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Second Generation Homebrew PVR Devices

Posted by michael on from the got-to-do-things-the-hard-way dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the second generation of homebrew PVRs is on its way. Asus recently released their Digimatrix barebones PC which combines a lot of features in a very slim and stylish box. DVD/CD-R, WiFi, HDTV tuner, FM Tuner, memory card reader etc. All for ~$400. The reviews look good, except that the software that comes with it doesn't look all that great... of course this may not be a problem because there has already been significant effort in getting linux to run on it and most features are working. Combine MythTV with this device and you have an almost perfect PVR? I wonder what other hardware companies have in store for the homebrew PVR market?"

24 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder how much power it draws by brokeninside · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With a Pentium IV and a fast system bus, I would expect this thing to draw a lot of power. When I went from an Athlon based system to an iMac, my power bill dropped by almost ten bucks a month. I'd hate to see it spike from a set top appliance.

    1. Re:I wonder how much power it draws by ciroknight · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not hard to do the math, but it'll probably average out at about 100-200 watts, as this is what typical PC's will run, and well... for all purposes, it's a fullsized PC, shrank into a smaller box.

      This Could Be A Job For.. Pentium M! Using today's latest and greatest SpeedStep Technology, Pentium M offers extreme flexibility and speed, at the low power of an Embedded/Laptop processor. This would be the perfect application for Low Voltage models too.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    2. Re:I wonder how much power it draws by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

      Pentium M desktop isn't available, only laptop processors at this point. If you could buy individual Pentium M's they wouldn't be cheap "the slowest Pentium M, a 1.3GHz chip, costs $209 with 1M byte of cache.. That's from Infoworld in January, not sure if there has been a price drop on them yet.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    3. Re:I wonder how much power it draws by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      $10/month ??? What the hell do you pay for power?

      Here we pay $0.06 US/KwH. Lets say I had a regular barebones athlon system:
      Motherboard
      Athlon 2400+
      geforce4mx video card
      1 hard drive 7200rpm
      1 cd-rom or dvd-rom
      1 512MB ddr chip

      This is going to pull about 200W max and more likely 150W continuous

      An IMac takes 130W continuous:
      http://www.talktothemac.com.au/Apple_ Folders/imac/ specs.html

      200W * 24 * 30 = 144kwh = $8.64 US
      130 * 24 * 30 = 93.6kwh = $5.52 US

      A savings of $3.02 US/month.

      And yeah, I have built the above little cheapie box and actually measured the continuous power.

      Either your numbers or off or you are bullshitting...

    4. Re:I wonder how much power it draws by realdpk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're forgetting the monitor.

      My computer - Athlon XP 2600+, GeForce Ti 4200, 1 7200RPM drive, 1 CD burner, and an LCD monitor NEC 1760BK use a total of 186W of power, idle but display on, according to my UPS. A 17" CRT (Sony) takes about 78W alone (just tested it).

      So more likely, your computer will idle close to ~160W, and then you can add ~20W (LCD) or ~75W (CRT). 180W and 235W respectively.

      We pay 8 cents per kWh here (4 cents if you're under a certain rediculously low maximum). 180W, $10.40/mo, 230W $13.53. Assuming you just leave it on and don't do anything with it, like surf slashdot or play a game... ;) Then it goes up.

      The iMac should cost about $7.48/month to run. It's not quite $10, but it's still a significant drop (almost half if you start with a CRT). Even more of a drop if you use a high wattage chip such as a late model P4.

    5. Re:I wonder how much power it draws by ratsnapple+tea · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't know about you, but $12.95 a month is worth it for me not to be annoyed by a piss-poor design every time I pick up the remote. Did you see this article? TiVo paid a lot of attention to the UI of their product, and it shows.

      That's just me, of course; YMMV. TiVo probably won't appeal as much to people who lack good taste.

      By the way, TiVo's data feed was reverse engineered a long time ago, but the hackers who figured it out aren't releasing the format as a courtesy to TiVo (the company). If TiVo ever goes under, you can bet your box won't become an "overpriced doorstop."

      yours

  2. I like this whole idea by www.fuckingdie.com · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It would be a refreshing change from the everyday norm to have all of our "Comsumer Electronics" built on an open platform. If someone built a computer that was the size of a slim DVD player, and could be operated using any operating system I wanted, I would jump on it.

    But for now at least we still have to put up with either a rather large Media PC, one that doesn't quite fit in with the other components of your home theater I mean, or whatever PoS companies like Sony want to jam down our throats this model year.

    So to make a long story short I would like to see a Computer that looks, and feels, like a super slim DVD player, and Runs Linux. Not too much to ask I think, and then I would be able to do as I please with it.

    Disclaimer: If something like this actually exists please let me know about it. I have, after all, been living in the middle of nowhere northern BC for about 19 years.

    --
    That really is my homepage, no kidding.
    1. Re:I like this whole idea by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 5, Informative

      You know I am pretty sure creating such a beast shouldn't be a problem. Watch.

      Step 1: Get yourself a small form factor PC, like the ThinkGeek Cappucino or The Open Brick or build your own cool looking mini PC.

      Step 2: Get yourself a USB DVD drive (brownie points for DVD burners)

      Step 3: Get a USB TV Card that runs under Linux (Note: I did a quick google, but I'd bet money you could find one that worked much better. And that page was talking about spotty TV signals in 2002. I bet it's gotten better)

      Step 4: Download a copy of MythTV

      Bingo! You've now got a PVR which will either look nice in your stereo cabinet (like that ThinkGeek case), or which you can keep hidden, save for the external DVD drive (and since every DVD player has a DVD drive in it, you're not going to find anything with a much smaller footprint). And, it shouldn't be too hard to hide the OpenBrick. And all for under $1500.

    2. Re:I like this whole idea by Polo · · Score: 4, Informative

      This post is a little simplistic. I've downloaded mythtv and even used knoppixmyth which is even easier to use, but getting things to work are far from easy.

      Bingo = between two days and a week of effort.

      From what I can tell, all the people who've gotten mythtv to work successfully have used a hauppage pvr-250 or pvr-350. Other brands work, but need considerable tinkering.

      I think I'm going to document my entire "journey" to help other people get going faster...

    3. Re:I like this whole idea by The+Vulture · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hell yeah, I have to agree. I could have shelled out a total of $500-$600 for a TiVo with a lifetime subscription, but I like to do things the hard way, it seems. I was seriously considering the TiVo, because it would just work.

      Then, I did some investigation into do-it-yourself PVR's, and stumbled onto MythTV and Freevo. I tried Freevo first, and didn't really like it (even before using it to watch TV), but the clincher was that, at that time, it didn't support PVR functionality (rewinding through the live TV stream).

      I had (still have to some extent) a bunch of older hardware kicking around, so I decided to give MythTV a shot. The hardware was somewhat under-powered, but if I scaled down the capture resolution (to 320x480, for instance), I was able to get it to work. That was enough for me to start spec'ing out some new hardware and make purchases over a period of time.

      It was definitely a learning experience in putting together a MythTV machine, helping find bugs, submitting a small code patch or two. I'd do it again, but that's because I'm usually up for a good challenge. If you want something that just works, seriously, buy a TiVo, that's what they do is make devices that work.

      -- Joe

    4. Re:I like this whole idea by The+Vulture · · Score: 4, Informative

      Granted, I now have a PVR-250 and a PVR-350 in my MythTV machine, but I started out with dual BT878 capture cards (a Pinnacle PCTV Rave and a Hauppauge WinTV/Radio).

      Although the picture quality of the PVR-x50 cards are better, I would argue that MythTV actually runs better on the BT8x8 cards, only because the ivtv driver is a bit unstable still.

      The two main reasons why everybody raves about the PVR-250 cards (and thus tends to go with them) under MythTV are:
      1. The graphics quality is SO much better. Even when you crank up the resolution on the BT8x8 cards to 720x480, there's still a noticable difference in picture quality (although, this could be due to the software codecs).
      2. While giving this amazing picture quality, the bulk of the work is done on the PVR-x50 card. Thus, the main CPU remains free for other things.

      I can speak from first hand experience, trying to do a dual-tuner system using BT8x8 cards really chews up CPU power. If you have the settings set up too high, and you end up recording two things at once (watching Live TV counts as a recording), then you'll end up dropping frames in the second recording (stuttering). The PVR-x50 eliminates all of these worries (assuming you have a motherboard that can handle the DMA traffic).

      -- Joe

    5. Re:I like this whole idea by toddlg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My "free" HTPC went from Freevo, to mythTV, to Knoppmyth, to the (gasp!) Windows-based (free for personal use, not open source) myHTPC front end.

      The author has not released anything for it since August because he's coming out with a new and improved version sometime real soon.

      Despite that, there's an active community writing/tweaking modules for it, and I've got it to do what I want so far (show the TV listings and weather) since I've not got a Hauppauge card yet.

      I decided to go with myHTPC because for me the learning curve was not quite as steep re: $distro vs. W2K pro.

      I've got a wireless nic in it for the TV/weather updating, use TightVNC to admin it, use it with my StreamZAP remote to control Winamp, etc.

      I almost went with a Linux solution, but just getting this box set up (in an Antec Overture case, btw) has tickled my hardware/fiddling bone enough and I'm able to use it now. YMMV

    6. Re:I like this whole idea by Emil+Brink · · Score: 4, Informative

      Um. Your numbers are a bit misleading, although that of course doesn't change the value of your story. USB 1.1, which I assume you were using since you're talking about "the past" and USB 2.0 is rather recent, has a max bandwidth of 12 megabits/second. That's 1.5 megabytes/second, of course. PCI, on the other hand, starts out as a 33 MHz bus that is 32 bits wide, for a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 133 megabytes/second. Thus, "raw PCI" is roughly 90 times faster than USB 1.1. Just wanted to point that out, since factual errors of this nature tend to annou the anal geek within. ;^)

      --
      main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
  3. No HDTV tuner, re-attach jaws by Chairboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is no HDTV tuner. If you read the article, you'll see that it supports 'HDTV output', eg, VGA (since any HDTV that doesn't have a VGA port on the back can take a VGA signal (at the right rez) using a component adapter.

    The rig in the article can only record regular TV.

  4. Looks pretty good by Nasarius · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unfortunately, their distributor forces you to buy a copy of Windows XP along with the computer.

    --
    LOAD "SIG",8,1
  5. My thoughts on this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I predict a much darker, less interesting future.

    Advertisers will want to find ways to get their messages in the programs. Right now, the method is to insert the messages in breaks of ever-increasing time which occur at greater and greater frequency. People use PVR's to fight this trend.

    The next logical step, then, is to insert the advertising directly into the contents of the programming. This is already happening now to a small extent, but I believe in the future it will get worse.

    Here is an example of what I envision: One character, Bob, pulls out his cell phone. A second character, George, sees it.

    George: Hey, that's a cool cellphone you got there.

    Bob: Yeah. It's a Noksung. I got it with my T-Cingle PCS. It was free! Look, I can take full-motion video with it and uselessly hog screeds of bandwidth with aimless nonsense.

    George: Wow! Can I have a look?

    Bob: Sure. T-Cingle PCS is running a special right now. 3,000,000 anytime minutes for nine cents a month.

    George: Great. I'm going to sign up for that right after we solve this murder. Wait! is that a Taco's Jr. over there. Pull in, they've got a new sushi-cajun burrito on their value menu for 34 cents!.....

    etc, etc, etc.

    Surprisingly enough, people will probably actually watch this crap.

  6. PVRs... for cars? by Sanksa+Wott · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the spirit of the "second generation of homebrew PVRs", I was wondering...

    Since I travel a lot I have recently been thinking about putting together a PVR-type device for my automobile. With ever-shrinking form factors, hiding the device would be no problem. A simple remote control would be fairly easy to integrate. Several fast-booting distro's come to mind to use as starting points. But before I jump in headfirst, I thought I would ask... has this been done before?

    (I remember an article a few days abo about a totally "wired" automobile, but that's not my goal. Just a simple mass-storage device with access controlls, integrated with a car stereo. )

    -B

  7. Almost perfect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Combine MythTV with this device and you have an almost perfect PVR?

    I have a fair bit of experience with MythTV. I've been using it for around 6 months now with both a Bt878 card and a PVR-350. And I wouldn't say "almost perfect". Pretty nice/cool, yes, but far from perfect. A friend has a TiVo that we use a lot.

    Here are some thoughts:

    MythTV/PVR can be somewhat cheaper (and big/ugly) or it can be quite a bit more expensive than a TiVo when using a nice case like in this article.

    TiVo subscription fees suck.

    MythTV and/or the PVR drivers crash or flake out. Some times I get interference bars across the recordings, a reboot fixes it. Not all the time, but sometimes. TiVo don't crash.

    MythTV can run multiple tuners. Although not really that great a bonus. I used to run several tuners but I never watched all the crap it recorded anyway. I'm using one tuner now and that's more than enough.

    MythTV can be daunting to install and configure. It takes a lot of time. There is KnoppMyth which is pretty easy and preconfigured, but it doesn't always work and still requires some configuration.

    MythTV makes it "easy" (if you ignore configuration pain) to use remote frontends so you can watch TV on any computer on the network.

    MythTV makes it easy to burn DVD's of your recorded shows or save the video for archival purposes.

  8. MythTV + Hauppauge PVR disappointing by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The MythTV software was good enough; SageTV is better. (Pro-Myth: Video preview in Channel Guide. Pro-Sage: File-naming format, smarter EPG fetching, better EPG data, smarter file-naming format, smarter interfaces, smarter favorites/don't like, smarter conflict resolution, smarter channel guide).

    The IVTV driver would lock up after 12 or 15 hours. That was with Kernel 2.6; probably should have stuck with kernel 2.4.

    Plus it was just torturously harder to use. I have switched to Windows 2000 + SageTV for my Hauppauge PVR-250, with the Hauppauge MVP for watching the movies on TV. It is much better than a Tivo or ReplayTV or Myth. It rocks.

  9. XBOX ... by vlad_petric · · Score: 4, Interesting
    An xbox + XBMP provides most of the functionality, and it's only 180$ (in all fairness, you do need a dolby decoder with your speakers, but it has HDTV in it)

    Furthermore, by purchasing an XBOX without actually buying games you make MS lose money :) (they're losing money anyway with xbox, but this way they're losing even more)

    These days it doesn't even take a screwdriver to hack the XBOX ... The (albeit kludgy) software solution works well.

    --

    The Raven

  10. Ahanix by Kaliban923 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I've got an Ahanix case for my mythtv setup and while its a bit big, it fits well in my AV rack. With the right motherboard I get quality AC3 audio on DVDs and overall it works pretty well. However, as a poster above noted, myth still has a few(minor) kinks to work out especially with a Hauppauge PVR 250/350 setup(which I have) but the driver code has been getting better and I am happy to report that other than a memory leaking LCDproc process, my machine has been rock solid for over a month since I upgraded to 0.14 release and the latest Hauppauge drivers.

    Personally, the integrated Music Player, TV recorder/viewer, web interface(and this is the killer app for me) for scheduling recordings make the hassles worth it. Even bought myself a JP1 remote that I reprogrammed so it controls everything seemlessly so my girlfriend faction has increased greatly in the past month or so.

    Getting back to the Ahanix cases, they have several different models with different sizes most with a LCD display(HD44870) that can be used by mythtv if you have lcdproc installed. If you are looking for a HTPC, check them out.

  11. Re:Volume by mp3phish · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just use slow spinning 120mm, 92mm, and 80mm fans rather than fast spinning 70mm and 40mm fans.

    My microATX system runs with a 120mm fan in its ATX power supply. When idle it spins at about 1,000 RPM's. It's maximum rating is 2,000 RPM's. It self adjusts depending on load. That is less than 20db once the case is closed up.

    Then I modded that same case for a 120mm fan in the front of it (from the normal 80mm fan) and I run it at 1,200 RPM's (I use a rheostat to adjust its voltage/RPM). Then I use a 92->80mm fan adapter on the cpu heatsink with a large Alpha 8045 (80x80x45mm) heatsink with copper inlay. This fan runs at about 1,000 RPM's, but it has a heat sensor on a wire that I can place anywhere. I chose to tape it to the side of the heatsink and that keeps the fan at about 1,800 RPM's under load and 1,000 RPM's idle. If you tape the thermal sensor for this fan to another area, it will run at a slower or faster rate, depending on how hot that surface gets.

    Then I modded the back of the case (click on the "back view" to see it) to allow a 92mm fan in there rather than 80mm. I run it at 1,000 RPM's.

    Now, every fan in a normal default factory case runs at about 2,500-4,000 RPM's by default and are only 60-80mm wide. A 120mm fan at 1,000 RPM's pushes the same amount of air (provided there is little restriction in the airflow pathway, and the shape of the finns, but on average...) as an 80mm fan running at 3,000 RPM's.

    Also, using the built in fan grill in your case (the ones they just punch out small holes in a pattern the shape of 60 or 80mm fan) is the worst thing you can do, even if you are going to use default sizes. You should always dremel out the built in grill and use a standard wire grill rather than those fancy air restricting/turbulence creating grills.

    Then use a 5400RPM Hard drive. If you want to blow money you can even get a heatpipe cooler for your hard drive that screws into a 5.25in bay with rubber washers, and isolates the HDD from the case. Then the heatpipes keep the drive cool. This works up to even with 10krpm drives. But I use 7200RPM's on my desktop systems.

    That is the basics. On top of all this you can do even more: Rubber washers between each fan and the case to prevent oscilations. If you use 2 identical fans, don't allow them to both run at the same voltage, as they will give you a beating effect because they will never spin at EXACTLY the same rate (unless you buy expensive computer controlled fan regulators which are only available in servers). Put a rubber washer between the power supply and the back of the case before screwing it in. Then put thin padding on all the joints of the case (like where the side pannel touches the rest of the case). This will dampen the oscillations throughout the case, and regulate all oscillations to be contained in a single pannel, rather than the entire case.

    There is much more you can do, but this post is getting long. You handy people should get modding. You don't have to be fancy and rice out your case with glowing lights to be a case modder. I don't, and my mods are what draws the attention when my friends compare computer systems with eachother. They just don't see how I can pack the fastest video card, the fastest CPU, and the best everything in such a small case, overclocked, and still keep it quieter than a Mac G5.

    --
    Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
  12. Upgradability an issue. by Craggles · · Score: 5, Informative

    As I'm sure we all know, upgradability is a big issue with computer hardware. My MythTV box is using a Cooler Master case (but in black), with this motherboard.

    I've already added a DVB-T (HDTV in the US) card, which you can't do with this box (i.e. you will never get digital TV with this box).

    My box is a bit bigger, but looks like a stereo component (brushed steel). I'm also planning on adding an extra analogue capture card (bringing my capture sources up to three). This will fill the PCI slots on the Micro-ATX board, so I'm damn glad I didn't buy a smaller box!

    I've got a DVD-ROM drive, DVD burner and currently one 160GB hard disk. Planning on adding another much bigger hard drive (waiting, waiting, I want 1TB)

    If you are thinking of building a PVR (it's a fun project), you really should think about expandability and upgradability.

    Also check Jarod's PVR Hardware Database, and his excellent Install Guides page.

    Also, don't forget MythTV is a very nice client/server architecture, so you can run your "backend" on some beefy ugly PC in a cupboard, and us anything (including an XBox) as a frontend.

    --
    "Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
    -- Henry Mencken

    My blog: http://yi.org/blog, Latest entry : Muscle powered microrobot's

  13. Your idea does not work. out so easily by yudan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First, the ASUS box has HDTV output, you cannot get a HDTV tuner with whatever box under 400 USD. Check it by yourself.

    Second, Using MythTV with USB TV Card is a pain in the ass.

    Third, Do you really want to stack many USB boxes on top of your box? Is it a CLEAN solution? Besides, these USB DVD/TV may require their own external power supply.

    Don't always assume DIY is the best. I think ASUS is quite impressive, building the whole thing around 400 USD>