Slashdot Mirror
Linux PVRs Highlighted
foolinator writes "Yahoo News is featuring an article highlighting TiVO alternatives. This includes MythTV (my favorite), Freevo, and even sites on how to start as a newbie. All of us who subscribe to the mailing lists be prepared to help out the newbies as Linux PVRs become more mainstream."
This is great -- more PVR software to help innovate PVR along.
But remember, TiVo uses Linux too! There's a TiVo hacker forum here.
It occurs to me that trying to use one of these alternatives will work great until the automated TV listing parser stops working due to a moved web page or some other problem.
I would be willing to update a system every couple of months if necessary, but my Mother sure wouldn't...
more importantly, Dave Letterman wouldn't.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
One of the things that makes TiVO so great is that it knows what television programs are on by downloading a schedule. With a free alternative, will some free service offer updated schedules so the devices know what's on, or will "homebrew" PVR users have to program it manually like a VCR?
Also, given past incidents involving competing products with similar names, the makers of Freevo might be "linspired" to avoid a name so similar to TiVO.
From the front page of www.byopvr.com: "I'm very sorry that our modest hosting buckled under the strain."
As a result of the CNN/Yahoo article(s), no less. Just wait until they see what Slashdot can do!
BTW, this is the exact site for me. I've been talking about doing this for a while, and every time I see an article on Slashdot I get a little closer to actually building one. I'm really excited now.
Recall that all of these efforts are standard definition television. Despite the nay-sayers, high definition television is indeed a reality, and has Linux support thanks to the HD-2000 card, which I'm happy to report has no support for Windows.
What a breath of fresh air. Now, back to watching hard-disk recordings of Alias featuring the supremely-cute Jennifer Gartner, who, in high-def, has many supremely-cute freckles.
From one of the links that you probably can't get to by now:
These projects are nice but it looks like homebrew PVRs won't be able to do encoded HDTV signals for a long while. It is really doubtful that DirectTV or Time Warner will release their secret encoding. They will most likely want you to buy HDTV Tivo or the TW equivalent (which is out for selected markets already).
I can't wait until Microsoft comes out with the next Xbox.. so I can have a media center pc running linux, recording all my shows, and playing bootleg games for $200 - all while pissing off Microsoft.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
This is all fine and dandy as a recording medium goes, but I would like to see the technology put to some other uses, like recording my incomming e-mail messages direct to memory stick while skipping the spam.
For my mom, who works a couple days a week, the ability to record her soap programs, sans interuptions, while she is at work is great. I just find that if you record a 1 hr show without commercials, you get about 40 min of video on average. You spend 40 min watching this and recording another 30 min program, aprox. 22 min of real show. You record another show shile watching your 22 min show and so on... It is like constantly halving a distance... you seem to get somewhere in the beginning but you never reach the end.
flinging poop since 1969
do any of the the nix PVR's have advert skipping ?
as in advert skipping where it doesnt record the adverts (as apposed to fast forwarding)
i know its difficult but usually there are cues in the TV signal itself (bars etc) (like the film companies used to use markers to tell the projectionist when to change reels)
be a nice challenge, or even for the future using bayes filters to train what is an advert and what isnt
thoughts ?
My roommate and I actually built one of these. Its a great project that provided much anit-Wintel fun. It also provided a great reason to add wirless to the condo.
Gentoo Linux and an Athlon XP 2400 mate up very nicely. Only thing missing is that WinTV-PVR-350, deffinately the most expensive piece of hardware but well worth the $165+ price tag. We started with FreeVo, but decided on MythTV. It was much more mature a year ago.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Though not Linux-based, myHTPC totally rocks.
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
Out of the blue my brother who is a pharmacist, with no prior interest in computers, told me he wanted to learn Linux. After a visit to my house and seeing MythTV in action he was even more sold. So, he'll be staying at my house for a couple days in the coming week and we'll build him a new computer with Linux and MythTV. This more than anything gives me faith that Windows may be on the downslide.
Also, I'd love to see a (legit) DirecTV tuner card for PCs. I wonder if this will ever happen? I presume everyone's too concerned about their content getting ripped off, but it would be awfully handy. DirecTV is the best way to get TV now (with the addition of terrestrial digital--the best bargain in entertainment today!)
Best Buy can have you arrested
I have tried both freevo and mythtv and found that neither are exactly to my liking. Right now I use mencoder and cron to record any tv shows that I might want to watch later, and tvtime to watch tv live. I know its not a total solution, but thats not what I'm looking for: I don't have the luxury of having an extra pc to be a dedicated pvr(or for that matter a tv), thus I find mencoder does exactly what I want it to do. Are there any others out there that use alternatives to freevo and mythtv to record / watch tv? More specifically, what formats do people record to? I record to divx, does anyone record to mpeg2 and not use either freevo or myth? For anyone that is interested, here is the script I use to record with mencoder.
This is just not broad enough for people to actually see the differences between the various htpc alternatives. Many of us htpc fans started over a year ago here or here or here . This review, frankly, is inadequate. There are far more issues than meets the eye when making your own htpc, whether myth or xp mce. I'm not advocating either one, I'd just like to remark, after building my own htpc from scratch, that this article tells little to nothing about the pain and suffering of completing this complex task on your own.
If you want to learn how to set up mythtv, this is about as complete a guide as I have ever seen:
www.wilsonet.com/mythtv
Mad props to Jarod Wilson
I originally had a fedora core box, but I recently switched it over to gentoo.
Is this true? Can we ever expect a card to come out? Are cable and other companies using proprietary protocals? Encryption? Does this fall under the DMCA?
I just can't see using a PVR that doesn't support digital cable, as most of the channels I watch or would want to record are only available on digital. This includes most of the movie channels.
Open Standards Portal
I was watching my daily dose of CNBC after work and they talked about Tivo and the huge drop in their stock price today. Basically it's an easily replicated idea that they big boys are into and they mentioned freevo as a free alternative. They only positive thing going for tivo is the satellite tv deals.
once you buy all of the equipment and get everything installed, it's way more than Tivo would be. still, I don't do Tivo cause I don't want to pay for the service, so a Linux box running as a PVR will be what I do, eventually.
any news on this front? are the Linux PVR apps more mature featurewise than the monthy pay options?
I *want* to build one, but time (and money) are my current obstacles.
CBV
free ipod and free gmail!
The how to start as a newbie page is still up. Whatever server they're using, it seems to have survived the test pretty well. Their comment:
UPDATE 9:48 --- from the kicking me while I'm down department We're being Slashdot'ed on top of the yahoo/CNN and matt pvrblogs traffic. No mas! No Mas! =) Glad to see the site get so much attention (but in one day?!) so that we can grow our home brew tivo community.
I don't do much PVR'ing. But I am using a Hauppage PVR-250.
/dev/video1 The output is mpeg2 streams, bitrates and the tuner I control by ptune-iu.pl perl gui script.
/dev/video1 > show.mpeg
/dev/video1
/dev/video1 --freqtable ntsc-cable-hrc $2 /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video1 -c bitrate=$4,bitrate_peak=$4
/dev/video1
/dev/video1 >> ~/media/recorded/$1 &
It's a tuner that encodes it output into MPEG stream. Note that I am using experimental IVTV drivers, so the quality/stability is not garrenteed. But it works for me. The device file that gets used is
All in all it's pretty primtive. I am to lazy to setup a real PVR program. Basicly to make a recording you can go like this:
cat
To play directly from the card:
mplayer -vo xv -vf pp=lb -framedrop
I wrote a script called "recorder"
(script)
#!/bin/bash
# Usage: recorder name channel length quality
# length is in minutes
echo "16000000 is great 8000000 is good 4000000 is normal for quality."
echo "name channel length quality"
~/bin/ptune.pl --input
echo "recorded $1 on channel $2 for $3 minutes at $4 quality at `date`" >> ~/media/recorded/recorded.log
if lsof |grep
then
killall mplayer
fi
cat
POO=$!
sleep $3m
kill $POO
(end script)
So I use it to scedual recordings of shows I want to watch. I use tv.yahoo.com for the listings.
So to record a show I use the at command. It goes like this:
at 11:25
recorder randumbshow 32 40 8000000
^d
And that sets the job to run at 11:25 for 40 minutes on channel 32 at medium-high quality.
That will take like 4gigs of space. To scedual recordings to go everyday at the same time I use "crontab -e" command. Syntax goes like this:
55 0 * * * $HOME/bin/recorder futurama 51 40 6000000
That sets it to record everynight at 00:55 (military time) for 40 minutes on channel 51 at medium quality. Simple stuff.
But it's well worth it. I've got one running at home, and it is an amazing device with all free software. You'll want to drop $120 to $150 on a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card with remote and your HD will eventually top 100 gigs if it hasn't already. You're looking at about a gig per half hour that you record. What's cool about my box is that in addition to acting as a PVR, it's also an ssh and samba server and its constantly grabbing 3 or 4 bittorrents. Also it can pause and rewind live tv. I must admit though that I have spent on the order of 30 hours setting it up and just fooling around with it in general. You'll want to be familiar with Linux before you even attempt to set up one of these. If you're looking for an easier way, you may want to try KnoppMyth. It's bootable live CD that installs myth TV. It may require a little tweaking at the end, but it could save you a heck of a lot of time. Of course then you'll realize that there's nothing good on TV anyway but your geeky pride will be stroked.
Big Deal? Why is this constantly brought up? I'm not trolling, but honestly, that's a little snide comment.
Listen, i'm all for open source, free as in beer, yadda yadda, but please, for the love of god, realize that EVERYONE IS A NEWBIE ONCE. I'm sure Joe SysAdmin Linux user would be more than happy to flex their geek muscle and help people. But doing it in a condescending way is absolutely NOT going to help spread any sort of information, besides what monumental jerks people can be.
What a better way to piss off your user base by calling them newbies and basically insulting their intelligence from the get go. I can already tell the general tone of these mailing lists, even before I join.
Some points which pundits may not mention (I'm a MythTV user):
- Dedicated PVR systems are always cheaper than building your own from parts
- PVR systems based on old hardware will be slow. It doesn't matter if you throw a hardware encoder/decoder in your Duron 850, it will be slow. You want all the CPU and disk speed you can get. Trust me.
- Be prepared to spend 40+ hours over the next three months setting up, configuring, debugging your system. Less if you don't care about customizing and tweaking. More if you're less experienced, and want to compile from source, or don't have popular hardware.
- If you use your Linux box for other things, be aware the system resources mythtv demands may make it slow and chunky.
- Setting up a MythTV box requires installing lots of stuff. The mythtv software works with LIRC (remote control drivers), iVTV (tuner drivers), and a bunch of stuff I don't remember. This isn't an install one thing and you're done project.
I enjoy tweaking systems, but I wasn't aware of the amount of time I'd have to put into MythTV. This in no way detracts from the project - it's a great project. Just know you're getting into something that's fairly technical, and requires troubleshooting.
For the record, PVR 350 + Athlon 1800 + 512 megs/ram on my mythtv box. Debian.
---
I support spreading santorum
I went looking for a "linux PVR distribution" this weekend and couldn't find it. Basically, I was looking for a linux distribution which could be easily installed, work out of the box with standard TV tuner/video out (and ideally, maybe even some sort of IR device) and give me the ability to watch DVDs, stream divx, listen to mp3s, etc.
Does this exist? It should. It could really work as a sneaky way to get people interested in linux in the home.
~jeff
Yes, get ready with helpful phrases like "This was just discussed last week! Didn't you search the mailing list?" and "A simple Google search would have turned up..." and "Just recompile your kernel with..."
You can get ReplayTV with lifetime subscription for $300:
c at_listRTV.asp?cat=51
http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/
So unless you already have a TV Tuner card with your ready to dedicate to PVR-ing computer and both combined cost less than $300 does it make sense?
Oh yeah, plus you get a remote with ReplayTV.
I'm not sure what other competitor's deals are but they must be in the same ballpark, also. Until the cost of the computer+tv tuner card go down, this is not a cost effective solution.
Having watched coworkers dodge TiVo monthly fees with their PVR alternatives. I see two things:
2. Most of them suck, and are just lame me-toos. Who cares if it's free or cheaper, it sucks.
1. TiVo is hardly a giant. They've already defended their market from Microsoft's PVR entry, once. Why endorse lame alternatives that weaken the viability of company that is on the side of the consumer until a giant can DRM you blind.
Yeah, yeah. So you got a free alternative you claim is just as awesome. And my Commodore 64 running Geos is still better than a Mac with OS X. Yeah, sure whatever.
Believe what you want. Go ahead, shoot TiVo in the foot and your consumer rights in the face.
Yes, this article is about Linux PVR's, but how do people feel that the popular ones mentioned (Freevo, MythTV) compare to Windows Media Center Edition's PVR functions?
/.), but I'm really curious. A few things I know already about Media Center:
Don't treat this as a troll (I still expect usual M$ backlash from
1) records in proprietary format (dvr-ms?)
2) no skipping of commercials (except of course fast-forward)
3) doesn't require a TV-tuner, can use any vid card with video capture (S-Video, RCA, coax, etc)
4) generally comes with a remote for all PVR functions and a IR transmitter to actually change your cable box channel
5) supports other media-ish functions like music, pictures, etc
6) It's Windows for chrissake
Please add/subtract/multiply/divide from this list. Just trying to get an idea of how MS's (cruddy) product stacks up to the free competition.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Do any of these projects / products work with digital cable and/or sat? I love the DVR built into my sat (100 hours), but I have already had to delete shows I would like to have kept around a little longer. Since we have gotten into the habit of recording much of the content we watch, so we can watch it when we want to do so, I find myself running into the 100 hour limit.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
All I can answer is in regards to MythTV:
1) If you use a Tuner card with an MPEG encoder, it records in MPEG2. If you use a Tuner without an MPEG2 encoder, MythTV uses your CPU to record in either RTJPEG or MPEG4 (user configurable). MythTV can transcode these formats to pretty much whatever you want after the recording is done.
2) MythTV can automatically flag commercials during recording. When it later transcodes the recording, it auto-skips these flagged areas. Works quite well, but can occasionally mess up (mostly it doesn't miss parts of your show, but might record an extraneous commercial or two). It has some newer experimental commercial skip features which I haven't tried yet. It's all user-configurable.
3) MythTV doesn't require a tuner. You could hook your cable box up to a video input of some sort on your PC and use it with an IRBlaster or serial cable (assuming your cable box can be controlled by a serial port).
4) If you buy a WinTV PVR card, it comes with a remote and IR interface... These work flawlessly with MythTV. However, I should note that MythTV works with LIRC... So if you get any old IR reciever working with LIRC, it'll work with MythTV. Essentially this means you can use MythTV with just about any remote you can get your hands on.
5) MythTV supports TV, Videos (auto-metadata lookups which is sweet, checkout the screenshots page), games (MAME, SNES, NES, Linux games, very cool), weather (My favorite module), RSS Newsfeeds, DVDs (which includes a nice ripper), and some others I can't think of off the top of my head right now. There's also a MythPhone module in development that works like Netmeeting/Gnomemeeting (http://www.zen13655.zen.co.uk/mythphone.html).
6) It's Linux, however, there's hooks and things in the code so that it might run on Windows some day. We'll see.
MythTV RIGHT NOW is an amazing piece of software, but because it's open-source, it's rapidly developing into something much, much more. Right now it's the PVR leader and I suspect it's going to remain that way for quite some time... A very promising future.
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/prod_digital.html
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
They don't do digital cable. Only digital broadcast over antena, and analog cable tv.
The bulk of TiVo's new subscribers last quarter came through its partnership with DirecTV, which offers TiVo service built into some of its television set-top boxes so that users can pause live TV, easily set up recordings and skip past commercials...
AP Online
For those using Windows, you may want to check out http://www.gbpvr.com which is a free windows PVR much like MythTV.
It supports multiple tuners. Hardware decoders like the PVR350, Hauppauge MediaMVP and SigmaDesigns XCard. Its a work in progress, but seems to be making great progress.
There are free Windows alternatives. Windows users may want to check out http://www.gbpvr.com which is a free windows PVR much like MythTV.
It supports multiple tuners and specialist hardware decoders like the PVR350, Hauppauge MediaMVP and SigmaDesigns XCard.
Its a work in progress, but seems to be making good headway. The guy developing it seems to be very responsive to requests.
actually mce does require a tv-tuner and not only that it requires a hardware encoding tv-tuner.
I was looking into setting myself up a PVR system but Australian PVR is still in its infancy and there aren't any "officially" syndicated XML program guide feeds. The Australian broadcasters have been holding off from doing this as they want some sort of copy protection scheme setup before they will allow program guides to be syndicated. I'm sure this will mean people living in Australia will probably have to resort to using Windows Media Center instead of Linux based solutions, which i think is a real shame...
-= Technomancer =-
My plan this fall for the few shows worth watching is to pick them up on Torrent. I caught the last episodes of Angel and Enterprise this way and decided this was the way to go. I don't even have to remember to record anything. I just pick the episode up when I want to watch.
Eventually I realize there will be a big witch hunt against evil TV downloaders, but I hope by the time the corporations shut it down, that this model will be available from the networks legitimately.
Thought I wonder if the weekly fiction series is doomed. The combination of reality crap, TV downloads and DVD boxed TV seasons all contribute to me watching very much less actual broadcast TV.
I would rather re-watch boxed sets of Farscape, Buffy and B5 than 99.9% of the new content coming out now. What does this mean for the future of fiction TV???
The main argument I hear is that people are afraid that Tivo will go bankrupt. My belief is if they bought a Tivo then Tivo would be less likely to go bankrupt. But this kind of logic is often hard to explain to your average "I deserve to have everything handed to me for free" idiot on Slashdot.
The big thing for me is that Tivo is locked down. I wan't my PVR to be 100% customizable and upgradeable at my discretion. I also have a HUGE problem with big brother monitoring what I watch and what I pause (i.e. The Janet Jackson Super bowl halftime show). Tivo may run on Linux, but it's just another greedy corporation. Fuck Tivo and fuck you.
^^vv<><>BA
I've always found it odd at how the hacker community treats TiVo. There is little information or recent work on how to extract the video out of a TiVo box (except for extractstream), and don't even think about bringing it up on TiVo fan forums. In fact, those forums won't allow talk about removing the ads TiVo downloads into itself. I'm surprised at this. I'd think the "it's my hardware, how dare they download ads into it" mentality would win out.
Apple releases a new DRM scheme for iTunes and people are all over it trying to break it. And Apple is pretty liberal with what you can do with purchased music.
I just don't get what's so special about TiVo that there isn't more work being done to open the system.
You can opt out of having your TV surfing habits anonymously aggregated with other users.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
First, proprietary format. You're right on. I have to install Media Center 9 to even watch something and then the quality is less than stellar in light of its compression ratio. I have noticed the differences between their codec and some others too, but that's not a criticism as much as an observation.
Fast forward is fine. The 30 second skip feature's invaluable but auto commercial skipping I think is a legal landmine and it's a bad perception thing. I have no problem hitting that button 4 times in a row fast.
I have a tuner card so I don't know about other options. There was some kungfu going on with getting drivers working but once it worked I didn't touch it.
Remote works great. It's got a much wider angle than even the tivo remotes. You could get one for myth too though
This is really incidental. I guess those are almost order qualifiers at this point. They're so easy there's no excuse to not, but I don't use them.
Yeah, and here's some more complaints that you wouldn't probably ever envision without the joy of testing one.
There's a database corruption issue about once every 4 days. I'd imagine it follows a poisson distribution, but the corruption will randomly occur. When that happens it will record scheduled shows, but it won't add any new ones or accept changes to any existing ones. Also it can't / won't update guide data or do anything other than record and watch what's there.
The sound will sometimes be overcome with static. I suppose this could be a video card issue but a restart always fixes the problem. It also seems to retroactively affect shows although I haven't really figured this one out yet.
Guide data is notoriously unreliable. This may be a function of the ever occuring database corruption which prevents any new data from being added, but either way it's annoying.
The machine it's running on is a beast compared to the processor that powers a tivo. That and I imagine the drive in it will last another year if I'm lucky.
Menu ergonomics are awful. Once you're used to it it's not bad, but the 'back' button is relative and it's nearly impossible to switch between 3 different menus without having to return to the root menu to get back to it. The animations are pretty, but that's the best part. They get on your nerves too when they pause for 10 seconds and load the data you're trying to get at. There are a bunch of other menu issues that I've managed to adapt to, but it's not intuitive.
The menus, when they're not crashing/pausing, are faster than tivo series one, but about on par with the series twos.
I like it because it gives me a dvr that's working and free (for the moment), however windows is certainly not the 'innovator' in this field. A 2.4+ machine that you have to restart at least every week is hardly competition to a tivo that runs solid for over 2 years.
Not sure how they do it, but the InteractTV Telly box (Linux-based with open source entertainment OS, EOS) allows schedule parsing without paying for a Tivo service. It even works in Canada where Tivo does not!
I've also heard that scheduling info is embedded in the cable feeds themselves. Is that true?
It seems rediculous that Tivo would charge just for the ability to get some schedule info.
I once started building a MythTV-based PVR, based on a VIA EPIA board and using a WinTV PVR 350. I'm by no means a Linux newbie, but oh my god did this suck. From non-accelerated X drivers for the integrated video to randomly crashing mythtv backends, I've seen it all. After trying with no success for 2 weeks, I formatted the machine, installed Windows and bought a copy of ShowShifter.. I was up and running in ten minutes and it's been working ever since. I'd rather just spend $60 for a working solution then keep on fiddling with MythTV for weeks and missing all my shows in the meantime.
Quack, quack.
On my Hi-Definition Direct TiVo.
The HDTivo is pretty nice, but ridiculously expensive. $1000, but it has two tuners. I still think you can undercut it with your own hardware by a little bit though, even more as HD tuner cards come down.
What I can do though is record HD content directly off DirectTV satellite without decompression/recompression, which you cannot do with any home-built PVR.
Thumbs down to Alias in HD though. It looks like crap next to CSI, it even looks like crap next to Law & Order. And the show isn't as good as either of those two either (which is saying a lot, I'm not a fan of CSI). The good news is I get Alias in 5.1, unlike either of the other shows. Hopefully, as my local programs get their acts together I'll get more stuff in 5.1 over the air.
Week in, week out, there's no HiDef content that shows off HiDef as well as CBS' golf coverage. Yeah, you may find a better individual program once in a while, but no weekly show can touch it. Yes, it looks so good that I even will watch golf on TV. Unbelievable.
My TV-Tunercard just arrived yesterday, and despite the fact that its slightly offtopic (me using windows and all), I thought I'd take the chance to ask about your thoughts about that card.
I havent had a TV since moved back to Århus in February, and I live in a small student collective. Focussing a fair bit on design, I've got a huge 21" sony triniton CRT that now doubles as a flat-heater as well as a TV.
I found the TV-Image to be a bit grainy when run in full screen and I wonder whether a different cable would influence the "reception" quality on a whole.. (I'm on cable though)
The card does seem to have a lot of nifty features, and it was pretty cheap.
My main gripes are with the happy-happy-joy-joy software interface. Are there any alternative softwares to those that get delivered with the given TV-Tuner cards?
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
I bought me a VIA EPIA M6000, because it was cheap, and only available M-series at that moment in my country (I wanted a fast delivery for the Easter holiday ;)
/dev/video0 > file, it went great, so I looked for other alternatives.
/etc user, I find the config-file much more intuitive than pressing every channel and feature in MythTVs GUI (also I don't have to install QT for once).
Because it is not the biggest machine in town, I believe its why MythTv failed for me. Everything is fine and all, but when I bought a Hauppage PVR 250 (MPEG-capture) it was extremely choppy in MythTV. When I used mplayer or cat
Freevo uses mplayer for LiveTV-playback (I don't use it much, it will freeze my machine eventually, probably because of the ivtv-drivers), and with and "choppyness". Also the capture is done exactly as a good as cat, so I am happy, that I can program to record a show, but of course I would be interested in some of the nice features in MythTV on recording. The other plugins and even more are available on Freevo, and as a typical
You might ask, why I didn't tell that to the MythTV dev/user-community (#mythtv and #mythtv-users), but I have never seen a more unfriendly one (eventhough there are good people among them). Its double as many users there, but barely anybody talks/helps eachother. Freevo helped me through some of my stupid actions and questions pretty nicely on #freevo.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
bog standard PC doesn't make it somehow more accessible to the general public.
Just wanted to plug my software:
6) There are not only hooks to windows, but WinMyth exists. That is, there is a windows myth front end written nativly for windows.
you can also compile mythtv via cygwin in windows, but in my opinion that's not quite as clean.
OK - What I want to know is if anyone out there has been successful in getting MythTV (or FreeVo) working successfully under Slackware.
I've tried (and I am certainly no Linux newbie) and could not get all the dependancies to work/compile/install. I spent the better part of 3 days working on it when I gave up.
Heck, getting Gnome recompiled is worlds easier than getting either Myth of Freevo to work under Slackware 9.1.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
There are also IRC channels (#mythtv and #mythtv-users on Freenode) and very active and helpful mailing lists to ask for help if you get stuck (at some point or another, you will!).
Be an elitist - read Slashdot at +4.
which one do you like better?!!!??
TiVo's hardware is far more superior to a MythTV box. anyone who says they can get a MythTV box up and running up to the same capacity of TiVO WITHOUT spending over 1000.00 is crazy. Granted, people already have computers, but the hardware requirements for MythTV compared to the price of a 250$ tivo and EVEN a 300$ lifetime membership (which I know..only covers for the life of the unit) still outweigh the costs of building a MthTV box.
granted there is the whole "trust" issue as its not "free" software
And what does this have to do with Linux PVR's?
I prefer to not run the trojan horse known as Windows.
I've had MythTV running for the last year and just LOVE it. 90%+ of my TV watching is from it. I have it setup as follows:
Backend (down in the basement) is an AMD 1700/512M ram, a 120G HD for root and misc data, and a 160G HD for MythTV recording. I can record about 120 hours of video (1.3G per hour with current settings). I run dual monitors on this machine so I can watch TV on one screen and do something else on the other.
The frontend is an AMD 2200/512M ram, a 120G HD. and an old packard bell IR reciever. I have an svideo cable and audio cables connected to the TV in the other room. I can watch recorded shows from either this room or the main TV in the other room.
With this setup I can watch recordings from three locations (basement, main computer, or main TV).
The best part is automatic recording of favorite shows. It keeps track of which shows I've seen so it doesn't record ones I've watched unless I tell it to. It's great to sit down and watch four one hour series shows, in order, in three hours after skipping commercials. Commercial skip is either perfect or not worth using depending on the channel. Some shows like Enterprise it's awfull on (dark show) and some shows like Deep Sea Detecives it's perfect.
Mythweb is a web interface to MythTV. With it I can see whats getting recorded from anywhere I can get a browser. I can add shows to record if someone mentions a special coming or something. Very cool.
It does take some tinkering to get it running, but that was half the fun for me. Very much worth the effort.
Jeff
The best advice I can give someone, is not to bother with MythTV at all. The interface is horrific, the guide is poor, the conflict handling is awful, the file-format it uses wastes about 100Xs as much space as it should, you can't play other files without plug-ins that have a completely different interface, etc. My solution is much simpler, and easier than even setting up MythTV...
Install webvcr+. It will run provide a web-based interface, displaying a TV-guide that you just have to click-on a few times to schedule recordings.
It would be more LIRC-friendly if there was a GUI browser out there that could be navigated like text-mode LINKS (even GUI links doesn't have the same keyboard nav as it's text-based fore-father). Now, you have to use Mozilla, or some such, and mouseless nav is practically impossible, so make sure you get LIRC's virtual XF86 mouse-control working. Not a problem with the ATI Remote Wonder, since it has a (rather poor, but usable) mouse built-in.
Then you can tell vebvcr+ to use good old MPlayer to do the recording from your TV-Tuner card (unless you have a hardware encoder, then "dd" works just fine, "cat" doesn't have large-file support sadly). Configure whatever arbitrary parameters you want MPlayer to use.
Then, the last step is to install a good file-manager... I use "emelfm" myself, and it does the job quite well, but it's not perfect, so you might want to try another simple filemanager. Just use the arrow-keys to go up/down through the list of all your files, and hit OK/Enter to launch one. MPlayer navigation works FAR faster and better than MythTV's, which is a big issue when you are skipping 10 minutes of commercials for every 15 minutes of a TV program.
Also, I just hit a button to bring-up the context menu, where I can open the file with avidemux2, and edit out the commercials. I found the keyboard bindings to be quite lowsy, so I made a little patch to change them to something more remote-friendly.
In addition, you just need to whip-up some very basic shell-scripts for anything else you want to do. I have simple scripts that convert my recorded MPEG-2 files to Divx. I have scripts that automatically record a DVD into a CD-sized Divx file, so you only have to type in the name and length. I have scripts that automatically takes the selected files, converts them into an ISO, then transfers them with 'scp' over the network to another machine with a CD-Burner, then records as many copies of the ISO as you want...
It may sound complex, but it's all quite simple, and doing all this setup work is still FAR easier than getting MythTV setup, and installing the necessary plug-ins. Plus, you have a mutimedia system that can do infinitely more, is easy to add more, new functions to, and is far quicker and simpler to USE than MythTV.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I love all this do-it-yourself PVR stuff and I tried to build my own two years ago. The hardware just wasn't available in the price and formfactor I wanted.
Now I'd be interested in buying a pre-made Free PVR that I could just plug in and start hacking on myself. Basically I want a box that comes in a small form factor, low noise, low heat and already has MythTV or Freevo pre-loaded and configured for the hardware.
Does anyone know if such a thing exists?
One thing the author didn't do was list the price of a base-model TiVo machine. For those with a limited income, forking out $199 for a graphics card may not seem as beneficial as paying $199 for an entire unit. They may even be able to scrimp with the monthly fees.
I have a ReplayTV myself, the base $149 model. I liked the built-in network card and available 3rd party programs that allow me to stream media from my PC to the ReplayTV box, or vice-versa.
I think it's good that this article showed up to list the alternatives. I really don't understand why TiVo is so popular, especially when you compare the features of it to ReplayTV. But I guess that they've got on hell of a marketing team.
I played around with a freevo for a while, but gave up. It was noisy, and ultimately, more expensive, and required lots of work to keep working. Look like that will be better now that xmltv doesn't screen scrape.
I wonder if anyone has worked out methods of hacking the Guide+ broadcasts. That would be a fun little project if I didn't have already.
anyway--
I just bought an RCA Scenium DVR. It's a no subscription DVR, DVD player, mp3 player, jpeg slide show device.
It uses the free Guide+ screen guides that are broadcast over the PBS stations overnight. It's nice-- though not quite as functional in some regards to Tivo or replay. But very nice, and free for life. RCA has been doing the Guide+ broadcasts for almost ten years, so it should be around a bit more. The other plus- digital audio and Dolby DTS, etc.
Now, I just need to figure out how I can extract the shows that I've recorded... some folks have already figured out HD upgrades. But extraction is the important piece in the puzzle.
Until I can find a tuner card for my PC that doesn't have a noisy tuner, I'm not going to use a PC for a PVR. Every single one of the tuner cards that I've tried now the picture quality from the tuner sucks compared to the output from a cheap VCR tuner. The video quality from my ReplayTV is 1000 times better than my Hauppauge WinTV-D card. Is it really so hard for them to get clean video from one of these tuner cards? Sheesh.
Hah, I didn't even know they offered this sort of a service now. Very, very cool. I signed up to take a quick look at it, and I'll be setting up something to use this sort of thing, I feel sure.
For those not in the know, basically this allows you to create an account with Tribune Media Services (the same place where Tivo gets its guide data from) and be able to download TV Guide data in XML format using SOAP and such. Very nice indeed.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There's a difference between being able to tell that a box in the 12345 zipcode rewound to watch an ad again, and that Joe User's box rewound to watch an ad again. However, as so many things in life are, it's all about who you trust.
Tivo has three data collection modes: Opt in, Opt Neutral, Opt Out.
You can Opt-out by calling up Tivo and asking to Opt-out. They send a command down to the box that sets a flag not to send the data anymore. You can verify this flag has been set on your box by turning on backdoors and looking at the system information screen. Or you can believe me or other people who have opted out and seen this happen for themselves. Your call, who do you trust?
Opt-Neutral is the default data sending mode, and it sends data that has been scrubbed of any identifying information other than the zipcode. Actually, it hasn't been "scrubbed", it's simply that that data doesn't get put into the log file in the first place in this mode. This has been verified by Tivo hackers, including myself. Again, who do you trust?
Opt-In sends the tivo serial number in the data file itself, along with adding a whole host of extra info. You can do this by joining http://www.hotline2hollywood.com . This means that all the stuff you watch will be trackable to your box. Not to you personally, mind you. Despite the rumor, there's no camera built into the box behind that "eye" looking thing on the front.
I'm opted-in. Why? Because I don't give a damn if they know what I watch. Hell, I don't care who knows it. It's not critical to me. Maybe they'll realize that I thumbs down all the reality shows and tend to skip crappy commercials. With any luck, this info will filter its way up to the suits and they'll improve the crap currently on TV. Forlorn hope? Probably. Still, it's nice to think that maybe I can make some kind of difference in the shit that's on TV now.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
They've been really open about this since the beginning, i.e. 4 years or more. They collect data on viewing habits, and provide aggregate stats on those viewing habits, but they don't tie them to individual viewers. If you don't even want them to do that, then you can ask them not to, and they won't. Simple, no?
I GUARANTEE YOU that you made a mistake in typing it in. I switched to 15.1 yesterday, and as such, used that code. I got no such message.
Even if they did charge, can we not just file it away as a "don't have to screw with it" payment?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
My myth box cost me $20 for a video capture card off ebay and $80 for a 160GB drive. The rest I built from crap I had lying around my house.
Tell me you can get a TiVo+subscription for $100. But to build a myth box out of store-bought parts would prolly run you around... $450-$700 depending on your configuration. Try $120 for a VIA M10000, $40 for a case, $180 for a Hauppage PVR-350, and $80 for your hard disk and you're in business for $420, and that's a machine that has good quality TV-out, 5.1 sound, yet will be quiet, small, and not look out of place in your entertainment center for $420. Add a slimline DVD drive for like $50. If you're going to use multiple tuners and stuff, you're getting in to the more expensive range that I quoted.
What's tivo cost these days? Like $120 for the box and $300 for the subscription?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Best of luck!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent