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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?"
Build Your Own PVR
I don't have the time! Stop pressuring me!
You can't take the sky from me...
I still want one that supports Sky TV in the UK. I could take the output from the decoder box but then anything I wanted to record I would have to set the box and the PVR, defeating the purpose.
Anyone know how to put a Sky signal straight from the dish into a PC? They use some obscure encryption so even when you pay for a viewing card you cant use it.
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
It seems the submitter forgot that the "best" PVR is already running Linux...
I had occasion to build both a Windows and a Linux HTPC for a recent book. The Linux one took longer for some of the steps, and I had to do some hairy troubleshooting, but it is perfectly possible. MythTV is pretty impressive, actually. The DVD ripping on the Linux side was much nicer.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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...
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.
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
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
So the writer spent dozens upon dozens of hours building, tearing down, rebuilding and troubleshooting something that's going to be less reliable and more expensive than a TiVo? DirecTV with TiVo is $100 plus $5 a month, not $600 I can just hear his wife now, "Matt! I JUST want to watch American Idol! Can I PLEASE watch American Idol? Why is there no sound? How come the picture looks bad? Why do I have to reboot the computer just to watch TV? What's a General Protection Fault? Wait! Something just popped up on the TV that says 'NIMDA' what's NIMDA? The TV said 'C: drive full' while I was watching the Trading Spaces Marathon! MATTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!" Dude - just buy the TiVo and you're done. Seriously.
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.
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
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
If that's his math skill, no wonder he kept failing...
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
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
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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
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.
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djzooky.com
I Like Cheese.
Quack, quack.
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?
"selling software to run with windows seems to be going out of style.. "
Other than a few random posts on slashdot, could you please offer a few concrete data points to back up such a sweeping assertion? Some market analysis based on real numbers would be particularly helpful.
Download my free songs!
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
I have a linux based PVR.
/etc. Then type ls. You see nothing, because you have to configure ls to allow you to see /etc.
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
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?
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.
"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.
"When I booted up the unit, I found that neither my CD/DVD Drive, nor my Hard Disk were recognized...Two hours later God spoke to me...look at the back of the hard drive and compare the jumper positions...Jumpers are little brackets that must be moved to tell a piece of hardware what role it will play as part of your computer."
to make a long story short, brain surgeon guy had the hd set to slave so it wouldn't boot. Like, duh. Course it took him 2 hours to realize it and God had to tell him too.
No offense guy, but MythTV wasn't designed for you. Get a Tivo. You'll be happier. It's simple. Pretty buttons.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
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
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'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!
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.
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.
I was thinking of building myself some kind of PVR too. I suppose I could have got myself a Sky Plus box, only this would have meant getting a dish -- and I happen to think they're ugly, compared to a cable buried discreetly under the pavement. I had the specs in my mind, and went out looking for parts.
Then in Dixons, I found the Philips DVDR-70 DVD+RW recorder. At 279.99, I snapped it up. This machine needs the more expensive DVD+RW discs. It can also use DVD+Rs, but the functionality is a bit more limited with one-time media. There are only two SCARTs, and you'll need both of them for the TV and the satellite/cable decoder; but it does have audio/video/SV ins on the front {meant for a camcorder so designated CAM1} which you can use in an emergency, and audio/video/SV outs around the back. As you would expect on any DVD player, the TV SCART has RGB out; but unlike a VCR the auxiliary SCART has RGB in.
Chapter points are added automatically during recording, or you can add them by hand - and the ability to block certain chapters allows you to implement a form of ad-skipping, which is vital for most cable/satellite recordings. The picure is rock-solid even at six-hour compression. It will play MP3 audio CDs through your TV or hi-fi, but not multisession discs - you'll have to burn them in one go. This should mean those annoying copy-protected discs will play fine, though, and there's no mention of disabling the digital audio out during certain kinds of playback {but I haven't been able to test this}.
Downsides? No HDD so you can't record and play back at the same time, and the picture blanks out while the machine is busy. No RF modulator, so you have to use the A/V connections; but you'd be throwing away the advantages of DVD anyway. And I didn't build it myself.
Conclusion: Worth the price, and you'll soon get to live with the quirks. Expect newer models to answer them anyway.
****
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!