Step By Step: Building a MythTV PVR for $635

hesby writes "Anandtech has just published the first half of a two-part article on building a MythTV PVR that they will ultimately compare with Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition on very similar hardware. As a result, they selected some components that the average user might not choose, just to keep things fair in the second part, where they pit the two PVRs head to head."

Comments

Or

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy a TiVo for $99.

Re:Or

[Anonymous Coward]

$99 + $299 lifetime fee = still cheaper. Heck, you can replace the hard drive with a bigger one and still come out ahead.

Re:Or

[typhoonius]

You can buy a TiVo for $99.

The article argues that you'll save money by not having to pay TiVo a monthly fee. Besides, for some of us, building a cool machine is an end in and of itself.

Anyway, I tried pricing a MythTV box a couple of days ago with a goal of keeping it under $500, and this is what I ended up with (copied right out of the link above):

• CD/DVD drive ($52)--Combo CD and DVD-writer. DVD-recording isn't essential, so I might downgrade this to a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive.
• Hard disk drive ($99)--160 GB, S-ATA, very quiet. A P-ATA drive with the same buffer is nearly the same price.
• Video card ($109)--CATV in, composite out, works with Linux and FreeBSD. The only people who dislike it seem to be kids who want to play Doom III on it.
• Sound card--Onboard might be good enough for now with a $5 3.5"-headphone-to-composite-audio cable from Radio Shack.
• Processor ($65)--Athlon XP 2000+, cheap, adequate. Retail instead of OEM so I don't have to get a heatsink/fan separately.
• Motherboard ($53)--Micro-ATX, S-ATA, AGP 8x. Committed to MSI because a motherboard without Engrish just isn't a motherboard. Three PCI slots for wireless adapter, eventually a sound card, and I dunno, 1394?
• Memory ($76)--512 MB DDR333, cheaper than DDR266. Screw dual-channel.
• Case/power supply--Needs something that can fit the video card (guess that entails finding a mobo that horizontally orients expansion cards if I don't want a lame-o tower).
• Wireless adapter ($30)--802.11g, cheap, works with Linux and FreeBSD. Going wireless so it isn't stuck in the same room as the router (and no way I'm running cat-5 everywhere in 20-mother-fucking-04).

Subtotal: $484.

Still need a case--certainly won't be paying $100+ for one like the article did--and probably a sound card that isn't onboard crap. It probably won't make the $500 goal, but it looks alright (barring any major oversights on my part).

Re:Or

[MBCook]

Not a bad list, but you really should "splurge" on the Happguage PVR-250 card. It does the encoding in hardware, so even a low end box could easily support two tuners. With the card you put in your list, all the encoding would fall on the CPU. Not only that, I'm not sure that nVidia's personal cinema is supported under Linux. An integrated video card (on the motherboard) would do fine as long as it had TV out that was supported under Linux (and looked half decent). Wouldn't even need that if you used a monitor.

Re:Or

[dioscaido]

This LBA issue is resolved in Series 2 Tivo's (the one's they are selling for $99, or $89 if you go to Best Buy). I got mine up to 330 hours (two 160Gb drives). The sky is the limit at this point.

Certainly, the linux/windows PVR has the plus of being able to play other media and donwloaded movies. Although I can't imagine a full fledged linux TiVo interface hack isn't in the works already to permit this functionality (Tivos come with USB, and support ethernet networking).

Re:Or

[mercuryresearch]

I can only echo the advice for using a PVR-250 (actually I suggest the PVR-350, which is encode and decode).

I've got a MythTV box running on a VIA mini-ITX using the slowest CPU offered, a fanless 533 MHz C3 "Eden." With the PVR-350 it loafs along at sub 5% CPU loading. The only downside to this slow of a CPU is occasionally there's a lag in menu selections or screens that need to do a lot of database work to update, but given the power savings and the fact that the box can be fanless, it's worth it.

Even cooler, I was able to use MythMusic to rip all my CDs that had been living in a 200 CD changer -- now I've got on screen menu, random access to the collection with complete artist/title info, instead of having to look up that a favorite CD is #153 in the changer. And I can create any playlist I want with minimal effort.

Tivo doesn't do anything like this -- one more advantage for MythTV.

Start adding up the cost of consumer electronic devices a Myth box can potentially replace, and it doesn't take long to make a compelling argument based on expense alone.

Just For Comparison

[MBCook]

I messed around with MythTV about a year ago. From what I could tell it was nice, but it wasn't usable for me (my computer was WAY underpowered for video encoding, which I knew going in). That said I've since gotten a DirecTiVo and I LOVE it.

So just for comparison, a low end brand new TiVo is $99 after rebates. A lifetime service contract is $299. The total is there for about $400. That's still about $250 under what the box in the article is. For that extra money you could get a 140 hour TiVo and still have $50 to spend on something else.

Or, if you have DirecTV, you can buy a DirecTiVo for about $100 and monthly service is $5 on top of your DirecTV bill. So that $650 will buy you the lowest end DirecTiVo and 110 months of service (about 9 years). DirecTiVos are wonderful machies, and can record two things at once, and it's all pure digital. I don't know the prices, but for $650 you could probably get a HD-DirecTiVo and a few months of HD/TiVo at least.

All that said, check out MythTV. If you already have parts on hand, it would be cheaper. It's a fun little project that can do tons of stuff, and there is no DRM (always a /. favorite). It was facinating watching the development list when I did. At that time they were discussing (and testing) ways of automaticaly skipping commercials, and it was very interesting to read. They talked about blank frame detecting (but you have to be careful so you don't miss a Simpsons's "eyeball" scene), using time (commercials come at fairly regular intervals), "bug" detection (the logo in the corner), etc.

MythTV can also show you weather, they were working on DVD and video playing as I remember, and MP3 playback. Plus you can have different frontend and backend boxes which would allow for very cool things.

All that said, if you just want a DVR, a TiVo is probably better. If you want your own Home Theater PC that can do all sorts of stuff and you want to be able to extend it yourself, check out MythTV.

TiVo = A linux distro

[KB1GHC]

TiVo is actually Linux based. So this isn't the First Linux DVR.

you can get TiVo source code at:
http://tivo.com/linux/linux.asp

Broadcast flag coming up...

[stinkfoot]

if you're interested in building your own PVR, you should take a look at EFF's broadcast flag page:

http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/

in less than a year, it will no longer be possible to buy a PC/HDTV decoder that is free of broadcast flag restrictions.

something to think about...

ReplayTV + DVArchive - Simpler, Around Same Cost

[meehawl]

Or... you could just buy an ethernet-ready, autoconfiguring ReplayTV for around $400 (lifetime) or less from eBay, boot up the free software Java-based DVArchive (works on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/Xp, Linux, Mac OSX 10.2.3 or later, Solaris, etc), and schedule, share, and distribute your content over your LAN or across the Internet at will. In this context, the ReplayTV box works like as a really very loosely coupled capture device with its own extensive on-board command set that can be driven remotely by the DVArchive program, either at a console or using a web browser. And unlike the Tivo's inferior HMO option, the DVArchive system costs nothing and is unemcumbered by DRM. Some select ReplayTV models even feature automatic commercial skipping (using associated XML content metatags) and let you download content from a library of several tens of thousands of shows stored on a wide distributed ReplayTV network. More info here or here.

Australian pre-packaged MythTV

[zbaron]

Like this. In fact, these are the guys that Aussie home brew MythTV builders get the programming info from.

Tivo?? No way, get a ReplayTV

[jmcmunn]

I have used all three: Tivo, ReplayTV, and Myth. For my money, I choose ReplayTV hands down. I currently own 2 of them.

Replay TV is about the same price as a Tivo. And unless I haven't seen the latest version of Tivo yet, you still can't easily get the vids off of your Tivo and onto a PC. With Replay TV, it is easy. Use a piece of software called DVArchive.

And yes, you can share recordings with other ReplayTV's of the same (or similar) model. Yes, you can program it over the web (my.replaytv.com I think it is, I never use it personally)

You can buy a good ReplayTV 5040 unit on Ebay for about $300 last I checked. This model has automatic commercial skip, and 30 second skip if you prefer to do it manually. I have one of these models and it kicks the crap out of my cousin's Tivo simply because I can network it with the 10/100 port on the back and get stuff off of it and onto my PC.

Lastly, if you want a bigger hard drive, there are instructions for installing dual 160 GB drives out there on the internet. I personally have plenty of room on my 40GB drive since I can archive to my PC.

Tivo I give a 7/10, Myth I give a 6/10 (mostly because it is more tedious to set up and lacks the all around neatness in the entertainment center) and I give ReplayTV 9/10. I do wish they had the thumbs up/down type thing Tivo has.

Re:And this is why Linux is not mainstream

[rjch]

"And finally, after several hours of turmoil and despair, we have installed and tested our Linux device. Its far from perfect - we cannot readily work with digital TV broadcasts, for example."

It's for exactly these reasons that people use Windows and Macs... this sort of thing is far above the average Joe's understanding I'm afraid, and it really shouldn't be stuff they have to know as it's not user friendly, confusing and assumes far too much prior knowledge.

However, as they pointed out in the article ("Opting for a different distribution that supports the PVR card natively would have been a better idea, but we have already gone this far...") they didn't pick the right distro. Had they chosen KnoppMyth, it would have worked damn near out of the box.

There are good reasons for having many distros. This is one of them.