Plextor PVRs Now Support Linux

planetjay writes "Plextor PVRs now support Linux with an open source SDK for their ConvertX PVR external USB TV tuner/encoder This is great news for Linux PVR users who want to use an external device with hardware based MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/DivX encoding in their MythTV or Freevo homebuilt PVR. "Plextor is strongly committed to supporting the Open Source Software movement with free development tools that help speed the creation of next-generation Linux-based video software," said Dirk Peters, director of marketing, Plextor."

Comments

Kudos

[michaelhood]

I keep loving seeing these companies lately who are Doing The Right Thing (tm). Here's to hoping clue is contagious.

Re:Kudos

[pe1rxq]

With a GPL'd driver, you can't have this running on other platforms. At least not legally.

You can use the gpl'd driver as documentation for writing a new driver....
You just can't cut and paste it.

Tivo?

[Manchot]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all Tivos already Linux-based? And didn't they just recently come out with an SDK for third-party users?

Re:gee

[enrico_suave]

there's a lot to what you are saying... it's absolutely true that the satellite PVR, takes the digital stream and writes the digital bits right to the local disk and there's no loss of quality.

BUT there are other reasons to build a PVR... There are satellite cards out there, and if the satellite companies allowed you to legitimately use your subscription access card with one of these cards, it would be a moot benefit.

Look, the reason to roll your own PVR has little to do with economics. If you can get a DVR for 5 dollars extra a month on your cable bill, it'll take a while to recoup a PC investment alone...

So if it's not about economics/being cheap... what's it about alfie?

It's about freedom. freedom to move content around. Burn DVDs... Let me see you move your favorite show to your smartphone, PDA, PVP, laptop, etc... Freedom to add features at will. Does your satellite DVR let you add movie times, pull in comics, or get slashdot rss feeds? IT's the freedom to tinker...

You don't get that with your satellite provided DVR, IMHO.

*Shrug* YMMV

e.

Hats off to Plextor

[dmouritsendk]

Now this is class, not only are they the first company to release drivers this kind of product for linux, they way they are doing it is truely awesome.

Released under the GPL(this will probertly be included in the kernel pretty soon i guess?), V4L2 support and code samples.

I can hardly wait for gstreamer (and it's v4l2 source element) to get a bit more stable/functional, and stuff like gstsharp gets included in the mono stack. I imagine we'll start to see a hole bunch of neat video applications.

as opposed to Hauppauge's lack of support

[jbr439]

Plextor gets two thumbs up for this. Hauppauge gets thumbs down for not only not providing open source drivers for their PVR-x50 cards, but for not even supplying proprietary drivers. It's due to what can only be described as amazingly valient work on the part of the IVTV developers (and users) that Hauppauge's cards are usable on Linux systems.

Luckily for Hauppauge, there is currently nothing to worry about with the Plextor PVR having a MSRP of $199. But if that price ever comes down ...

what about the broadcast flag?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to buy some pvr cards now rather than later so I don't end up with cards with a broadcast flag prematurely enabled in the cards. Don't be so sure that the manufacturers will wait until the deadline to enable the broadcast flag. They may decide to enable the flag during scheduled downtime rather than wait until a date deadline when they may have no deadline (and orders for different hardware to be built on the same equipment).

What is important is to be able to discern whether this pvr hardware or any of the other pvr hardware has the broadcast flag enabled so you know which ones to avoid.

One of the things that worried me was the pvr pci cards themselves. I'm no expert on pci technology, so the concern is how long before the cards are obsolete? I have some older computers that use the old slot technology (ISA?), and those cards are now useless. Ended up having to buy new cards. From what I've read, the PCI Express slots are smaller and use serial technology, so they are incompatible with the current pci cards. And after PCI Express? PCI-X?

What happens to all the pci pvr cards when the motherboards start including PCI Express? They are already adding the slots. It looks like they are mixing the PCI Express with the regular PCI slots, similar to what they did with the old transition to PCI. The irony is that the pvr cards would benefit tremendously from PCI Express. I've been thinking of buying two over-the-air digital cards, one the air2pc and the other the 3000 card (can't remember the rest of the name right now) so that I spread my risks. I've also planned to buy two pvr-350s, for a total of 4 cards. I already am figuring that the limitation with recording from the 4 total cards simultaneously would be the pci bus (raid would eliminate the hard drive i/o bottleneck).

The reason for sticking 4 cards in one backend for mythtv would be to keep electricity costs reasonable. One of the things I've noticed that many people ignore is the cost of running a computer 24/7. This is the problem with multiple backends for mythtv (and seti@home). If one backend can be used for recording and playback, that keeps the electricity costs at a minimum. Add a second backend and electricity costs double.

I've been watching the mythtv user list recently, as well as the irc channels for mythtv and knoppmyth so I can figure out where is the best place to buy all of the cards, the air2pc, the 3000, the pvr-250/350. It looks like some places are out of stock on them from time to time. And pricewatch is no help. Being out of stock brings up the original worries, that the cards sell out as they are made without a large stockpile, which makes it more likely that the broadcast flag will appear in cards sooner than the deadline because of the reasons I outlined above and because there is no old stock to work off.

The card listed in this post would be better than the pci cards if the hardware has all the functionality of the pci cards. The reason being that the connection, usb, would be more likely to outlast pci slots which are being obsoleted by the pci express. As for whether the bandwidth of usb 2.0 is an issue over a pci slot, I can't speak to that. But it keeps the pvr hardware working when the motherboard/computer becomes obsolete and finally fails.

Thanks, Hollings, and the rest of the Senators for pushing for the broadcast flag. Hope you choke on your campaign contributions and honorariums.

A list of stores to purchase the pvr-250/350 and air2pc and 3000 cards would be greatly appreciated. More than one reliable source would be appreciated as well. And the ir blaster also.

Comments about bandwidth requirements on the pci bus would be welcome also. Thanks.

Re:What's the easiest?

[Cylix]

Just go fetch a DVD Recorder with HD built in.

They have on screen guide data and schedulers.

You also get the added benefit of being able to record a dvd in realtime.

I did a good bit of research on them some time ago and there are some nice models out there. Some of the units are really pricey, but you can get a smaller HD model for 600$.

Besides pricey, the real drawback to a pre-built, ready to roll-out pvr like some panasonic units is they use EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data. So your guide stream has to be sucked out of the video stream. (I'm not sure if its compatible with PSIP (Digital Television guide data protocol).

However, it's been months since I've done any investigation and I'm sure things have changed a bit. I'm sure a casual google search will reveal something for you and I do believe there are a few places selling pre-built media boxes with myth and freevo. *I've even seen shuttle controls, but no one sells them that way*

If open source isn't your thing, you can always go the windows route and try out BeyondTV. However, for all of its features, it only ships with WM9 support for mpeg4 now. (Though I wrote a python script using mencoder to work with BTV to compress using divx) (There was also something off about width/height issues if you weren't using DivX pro)

Having used BTV and MythTV extensively I can say that MythTV really does a great job competing with a commercial app such as BTV.

I like both of them a great deal, but I've currently switched to MythTV and probably will remain a mythtv user for a long time.