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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?"
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
His web site screams "tech moron". The bit killed me about never going to use the modem, and then proceeding to bend the case to make it fit anyway! He spends the first two thirds of the page meticulously documenting his incompetence in putting together hardware for all the world to see, then one paragraph on rebooting Linux and not everything working right away, and then off he goes into Windows bliss. And then the moral of the story is that Linux PVRs are not ready for prime time?! To quote Basil Fawlty, his wife clearly made a mistake.