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?

[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...

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.

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.