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Step By Step: Building a MythTV PVR for $635

Posted by michael on from the longest-march dept.

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."

4 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Or by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  2. Re:Or by typhoonius · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

  3. Just For Comparison by MBCook · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  4. TiVo = A linux distro by KB1GHC · · Score: 5, Informative

    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