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Linux Looms Large in DVRs, PVRs
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at LinuxDevices there's a new fanless digital entertainment center reference design based on Linux and the MythTV open source DVR (digital video recorder) software. The 'Royal Linux Media Center' runs ESG's Royal Linux OS on a Transmeta development board based on its Efficeon chip. Linux has been increasingly popular in DVRs and PVRs, with examples including TiVo (of course), HP's recently unveiled Linux media hub, i3's Mood box, Interact-TV's Telly, Siemens' Speedstream, VWB's MediaReady 4000, Amino's AmiNet500, Sharp's Galileo, Dream-Multimedia-Tv's Dreambox,
NEC's AX10, and Sony's CoCoon, to name a few."
That's all well and good, but does it run Linux?
Oh, fuck it!
Linux is well poised for the appliance market... but I have to wonder when DRM and the DMCA will make it difficult, if not impossible, to provide the services on Linux needed to compete in the media space if DRM gets in the way. The simple way, I guess, is to put the DRM enforcement into hardware, but I think that leaves us all worse off in the end.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Play WMV9 ?
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IIRC, Dish also uses linux in all of their set top boxes, including their DVR units.
So yeah, linux seems seriously popular in the various DVRs that are available. Is there a source that lists known hacks/mods available for them?
I heard there's some hacked together thing called Teevough (sp??) that uses it as well? Anyone heard of this Teavoe?
Tey Veaux?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You are right, DRM enforcement in hardware is worse off. Palladium / Trusted Computing, in whatever incarnation, is still being pushed at us, this time as a way of supposedly making a computer more secure. If successful, it would either:
1.) Make Linux buy a license for every version of binary that we use. Licenses would be controlled by Microsoft, so this would be prohibitively expensive, unless we can all settle on a single binary kernel, essentially making Linux proprietary -- as in, individual users can no longer alter it to meet their needs without dropping the DRM support.
2.) Ignore DRM. Hopefully consumers will follow suit, and these devices are critical. If we don't let the industry impose its own standards, we can still watch movies with our own software. How are people going to react when their Terminator 4 doesn't work on their Linux-based DVD player? Especially with the quality of movies so low recently -- I'd sell my soul and buy an Xbox for Halo 2, but no way I'll sell out Linux for Blade: Trinity.
Putting DRM in software at least allows someone to crack it and provide other software. Putting DRM in hardware would make it, to my knowledge, impossible to break without some serious hardware cracking. The difference is that Joe Blow can break CSS by downloading a DeCSS-enabled mplayer, but he can't break Trusted Computing, because he can't "download" a modded Trusted Computer. And a "Trusted Computer" would be harder to mod than, say, an Xbox.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Someone out there make a streamlined tivo-like box (using the reference board above), having the following properties:
1) Slick design. Not a computer in a funny case, something with a home electronics feel. Fanless!
2) Good remote control.
3) Hardware MPEG4 encoding/decoding
4) Open source tivo-like software (not mythtv, something usable).
5) Quality TV output and sound hookups.
6) Open firmware (no DRM, no proprietary files, no restrictions, hardware documentation provided).
7) Ethernet and/or wifi and/or USB.
I'll buy it. I'll buy two, one for my parents. It should work out of the box like a tivo, but be hackable by anyone that desires to do so. Make your money selling the hardware, not subscriptions. The community will take care of improving the software (which will make your hardware even more attractive).
The GPL doesn't say legally that modifications to the software can only be made for machines which allow one to modify software.
BUT.
GPL also says that users can redistribute under later versions. And RMS has already hinted at cleaning it up to avoid just this kind of thing.
AND.
The Spirit of the GPL is to provide software that people can modify and use however they want, without letting others take the software and make it proprietary. But by making it impossible to run custom software on the target hardware, the use of Open Source becomes a marketing ploy and essentially a leeching strategy for development.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Dang. I was on the brink of either getting a Telly or building my own MythTV using a Shuttle box with Intel. Now I see that there are six other products besides the Telly, and more coming.
My plans are starting to look like "early adopter impatience"...yes, yes, there's always a better system coming out, ut's never the perfect time to buy in, yada yada. But! I don't want to buy JUST before the cost/benefit curve goes through an elbow.
I'm getting a feeling that 2005 is the Year of the Elbow for DVRs.
Over the last 5 years Microsoft and their cronies have been crowing about who's going to "own the livingroom". The idea has been to get away from the PC and onto the TV.
I'm sure Linux making such deep inroads isn't going to sit well with Gates and Ballmer. I'm also sure they will attack Linux with all their legal and marketing muscle. Expect to see a bloodbath over this one.
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A potentially interesting example not mentioned is Street Fire Sound which has an open source hardware offering.
.. which mythtv doesn't then have? because that's what you're implying by the way you're puffing them.
looking at the features, mythtv looks like it does more, a LOT more.
including stuff like picture in picture, multi card support - and get this, transparent multi machine support: "Distributed architecture allowing multiple recording machines and multiple playback machines on the same network, completely transparent to the user.", rss, mpeg4, mpeg2 decoders/encoders and a whole lot of other stuff.
maybe mythtv gets mentioned more often because it does more and is prettier? anyhow, if you say that one thing is better why not back it up with features the other doesn't have
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I have a Dreambox and let's just say that it has some *ahem* special capabilities when it comes to satellite television. And of course, it runs Linux (currently an unpatched 2.6.9-rc1 ppc kernel). Good stuff. :)
It's DVR capabilities are also improving daily, thanks to an active CVS repository where Enigma, (which is like MythTV) is being developed by people all over the world.
Visit my forum Open Dreambox North America for specific info for usage in the states and canada
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Some of VIA's CPUs have built-in compression and encryption hardware that would seem perfect for a DVR.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Seriously. I bought a Sony HDTV LCD projection TV for Christmas, and was surprised to see that it came with a GPL. It's running one of the real-time embedded Linux platforms (I forget which one).
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
MythTV currently relies on libavcodec on the backend to do video compression/decompression. The libavcodec library implements the various MPEG compression algorithms, which are *very* vigerously protected by the LA MPEG patent pool group.
Any commercial implementation of a DVR using MythTV would be at extreme risk of prosecution by the LA MPEG group for unauthorized usage of the MPEG patents.
It would be very nice to see MythTV transitioned to use the Theora (www.theora.org) video codec, as this is a patent-free video compression / decompression library.
I've been putting together a MythTV box. I don't know the answers, but get involved in the mailing lists. (See the bottom of this page http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInfo.)
s / (mailing list archive)
Other useful references:
http://www.mythtv.info/ (MythTV wiki)
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/user
http://www.mythtv.org/
But why not, say, hardware Theora encoding/decoding?
Because hardware that encodes/decodes Theora does not exist to the best of my knowledge. that, and MPEG 4 (and its varients) is widely supported by many systems/devices now (it's the video equivalent of mp3).
Why not software encoding/decoding, if it was just as fast?
Okay. I'm not fundamentally opposed to this, especially on the decoding side. A hardware encoder gives you the opportunity to use a much lower power (ie, no fans needed, lower power consumption) general purpose processor. This also generally brings the cost of the hardware down (which any embedded systems engineer like myself is obsessed with).
8) Upgradable
I thought harddrive upgrading was implicit in 6, but might as well make it explicit. In fact, sell it to me without a harddrive, just an image of the firmware on a CD. Further, since the firmware is entirely open, you can boot whatever you wish.
9) No reliance on proprietary/Windows stuff.
Absolutely.
And btw, how do you get the content of subscriptions, without the subscription?
Easy: you buy a subscription, but not from the hardware manufacturer. Instead of trying to make the money back on loss-leading hardware, the hardware people are out of the picture now. I can buy a subscription at a super-low rate from anyone who will sell it to me (competition), scrape it from a website, type it in myself. And when I stop paying my subscription, my device doesn't stop working.
No, it is still on .16 .17 to comeout sometime soon, but there isn't a .18, the article is wrong (shocking I know)
CVS is quite stable righ now as well, so I would expect
The one problem I have had \w PVRs is getting the digital channels to work correctly. My old tivo wouldnt do this (maybe series 2 does?).
Anyways, I recently joined the beta program for the Comcast PVR. It is actually running a stripped-down version of windows media center. Now, I hate comcast, but I have to admit this device solves all the problems I had \w my Tivo. 1) the digital channels work 2) the recommendations are less silly 3) it only cost 4 dollars a month extra. I would *much* rather give my money to tivo, but comcast will have them beat once this device goes public.
Wht do manufacturers keep coming up with special names and looks for their PVR/DVRs? Why not take the approach that made VCRs ubiqutous and have a general design that everyone knows and will not be afraid to buy. If everytime someone walks into a store and sees 10 different versions of what are essentially the same device, they're going to inevitably get confused. Its already tough enough getting folks to shed their VCRs for a digital replacement so why compound the issue? In my opinion commodidty and simplicity is what will drive the DVR/PVR market to the levels of market penetration (or saturation if you will) that VCRs have already achieved. Whenever something whiz-bang enters the market this always seems to happen and is eventually later "fixed" by the companies that make it simple enough for Joe Sixpack to own and operate, which is a point I hope we're quickly approaching. Until then the standalone DVR/PVRs will be a fractured market fighting to stay alive. Don't get me wrong, I love the ability to space & time-shift my stuff in a digial format, but too many options/features can lead to a divergence in the selling points that may end up killing any advanced funtionality they offer (assuming costs don't do the trick beforehand).
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Your beef is with ATI. I have an All-In-Wonder 3D Pro AGP 8mb card. This is from when AGP was first introduced. Pentium II era. There is STILL no decent TV input support that I could even find under Linux. It was a ton of hacking and messing around with beta/cvs drivers the last time I looked (a few months ago). If ATI would make the drivers so you could use your card, things would be fine. They make bianary closed source drivers so you can use 3D, why can't they do it for TV input too? Ask 'em, I'd like to know the answer. They also refuse to tell people what they need to know to make the apropriate video capture drivers, let alone 3D and such.
The solution? Buy video capture stuff from Hauppage, or anyone else who supports Linux. Buy 3D stuff from nVidia (who at least gives great 3D support for all their cards) or someone else who supports their cards well under Linux (Matrox has good Linux drivers, don't they?).
In short: DON'T BUY ATI FOR LINUX USE. It's that simple.
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Couple thoughts
1) if you have a beefy enough computer, hardware encoding is not really necessary, especially if you just want to "try out some of the linux solutions". Buy any number of the BT878-based TV cards and try with that. I know the TV Wonder VE used to go for about $30. Granted, it's mono, but I'm sure there's other stuff, cheaper. I remember Isaac mentioning that a 1700mhz machine was almost enough to record two streams and play one simultaneously.
2) The idea for your "ppc-based" box makes a lot of sense, too, and I'm curious to see what people will do with it, PVR-wise.
3) MediaMVP - you might want to look at the PrismIQ. I know the GUI is a lot better, and I think it has some features the MVP doesn't. Unfortunately, I believe both require some software running on another computer. (And neither supports MPEG4 natively, the prismiq uses the server computer to transcode). Oh, and the big annoyance on both - NO PCM AUDIO. Means that iMovie-based DVDs can't be ripped and played - you need to convert them to something else. Not a huge deal, but a deal nonetheless.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
WMV9 is the one that has the nice "feature" where it will open up a browser window and load an arbitary page from the web simply by trying to view a movie.
You need to (from reputable companies) purchase a license for that one media file before it can be played, the web page displayed should be a purchase/more info page for the artist.
Adware spreading virus infections have noticed this now.
liqbase
I think the most appropriate comment from television and satellite companies to Microsoft would be "Your reputation precedes you."
You forgot the Prismiq media player, and the soon to be launched Prismiq media center. http://www.prismiq.com/ http://www.prismiq.org/
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Those of you who'd rather watch satellite programming, don't forget to check out VDR. Add a cheap PCI card to your PC and you can be time-shifting satellite programming in no time.
Linux at home
I'm also using a Hauppage card for my MythTV box (PVR-250). Great piece of hardware.
Seriously though, you are a moron. Why should companies care about what software their devices run but for the fact of profit. That's what companies strive to do (make profit) and it doesn't make them whores for doing so (at least not in America). If a company thinks that by using Windows (or anything else) they will get a higher profit then it should be expected that it's the "right" and logical choice, especially considering that choosing Windows is neither illegal or immoral.
If you as the consumer have a problem with a product (i.e. it runs Windows) then that's your own bias and it doesn't make the company a "whore" (except perhaps in your own biased mind). The choice you can make is to not buy the product (perhaps to try to punish them), but if the company has a decent market research staff, they will have seen it coming.
Moof.