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).

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: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: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).