perhaps it is a hardware problem. What TV card are you using? We were using a haapauge WinTV PCI card. We've never had problems with it before under linux, but maybe MythTV doesn't like certain cards.

linux vs. windows

[z00ky]

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.

Re:What's a PVR anyway?

[FlyerFanNC]

Hmm, isn't a VCR also a PVR? I personally own it, and it records video. I prefer the term DVR.

But then again, I'm a language lawyer.

Why...

[strateego]

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?

Re:Why...

[dwaggie]

When in the hell did Slashdot become Linux only? Holy cow, he did something original, and he did it with technology. And! HOLY COW! LINUX THREW A SHITFIT! .. Yeah, 'cause that's never happened.

Honestly, this elitism about open source is the one thing that will always keep Linux as a server-only, desktop-maybe OS. He did something groovy, and he did it with cheaper parts and in a way that was documented well.

Re:Why...

[ted_nugent]

How was it original or cool in any way? The guy assembled a PC, downloaded some software, and clicked setup.exe. Even if he had managed to install an open source solution I don't think it should be front page news. The experience is well documented at this point.

Linux apps too hard to configure?

[xeeno]

I have a linux based PVR.
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 /etc. Then type ls. You see nothing, because you have to configure ls to allow you to see /etc.

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?

Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?

[Scrameustache]

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?


I said "I don't have the time".
You say it took you days to compile, configure and tinker.

You may not be an idiot, but you sure are an asshole.

Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?

[forevermore]

Here's the problem with comparing Linux PVR projects with Windows PVR's or a dedicated machine like a Tivo: variety. With a dedicated machine, the manufacturer can pick the hardware they want to use, and then tell their developers to write code to fit the hardware. With windows, the hardware manufacturers make the drivers, etc. so the PVR coders don't have to. With linux, we lose on both fronts - not only do the PVR developers have to code their software to work for a variety of different platforms (hardware/software encoders, different remotes, distributions, etc), but they also have to rely on other sets of open source developers who work on the drivers for the sound cards (ALSA), video cards (ivtv, v4l), tv-out video cards, etc. It makes the programs a lot more complex, slows down development time, etc.

On the other hand, they're free, and you can add your own features if you want. I'm a happy mythtv user who didn't like its mythweb module. So I rewrote it and gave it back, and now the project is better than ever (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).

Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?

[Talinom]

So which choice do we make:

1). Make linux easy to work on and use so that it can be an effective alternative to windows. This might entail things like standardized GUI interfaces, methods of adjusting preferences that neither involve the command line nor hacking an initialization script, and help files that guide users through how to easily solve their problems.

2). Keep linux in it's current state of "difficult for the newbie to work on and use." This would involve the least disruption to the current developmental process(es), would keep things "just as they are today", and ensure the burden is on the user for tracking down an expert in case they need to install, modify, use, upgrade, or remove either the operating system or an application.

While keeping the customization that is vital to the particular user available is it necessary to keep it difficult? Or are the two mutually exclusive?

Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?

[Afrosheen]

The only thing that causes a rift in distinction of difficulty between windows and linux is lack of familiarity on the part of the individual deciding the difficulty level. Or, to put it a simpler way, people think linux is hard because they don't know it. Put anyone unfamiliar with Windows on a Windows PC and it's not any easier to linux. It's only easy because you or the neighborhood geek is familiar with it.

Also don't overestimate the ease of use Windows purports to have. It's still hard in spots, some things are impossible to achieve no matter what you try, and it doesn't always work like you expect it to. Ask your local windows user if they know what spyware is or why they have windows popping up advertisements even though no browser is open. They won't know. I'm not talking the /. crowd either, just the general run of the mill user (think: your parents).

Once Linux reaches truly critical mass on the desktop in around 5 years, things will balance out. In my opinion, a default windows xp install is much harder to use than a default Mandrake install. Lots of necessary software is missing, drivers are missing, defaults are set wrong and a gigantic wad of updates are necessary before your windows pc on that broadband connection gets owned by whatever worm keeps knocking at your door. I've seen Windows pcs get owned before the first huge update can even download.

Well I went off on a tangent there but my point is this: it all comes down to what you're familiar with. I challenge any of you to cook up a system like this on a mac. :)

Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?

[Ogerman]

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?

Yes, Linux absolutely should be available in a form that is as easy to use as Windows. What concerns me is that there is still such a holdout among elitists like yourself. The notion that allowing Linux to be newbie friendly will somehow make it worse for us hackers is downright asinine. I briefly held this belief myself before realizing how stupid it was. Every example you gave of the "horrors" of a newbie-friendly Linux is pure hyperbole and utter BS. (And frankly, they show that you have little clue what you're talking about.) The development of software and utilities that assist ordinary users will not in any way affect those of us who do most of our work in a bash shell and a vim session. To the contrary, it will help us immensely because more software will become available for our platform of choice and any kludgy configuration issues that exist today will be standardized by necessity as automation tools are developed.

Also, may I ask you a question? Do you ever plan to actually use the skills you infer to have to make a living? Well guess what? It's a no-go if ordinary people can't use the technology you are most adept at and if Linux doesn't drive a significant 'market-share'. So what is your solution? Let Microsoft and Apple have all the desktops and let Linux/BSD be niche players for the geeks only? Guess what? If that happens, we will have a world filled with DRM garbage and security nightmares. Get your head out of the sand.

Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Only one small problem with your rant. easy to use != glitchy with drm and no configurability, just because windows has both better ease of use and several issues with user controll, security, and stability DOESE NOT mean they go hand in hand, it just means microsoft didn't code it well enough. There is no reason why other operating systems shouldn't 'just work' for joe six-pack and still have stability, options, and security.
Your illogical assumption otherwise causes me to suspect a troll, but if not at least think about it.
Personally I don't wan't to HAVE to spend 2+days to get somthing to work. I do want to be able to install a program and then just click on an icon to run it. not have to fight version of lib hell, then find and edit a bunch of config files and recompile half my software all the while searching for clues on how to run the software through dozens of web sites, usenet groups, and the source code. THAT is what's moronic. The way it is now if it doesn't come on the cd with your distro, odds are your going to have at least one of the above issues, and that is un-acceptable, un-professional and why linux,etc. only make sense for hobby use and corporate use where the cost of trained staff is less than the per-seat licensing of winows.
I really like linux and what it represents, and really want it to succeed in the home arena, but untill you can buy/download somthing and know it'll install and run out of the box, it won't and any sofware house that makes low cost comsumer software (games are a prime example) won't bother much producing linux versions of thier wares.

Mycroft

Re:Well I can say this for one..

[dnadig]

I went through all FOUR major offerings on this front, because, mostly, i didn't have to pay for extra OS licenses.

I built a machine for Myth, for Sage, for Snapstream, and for MCE. In the end, I stuck with snapstream.

MCE is a buggy piece of crap (surprise)
SageTV is nice, but fails the pretty/Wife Factor test quite badly, and has plenty of bugs of its own.
Snapstream has by far the most "tivolike" interface, and just plain does the job well.
Myth, if I NEVER, EVER had to have my wife and kids rely on it, would be nice, but I simply did not find the combo I got with my snapstream install.

If you are JUST going to do PVR, sure, its not THAT hard to get set up. But when you add playing DVD's, pushing a high def signal through a converter, playing MP3s, cutting DVDs from home movies, doing some light websurfing, actuing as the household firewall, the household fileserver, and being a KILLER gaming platform on a nice 50 inch HDTV, you're gonna end up with windows.

Bitch all you want, but add "killer gaming" and "easy to use all the other little crap" to the equation, and windows RAPIDLY becomes worth the license fee.

Re:Well I can say this for one..

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend plays DVD's, mp3's, burns DVD's, and websurfs. My roommate (who practically learned what a hard drive was this year), does the same. Our system serves as a firewall and as a household file server, but I set these up and the services are transparant to them. (they just know the movies are in this directory and the dvd's are in that one).

Killer gaming? I think of UT2k3, Warcraft III, NWN, and soon to be Ryzom and Doom III to be killer gaming, but you are right in that I don't the selection I would on windows. However, these games suffice for me. My girlfriend considers pySol type games "killer" so no problems there.

Of what you mentioned, only the gaming criteria seems prohibitive. But if gaming was that significant a deciding factor, you never would have considered Linux in the first place. Its lack of gaming support is not a secret.

Perhaps you underestimate the ingenuity of women and children?

Re:MYTHTV does this allready!

[bluekanoodle]

I started out on this route using the same instructions, spent 3 days working on it, to no avail. ( my nice hardware wasn't well liked I guess. I forgot, I can only use Linux on crappy hardware thats been out for a year or more. :) )

I decided my time wasn't worth this, so I put Windows on it, paid sixty bucks for Snapstream and have been very happy with it.

Reviewers Linux Literacy

[miketang16]

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.

Re:MYTHTV does this allready!

[Keebler71]

If you had RTFA, he tried that... he even mentions trying the exact "step-by-step" instructions you link to. Just because it worked for you, doesn't mean it works for everyone.

Re:no, this guy's just clueless

[NateTech]

I do too, but turning it into an attack on all Linux PVR's is sensationalism and stupidity. That's the part I think is wrong... not the poor dude trying to build a PVR.

Again, the question is... why is this even a /. article?

a) Dude screws around putting a PC together and has problems.
b) Dude loads linux, has a few problems, panics.
c) Dude loads Windows and finds his own personal nirvana.
d) Anonymous Coward convinces /. to post it as an interesting "question" article about how all Linux PVR's are "too difficult".

Whatever.....

It had nothing to do with Linux.

[ssstraub]

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.

This is stupid.

[rsheridan6]

The guy who wrote the article never even INSTALLED LINUX, and the slashdot story reads "Makes you wonder if current Linux PVR apps are just too much of a pain to get working well?"

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.