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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?"
It seems the submitter forgot that the "best" PVR is already running Linux...
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.
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)
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...
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
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).
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
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?
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
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.
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
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.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
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.