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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:
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.
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
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!
My old coworker and friend uses this card and loves it, he just wishes he had better reception to get the HD channels in his area.
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.
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
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
I certaintly can't answer for the rest of the Linux PVR community, but I for one think my Linux PVR works great! I don't watch nearly enough TV to purchase a TiVo, and since my PVR was frankensteined from dead machines I had laying about, it cost me nothing but time. Of course I enjoy configuring and tweaking systems in spare time. :)
The sum and substance is: If you like playing around with this kind of stuff, go for it, and enjoy the fringe benifits of having some level of use. If you don't like spending the time, then buy a TiVo and support an emerging company. It's all about choice, and having a choice is just awesome in my opinion.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
How about today.
http://www.pchdtv.com/
Get a free ipod.
Look a little harder.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
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!"
If you're interested in MythTv and want a distro I would try Knoppmyth http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
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
linux/plesk root server II from 1and1.com
About now wishing I got the tier III =)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
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.
^^vv<><>BA
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.
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.
Quack, quack.
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)
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.
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.
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.
>>
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.
>>
well a great user on byopvr site put together a guide for just that.
Homebrew's guide to installing mythtv on slackware (w/pvr350 support)
also see this forum post on the subject
Good luck...
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
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?
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