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."

Comments

Does this really apply?

[Allen Zadr]

Tivo is a service. The service is tied to a hardware platform, but it's still a service.

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.

Re:Does this really apply?

[Snad]

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.

Indeed. I was very interested in MythTV, but given that there are currently no active, reliable ways to obtain the program listings for New Zealand television (such as it is...) the whole thing became rather moot.

One of the great advantages I saw was being able to present my gf with a list of TV program names on screen that she wanted to record (or had recorded and therefore could play back), rather than dick around with the video tapes and the (let's face it) pathetic UI that exists on most video recorders.

Without that program listing things like MythTV lose some of their gloss.

The obvious solution being that I should create my own mechanism for scraping NZ TV websites for program listings but I spend far too much time on /. to have time to create, and more importantly maintain, such a method. My gf, and my mother, and their work colleagues would be even less inclined to do so.

Of course, being in such a small country we're SOL with regard to any kind of TiVo-like service anyway.

Re:Does this really apply?

[nathanh]

Indeed. I was very interested in MythTV, but given that there are currently no active, reliable ways to obtain the program listings for New Zealand television (such as it is...) the whole thing became rather moot.

Yeah, good point. The live-tv stuff I must admit isn't very useful to me. What I use MythTV for is saying "I want all episodes of BLAH and you figure it out". Then I come back a few weeks later and watch them all back to back.

Without a functional tv_grab script I simply wouldn't bother. Thankfully the tv_grab_au script does seem to work pretty well. I see tv_grab_nz in the xmltv install. Does it not work for you?

Re:Does this really apply?

[Alien Being]

"Someone pleas convince me I'm wrong."

Let's say I sell brooms by running commercials on soap operas. Scratch that, I'm selling soap. And let's say that I learn that 20% of the viewers watch tv on a PVR. I realize that PVRs allow consumers to skip commercials, so that sucks for me. But I'd still rather that they be skipping *my* commercials than my competitors. I know that once in a while, they'll see my product for a second. And by making the ad entertaining, I can still improve my odds.

The name of the game is broadcasting. The broader the better. They need to make the program listings accessible. IMO, they should consider sending it out in XML over usenet.

Re:Does this really apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that I watch some commercials more than others, even with a PVR, just because they're funny/cool/etc.

I actually think that being able to weed out the crap is cool, but sometimes, you catch one bit of a commercial and you skip back, usually saying 'What the-'

Being able to watch the *commercials* I want to watch roxors, too. Maybe I want to analyze the Spiderman 2 commercial somewhat, but don't want to get on the 'net.

Consumer choice kicks ass.

Re:Does this really apply?

[Ath]

To me, if TiVo's the best, and still cheaper (at least for the first couple of years of use), why use homebrew except for bragging rights?

Here's one reason: I live in Europe but have a remote MythTV box setup in the USA. I remotely control it and download whatever I record. I cannot do that with a TiVo.

A second reason is that some PVRs have additional functions built in. MythTV has add-ons for DVDs, music, weather, web browsing, videogame emulation, photos, etc.

TiVo is great. I love it. But for some, it may not do everything they want. For that, there is MythTV! Of course, it's not for the technically phobic people...

Re:Does this really apply?

[Lumpy]

They have also said in their forums that it will remain free, your only obligation is to fill out a survey every three months to continue the subscription.

I highly doubt it. and is one of the major reasons I gave up and abandoned my MythTV box for a replayTV box. It took me 3 days to find a working "subscription code" for the zap2it.com page and finally found one not with mythtv's forums but in the XMLTV user mailing list. the whole thing leaves a really bad taste in my mouth coupled with the fact that it becomes a maintaince fight getting everything working well. Besides XMLTV's US data scraper has also changed to that data source...

My three requirements for a PVR, that drove me to mythtv was Ability to extract the mpeg's, upload my mpegs, and no subscription fees.

I can see enough into the future to know that zap2it will certianly start charging fees by the end of this year. It's not worth the fight. I had spend at least 1 weekend a month updating xmltv every time the guide data breaks as well as other "updates" to the myth platform.

I'm switching to a replayTV and the assorted software that make it really stinking easy to do what I want sans the free guide data..

so yes, $13.00 a month is worth me not having to screw with it, and $100.00 for the replayTV new cant be even touched by any of the linux PVR's.

I look at my $13.00 monthy bill as a "dont have to screw with it" payment.

Dont get me wrong, MythTV is the best linux PVR out there... 3 times faster than freevo (I tried for months to get freevo to work smoothly and fast.) and really easy to get going if you follow the docs...

but the guide data is going to be the death of them all, zap2it is not going to keep giving out free data forever.

Just you wait...

[lukewarmfusion]

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.

Advert skipping

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ?

Article is not broad enough

[tjasond]

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.

Re:Don't forget pcHDTV

[palutke]

. . . and has Linux support thanks to the HD-2000 [pchdtv.com] card, which I'm happy to report has no support for Windows.

Why would you be happy to report that? It just hurts their chances of staying in business.

PVR with digital cable

[Openstandards.net]

I thought Myth TV looked awesome. However, I discovered that it can't support digital cable. But, it's not the project's fault, or even a Linux issue. I read that there are currently no PC video capture cards on the consumer market that can support digital TV.

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.

Re:TiVo uses Linux too!

[stanbrown]

But they have done a pretty good job of locking you out, satrting with the Series 2 units. I personaly think this is a serious abuse of the GPL.

Windows Media Center Edition?

[altek]

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?

Don't treat this as a troll (I still expect usual M$ backlash from /.), but I'm really curious. A few things I know already about Media Center:

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.

Re:Linux PVRs can be a pain!

[Spoke]

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.

You must be doing something wrong if you can't get a Duron 850 running well, especially when using a hardware encoder. I'm even tempted to replace it with a Via Eden system so that it uses less power and runs quieter (no more CPU fan!)

I've got MythTV running great on a Duron 800, 512MB of memory and a 80GB 7200RPM drive with 2MB of cache and 2 PVR250s. Not exactly state of the hard hardware, but it works very well.

Now, if you were using software encoders, you would then need a lot of CPU power if you wanted to record multiple shows at the same time, especially if you want to record directly to MPEG4 format.

IMO the following is most important when building a MythTV system (not sure how much applies to other Open Source PVRs):

A decent amount of memory. 256MB is bare minimum for a combination frontend/backend system. 512MB is good.

Lots of hard-drive space. I thought that 80GB would be plenty, but every now and then I get a number of shows queued up and fill up the drive. 160GB would be better. The drive doesn't need to be fast, even the slowest drives are fast enough to stream multiple live video streams off of them. 5400 RPM drives suffice if they are big enough. More important is to put the right filesystem where you are storing your recordings. EXT3 is a lot slower than JFS or XFS when it comes to deleting large files, it takes 3-5 seconds on my system to delete multi-gigabyte files. JFS or XFS can delete large files almost instantly.

Re:PVR Distro

[Baseclass]

I've been using Knoppmyth for several months and am extremely happy with the results.

Although I've dabbled in Linux off and on for several years, I'm hardly proficient. MythTV has renewed my love of Linux in a big way. The Knoppmyth distro proved to be a perfect catalyst. The install is simple and straight forward (do your research on supported hardware first!) Check out the forums at My Settop Box. It's based off Debian (all hail apt-get!). The developers did an outstanding job of setting up the bare essentials and they keep pace with stable MythTV builds. This has everything the commercial PVRs have and much much more. My dad has been a devout ReplayTV user for sometime and was blown away by the freedom MythTV provides. Since it's Linux you are free to do anything your heart desires. My 7 year old has become very proficient at pulling up his favorite Futurama episodes (yes I've taught him well), music, pictures...you name it. He's actually a better navigator than the mrs. :)

Please note however, it's still under heavy development and shouldn't be attempted if you aren't a geek who enjoys hacking config files or aspiring to learn Linux.

The only major problem I've experienced is that everyone who sees mine wants me to build them one.

Re:TiVo uses Linux too!

[AKnightCowboy]

They provide source code, under the GPL, for all GPL licensed software that they use. You can get this from their website. Doesn't that meet all the GPL's requirements?

No. They lock you out of modifying your machine in any way, or at least they attempt to. That's not in the spirit of open source software. If TiVo actually cared about the community instead of just using them for cheap labor to build a royalty free base OS they'd put a serial console port and an ethernet NIC on it and provide instructions on how you can ssh into the TiVo and start hacking away at it to do other things like MP3 playing or streaming movies from a PC ala ReplayTV's DVarchive project. I will never, ever understand supposedly open source advocates using and promoting TiVos, possibly the most closed PVR system available.

And before the TiVo fanboy moderators mod me down as a troll, I'd like to point out that I run a *real* open source Linux PVR system using MythTV on the backend w/Debian GNU/Linux as the base OS and an Via Epia M10000 as a frontend system using Minimyth (www.linpvr.org). Both these projects have made making a Linux PVR a snap.

The TiVo double standard

[Call Me Black Cloud]

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.

Free schedule listings

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

freevo best for small boxes?

[broeman]

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 ;)

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 /dev/video0 > file, it went great, so I looked for other alternatives.

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 /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).

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.

Re:MythTV setup not for the faint of heart

[Dachannien]

Also note that you can use MythTV to transcode the programs recorded by the PVR-250 to remove commercial breaks from the file and to use a more efficient encoding, which reduces file size to well under a GB per half hour.

Re:TiVo uses Linux too!

[AKnightCowboy]

Want a better hardware implementation of TiVo? Take the software and port it to your toaster. Quit whining that they're not doing what YOU want them to do. DIY.

I swear to Christ some of you people must be getting free TiVos or something. I've never advocated ANYTHING as rabidly as TiVo fanboys do. They rival Mac and Amiga fanboys in the blind faith they have in their devices. I've used a TiVo and find it absolutely crippled compared to my MythTV box.

Re:TiVo uses Linux too!

[Moofie]

I don't own a TiVo. I don't like TiVo. I won't pay TiVo for the privilege of looking at their guide data.

See, I DO want a better hardware implementation than TiVo. So I'm going to do it myself. The difference is, I don't whine about TiVo not doing it for me.