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Software PVRs Becoming Tivo Killers
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech's Jason Cross examines PVR software that runs on Windows -- applications from SnapStream, Cyberlink, and SageTV. With TiVo's mounting price hikes, service contracts, and 'features' like self-deleting shows, the DIY option is getting more appealing all the time." From the article: "All the major TV features you're used to with TiVo or Windows Media Center Edition are there--quick 30 second skip, padding show recordings (start early and stop late), a nice integrated guide with easy-to-read program info. The interface design isn't quite as good as either of those two other options, but it's one of the best we've seen in a Windows-based PVR application outside of MCE. If we had to pick an annoyance, it's that you can't seem to bring up the program guide or navigate the menu without stopping the live TV or recording that you're watching. TiVo plays the current TV program in the background, and MCE plays it in a small window in the lower left. We didn't miss it until it was gone."
I currently run MCE05 after years of Tivo and love it. It never fails, the interface is usable by the lady, and it was a breeze to install.
I tried EVERY other Win & Lin PVR and none were as stable or easy to install/use. The new Rollup2 for MCE adds copy/view restrictions but they're relying on the video driver and encoder to pass the flag. I found a driver that doesn't pass the flag, and I'm happy.
I'd love to switch to Meedio or MythTV but recent trials a few weeks ago vetoed the idea. Stability and ease of use weren't there yet. MCE is a performance hog but it works. No kludges, never crashes and really integrates well in my house with the Xbox Extender.
If we had to pick an annoyance, it's that you can't seem to bring up the program guide or navigate the menu without stopping the live TV or recording that you're watching.
It gives you something to do during commercials.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
When we have MythTV on the penguin, and even MythTV based LiveCDs, who honestly cares about running a windows PVR?
... tivo killer eh? ...eesh...
And with all the DRM and such on windows these days, who would WANT to run a windows based PVR? Ignoring of course that adding xp pro to some hardware pumps the cost of that PVR by $150
-GenTimJS
Prepare to read 500 "Windows is teh suck! Use MythTV on Linux! It is da bomb!" comments...
The average home user still can't be bothered to set one up though and will thus still want the nice shiny, straight out of the box option
Lets see a Tivo with 2 tuners which does it's job damn well 24x7 for $99 or a $1000+ dollar desktop which won't be up 24x7....
Don't forget the open source Freevo and MythTV software. I have just installed them on my (Linux only ) PC. Works great!
Then it killed my iPod too, because it knew too much.
I don't have a TV (not since 1989) so TiVO like devices haven't interested me, but I've been keeping a casual track on the goings-on with TiVO, MythTV, and others.
But what confuses me is this: All the "new" features they keep adding, seem like a step backward to me, are these features forced upon you regardless of device you have, or are "1st Gen" model TiVOs and whatnot, valuable property for ignoring all the new stuff?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I'm shopping for DirecTV now, and was amazed that their 'free' PVRs come with a monthly fee! While the software PVRs get better and easier to install, I'm going to go that route to be free of fees and restrictions. So, the million dollar question, which is the best bet right now:
http://freevo.sourceforge.net/
or
http://www.mythtv.org/
or is there another option I'm missing?
fak3r.com
I, for one, have been interested in MythTV for a while. It's looks like a great F/OSS solution. Any others?
Coderz 4 Life
While I don't like the games Tivo is playing of late, one of the biggest appeals of my DirecTivo is that it captures the satellite video stream directly, without any degradation due to re-encoding. When I watch a recording it is EXACTLY the same as when it was "live".
I see they wanted Windows only, why didn't they include http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/MediaPortal? It is open source, has the features they want, and runs on XP. Now, if someone (anyone) could include QAM support, I would be all set.
The one thing I like about Beyond TV- other than the fact that it runs just fine on obsolete hardware and an obsolete operating system- is that it produces WMV files. I believe MythTV on Linux does so as well- but TIVO fails in this regard. What do WMV files do for me? Give me two hours on the train every day to watch TV, during my commute, on my Windows Mobile IPAQ. That's five half-hour shows (once you skip the commercials) or three hour length shows- and I use the showsqueeze function to put them into a very watchable, 60MB/hr format that fits nicely onto flash cards.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
With the ability, for years, to record straight to my HD I couldn't think of a decent reason to get a TiVo. Heck, I even get TV schedules and can pick and choose what to record, when and it came with my ATI video card. No funny business, telling me what I can and can't record, how long it lasts, what I can do with it, etc. It's all a bunch of MPEG files and plays as good as when I recorded it.
This all subject to change when everything goes HD.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I've stuck with the DVR from my cable provider. So far there hasn't been a TiVo like auto-delete. The nice thing is its only $5 a month additional and when it dies, I take it back and get a new one. I've had to do it twice so far. DVR can kill a hard drive. Why waste my money buying new drives when they can do it for me.
People are just too stupid to use them. I mean, if you couldn't figure out how to set the clock on your VCR, how in the hell are you going to figure out how to use a COMPUTER (*gasp*) to record your soaps???
It's called BitTorrent and a DVD Burner. Capture TV only. I pay for my cable. I just don't program my VCR properly.
Joe ya, but what about the guy that wants to network a multimedia system over his ousehold! Frankly i think it's easier by starting it out with a central PVR computer.
You can then have several drones take care of sound all over. Could be real cool. But i'm not sure what the average joe can do to have that?
Coding projects blog - Code Slim
and I'll insert my "can your granmother setup and use mythTV without calling anyone and figure out how to tape "Days of Our Lives" on it?
just add up the phone and gas charges there to see the infamous "price points"
What I really find interesting about Tivo is their advertising model. I don't think I've even seen an actual TiVo ad, but rather product placement in every TV show imaginable. I head it mentioned in Law and Order, The Daily Show and there was an entire segment dedicated to it in Family Guy complete with TiVo sound effects.
Although some of these references may have just been for the hell of it, like on talk shows, when the name comes up in sitcoms and dramas, it's pretty safe to assume the plug was paid for.
Living in the southern US, everyone down here likes to refer to generic products by their brand name. Every soda in the word becomes a "Coke" even if its a Pepsi, every portable mp3 player becomes an "iPod" even if it's an "iPlay" and now ever PVR device is being referred to as a "TiVo" when it's really a Comcast PVR (which is probably made by Motorola or some other company).
TiVo might go away, but the name will stick in every household.
The standard offerings by cable companies are pretty good. Cost $5 a month for standard definition PVRs or $10 a month for the HD PVRs.
That $10 a month for the HD PVR is practically untouchable. There just isn't any HD PVR solutions that are comparable. I am talking about more than just the over the air HD content that MythTV, et. all. can record. HBO-HD, InHD, TnTHD, Discovery HD, etc.
You can get cable boxes that output HD over firewire for recording purposes, but those firewire devices must respect the "Broadcast Flag" like signal the cable companies have implented. IE, you don't control the content coming from that port.
I am coming from an HD centric view point. SD centric viewers obviously have more choices and options available to them.
I have recently been looking into getting some kind of DVR for our living room and/or bedroom, and I don't think that DVR software is going to win out over DVR appliances such as Tivo anytime soon.
Ideally, I would like to have a device that is: cheap (I only want to spend more than $300), small (limited space near TV), quiet (I don't like to have noisy devices on all the time), and extensible (I like adding neat stuff like weather, games or my own custom programs).
Ideally, I would like a small, quiet computer that runs MythTV, which is incredibly extensible. However, building a small, quiet computer that runs MythTV takes lots of money to buy the small form factor equipment and the quiet power supplies, CPUs, hard drives, etc. I could use an old computer, but those are ugly, large, and rather noisy (too much fan and hard drive noise).
I find that Tivo, which is cheaper, provides everything except the extensibility. There is a beta of a Tivo API on sourceforge, which looks promising, but there aren't all the neat features and extensions yet, like one finds for MythTV. Tivo also isn't nicely upgradable, and the product lifetime service subscription needs to be paid again after an upgrade. On the other hand, I hear that Tivo has a software advantage over MythTV, where the UI is nicer and it does all sort of neat things for you.
So at the moment, although I would like a nice MythTV setup, I'm probably going to go with Tivo, primarily due to price/benefit ratio. I'm sure there are a lot of people who are in the same situation, so I don't see the DVR software gaining dominance until more hardware like the Mac Mini is available for a cheaper price.
I have heard rumors as to some Apple DVR hardware/software in the works. Anyone know about that?
Does any of this stuff work with DirecTV or the Dish Network? Or, for that matter, digital cable? If you want any of these, you need a commercial DVR solution.
This year its "they both suck because neither supports QAM/CableCard HD".
And, in fact, they both suck because neither supports QAM/CableCard HD.
Until there are input cards that accept a cablecard, software PVRs will always be a fringe hobbiest activity. Joe six pack doesn't want to deal with the hassle, so Tivo or a service-provided DVR makes more sense. And anyone who has bought one of the 16.5 million HD sets in the US doesn't find them terribly useful either. I have three Tivos sitting in my storage unit, and I'm sure I'll never use any of them again because I don't own an SD TV anymore. It may piss me off to be stuck using the near-worthless Motorola box that Comcast provides, but at least I can watch and record HD, and most stuff I watch is, in fact, in HD.
And I'd bet it'll be a long while, if ever, before we see a cablecard-compatible input device.
I, personally, use Dish Network's DVR, and am quite appalled with it. Not only do I have to pay an additional $10 a month to use it (its supposed to be $5, but they give you a hidden fee), but its fairly unreliable. The system powers itself off if its not used in awhile. Thats not a bad feature. The thing is, if it does this, it doesn't record programs once its off. Quite annoying. To top this off, it will sometimes say it has recorded a program, but it didn't. So, when you try and re-record it (if you're this lucky), it will cancel the new recording because it will say its a duplicate. To add insult to injury, the box itself can become quite noisy, as it heats up a good bit, and the fans are loud. The Dish Network service is great, it rarely goes down, and is great, except for some occasional lags between the video and audio, but I'd be glad to trade my DVR in for a computer-based version any day of the week (mostly for DVD burning capability).
Because I don't. Don't own a TV, that is. And I'm posting here because I'm interested in the technology. I'm not interested in television, though. Because I don't own a TV.
I can't speak for the parent, but one reason I'm attracted to MythTV is because of external modules, stuff like MythGame, MythWeather, MythPhone, etc.
As for TiVo, they still (for now) have one big advantage for me: I'm a DirecTV subscriber, and TiVo is the only device that will record the digital signal instead of the analog conversion. When DirecTV starts offering their own DVRs, I'll probably start using it instead. I love my TiVo and MythTV, but the most important thing to me is seeing what I watch in its glorious original quality.
I use MythTV over here and when you pull up the program guide, the currently playing program does, in fact, get resized and shows up in the upper right corner of the screen. Takes a bit of time to bring it up, though.. 2.8Ghz machine but you can still feel it chug.
I've been running a dual tuner PVR now for about 6 months. Unless or until someone comes up with a solution to let consumers record channels above 125 [my tuner cards can not...including the $400+ ATI X800XT All in Wonder] then AFAIK provider supplied solutions such as DTV or Comcast's DVR is the only way to go to capture HD content.
This looks interesting.
_ 5000_advanced
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1098/mediaready
I have had two MCE2005 computers and loved them both, unfortunately the first one had the motherboard melted, apparently couldn't cope with my 24hour 7days a week uptime, but the current one is doing great (3 months old :d )
Inbetween them I had a Power Cinema software installed on a Windows XP machine, and that was awful.
MCE gives me unlimited (hard drive is huge) recording time, free guide (one off payment for machine), and is one of the most easy to use software packages I have seen in a long time, the GUI is also lovely.
Microsoft did this right, and it is MCE that is keeping me from switching to Linux, because I love my MCE
If you're getting DirecTV, use one of their PVRs. The reason is simple -if I'm reading correctly, the PC based PVRs only record analog video to digital. IOW your 100% digital DirecTV show has to be converted to analog, then back to digital to save it on a PC using one of these devices. Same for digital cable. The loss in quality may or may not matter to you.
With BeyondTV you CAN view the guide while live tv and even recorded shows are playing. It brings the entire guide up as a transparent screen and keeps playing the video in the background. It works great and with the remote that came with my Hauppage card it is only a button push away.
"With TiVo's mounting price hikes..."
What series of price hikes are you referring to? The prices for the Tivos themselves have been consistently dropping, albeit with rebates (and the before rebate prices haven't been going up). The monthly subscription fee has increased just once in the past several years - certainly not at all in the 2+ years I've been a subscriber - and the multi-unit fee has actually DROPPED.
I'm guessing you've never had a Tivo - you just get all your "facts" from Slashdot discussions?
#DeleteChrome
I got a basic computer (3Ghz) with 512 MB RAM and then added 4 things:
-2 hauppage PVR150's (dual tuners) ($95 CDN each)
-A Super-quiet fan ($65 CDN)
-A Cooler-Master case ($30 more than a standard beige one)
-SageTV ($80CDN)
Then I signed up for the CANADIAN guide from Zap2It and I'm done. Whole thing took about 3 hours after the computer was running. Used an old copy of Win2kPro, an Old Nvidia card for TV out via S-video, and an old copy of PCAnywhere for remote-control from other parts of the house (the PVR150's come with remotes for actually pressing play/pause/etc).
My Wife loves it and can't live without it. WE CAN watch the current channel, an Xvid, a recording etc while surfing the guide.. but we never surf the guide anymore. We set all our shows as favourites and just watch recordings and XVids.
It kicks ass.
--- Zhez
I am interested in building an HD-capable PVR system, but I am concerned that some HDTV capture card manufacturers have already built in Broadcast Flag support in anticipation of the regulation that was to go in effect last summer.
I know that pcHDTV is safe. Have any of the other manufacturers, such as ATI, already built in Broadcast Flag capabilities?
I really wanted to build my own DVR/PVR box but I ended up getting a Tivo. I think what it comes down to with me, is I didn't have another box laying around. That appears to be the argument with most people towards building a cheap DVR/PVR.
Oh just grab a box you have laying around and for around $200 you'll have a sweet little MythTv box etc etc. But when you don't have one laying around you're looking at at least $500 from what I calculated.
So I picked up my Tivo box for $50 from Target and yes I do have to pay $13 a month but I figure that in the time it takes for that $13 a month to add up to the cost of my MythTv box (approx 3 years) I'll be ditching it all and going all HDTV anyway; and at that time I'll re-evaluate BYO DVR/PVR vs. flat out buying one.
Comcast has an dual-tuner HD-DVR which is pretty snazzy although for the life of me I don't know if it's licensed by TiVO or what runs it. It looks the same as its cable box and so far has worked great. It can record about 15GB of HD content or 40 hours of regular content.
It, too, carries an additional fee, but it's actually the same price to get a second box for your home. At that point, it's about the same price as just replacing your original one.
I'm not affiliated with Comcast in any way besides being a customer. I do wish their services were a LITTLE less expensive.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Parent links to an affiliate link portal.
This is the real bummer here. Without CableCard, or its satellite equivalent, we will never be able to build an HD PVR, let alone some PC-based system. And even WITH CableCard, we miss out on Pay-Per-View, On-Demand, and other services (at least until the probably-never-to-see-the-light-of-day CableCard 2.0 that should be out sometime in 2007). I have a Comcast HD PVR. It works ok, although compared to my Replay 5000, it is pathetic, in terms of conflict management, predictability, etc. However, the Comcast box lets me record 2 HD streams at once. The Replay is only standard-def. As far as I can tell, Comcast is trying its hardest to derail CableCard. As for Satellite, don't count on anything, even as lame and rudimentary as CableCard, in the near future.
Will any of the Media PC's be able to support Cable Card whenever it becomes available?
I use the Cable Company provided Scientific Atlanta DVR. It's a piece of junk, but it mostly works. The main thing that has kept me from building my own DVR is that I'll still need to rent a box from the cable company to decode the digital signal. When I can do it all with only one box, then I'll definitely be ready to switch.
- the Hun
I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
Jeez, don't click that link. Stupid me, it's: GB-PVR. They've got a nice forum and a dedicated developer. Unfortunately, it's not open source. But neither are any of the commercial offerings.
The Kerr Divine: My wife's battle with a mysterious illness.
GBPVR, found here. It's great, free, and does some really cool features. It's definitely worth checking. I was actually prepared to drop money on a Windows software if I liked it. I don't give two craps about viewing photos, and I don't really listen to much music that isn't in the car or on my own computer. All I looked for was a good PVR that also lets me play downloaded videos/movies/ripped DVDs. I'll give the quick take on the ones I've tried:
1) Meedio/MeedioTV - buggy as hell. And slow. It's also very new, as in a few months (MeedioTV is, at least). Looks nice, though.
2) SageTV - the built-in video browser/viewer isn't that good. I found setting up plugins sort of a pain, and I could never easily get ComSkip to work well. Maybe it was just me. It's also kind of pricey.
3) BeyondTV - no videomedia component at all; you have to separately purchase BeyondMedia. Other than that, I like this one the best. Never really tried messing with any plugins.
4) GBPVR - pretty good as is, much better with the MyVideos plugin and some other plugins that are very painless to install. Downside is none of the skins, even the MCE port, are attractive at all. Also, sometimes there's a lag between hitting a key and getting a response. Few crashes, less than Meedio but more than Sage/BeyondTV (I have roughly one crash every 3 weeks, running 24/7). Have to renew your Zap2It profile every three months to get an EPG, which is kind of annoying. Installing ComSkip a breeze, and it will auto-ship commercials (BTV and Sage require you to press some button during commercials to skip them, presumably for legal reasons; I'm not sure with Meedio).
There you go. There are plenty of other ones, like Media Portal or Myth. I've never tried MCE, though, and most people I talk to like that best if for no other reason than the WAF (wife acceptance factor). Likely, my gf prefers software she's used to, and since I already showed her how GBPVR works, she's happy with it. As long as Desperate Housewives and The Daily Show are recorded, the GBP-vo stays.
We're going more for quiet and reliable than for blistering speed: There's no intention of playing the latest 3D games on our TV, so we kept to the low-power, low-heat X300 card. ATI's TV Wonder Elite is one of the highest-quality TV Encoder cards on the market, though it unfortunately lacks dual-tuner support.
So they use a P4 at 3.2GHz? Extremetech just built the opposite of what 90% of homebuilt PVRs out there are using.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
I kill TiVo's
Pioneer has some good PVRs for much cheeper than a PC. Mine has 80G drive,tv-guide,comercial skip, can play and record at the same time, good dvd writing, no flags and no subscription for about $500 canadian.
? product_id=10726&taxonomy_id=42-125
http://www.pioneer-eur.com/eur/product_detail.jsp
Another poster already mentioned Media Portal (an excellent opensource choice for Windows) but there is also GB-PVR over at http://www.gbpvr.com/ which is also free to use however not open source. Its in active development with active forums and lots of plugins available. It supports xmltv as well as zap2it for EPG. I recommend a hardware based encoder (I use Hauppage 350/150) for either.
Both of these fine products are easier to setup than MythTV or Freevo (I tried those too).
Just another alternative to MCE.
I think we'd all enjoy a nice cold beverage. -David Letterman
Currently using GB-PVR with an ATI 550 Pro.
Records MPEG files, works under Windows, and its FREE!
It seems like Tivo is becoming hated around here for some reason. Even the review as posted freely admits that nothing, not even Windows Media Center comes (due to large screen picture quality) close to Tivo features and function. When you account for the cost of the other options, you have a real difficult time justifying anything else. A base Tivo unit is now $49, plus a liftime subscription for $299 (total cost of $348). The software and PC and tuner card(s) for the other options will cost at least twice that. There is nothing to install with Tivo short of screwing the cable in and plugging in the network, nothing to check compatability with. It's upgradable for those who like to tinker. The hacks, that give skip functionality and such, can be found from links off the Tivo site itself, and a simpleton can run them from the remote and have worked from day one and still work today. I love to put together solutions myself, but until the software comes on par with Tivo functionality and pricing, I can't justify changing. I would gain nothing and lose quality, functionality and money.
I currently use ATI MMC with my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AIW and a set of rabbit ear antennae (no cable and satellite). It is a nice software in terms of features (TV-On-Demand, schedule recorders, closed captions recorder (requires ATI's VCR video file format), TV guide (Guide+), etc.), but it can be buggy since it likes to crash and has some issues. This is in Windows XP Pro. SP2 (all updates).
I would like its automated scheduler to be record with TV-On-Demand method so I can go back to the beginning watch while recording is in progress. This was disappointing. MMC doesn't let me do this. I have to do a manual TV-On-Demand for this feature. Also, if the file gets huge for like 2-3 hours, then it gets choppy.
I had looked and tried some programs like Snapstream, SageTV, PowerVCR, WinDVR, ShowShifter, and Video@Home. However, they were limited (e.g., missing CC recorder since I find it useful and I am partially deaf. However, these were a couple years ago. It would had been nice if I could use MythTV but the last time I checked 9800 Pro AIW were not supported.
Since I am upgrading my video card soon for mainly gaming, I am thinking of dumping the video card and getting a separate HDTV tuner card and NVIDIA card (ATI is bad in Linux as well beside its buggy Windows software) since newer games are demanding more graphic power. I am worried about the number of software available compared to ATI's MMC. What do these HDTV cards use for software PVR?
Thank you in advance for replies.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The advantage of those dual-tuner DirecTV TiVos is that they record the compressed signal as it comes from the satellite. No additional degradation due to decompressing (in the receiver) followed by on-the-fly compression in a software PVR, which is likely not as good as the big iron's they use to feed the satellite.
The only real TIVO killer is and was TIVO itself. They've shot themselves in the foot once too many times.
Probably not, given that most of the people who buy tivos are sheep with too much money, but maybe the new "features" such as auto deletion of shows and "no record" flags are making people reconsider their purchase - especially if these "features" are forced on you. It could be just me, but the whole "you bought something that had a feature, and now doesn't anymore" seems like a kick in the balls - especially if you are expected to continue a monthly fee under their contract.
The lack of HD stuff - especially for DirectTV (they want $700 for a POS unit and that took forever to hit the market and it only does mpeg 2) is another concern. You'd think that Tivo would be kicking the ass of DirectTV, etc, in order to get their product out to market in a timely manner.
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That said, thanks for the pointer... I'll have to check it out.
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But I run MythTv, specifically KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth is actually a distro that gives you a bootable CD that will install linux, mythtv, xine, and do almost all of the setup for you.
But the nice part is needs much less hardware. My system is running on a Duron 750. The 160GB drive yields about 70 hours of recording.
Nothing gives me more satisfaction than hitting the "skip" button and saving 4:34 (or however long the breaks become) of my life.
I built a MythTV box out of need... in my area, the cable company splits video out A/B... even now, no one offers dual-tuner PVRs except for Comcast, so I decided to give MythTV a whirl.
It is (or was) fairly finicky about which tuner cards worked with it; it's easy to find yourself in the weeds if you try anything besides Hauppauge 250/350. Once functional, MythTV was pretty nice. Very configurable, very stable, sleek looking, nice music library, neat weather display. But... it took like 6 seconds just to change the channel (worse than Tivo or Comcast or any other PVR I've seen). And, it wouldn't let the user select from either card. Ie, I could ONLY watch shows on the A side, unless I was recording a show on A side... in which case I can ONLY watch B side. I never resolved that problem after six weeks of research.
Eventually I caved and got the dual-tuner PVR through Comcast. It spams advertisements to my TV, has a crappy interface, and few features. But at least I can surf the B side again.
feh.
Sure, manage to sneak your own correction in while mine is being posted, you sneaky bastard ;)
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that once tivo feels threatened by opensource/proprietary solutions/workarounds to their product, that they will find a way to stop this movement. let's see...they can go get a patent from the patent office which is so vague it'll allow them to blanket the entire market (lest we forget the gif, click, and one-click shopping patent disputes). they can approach the content providers and use an encryption algorithm that only their boxes and the boxes of those licensed to redistribute their feed (cable/satellite operators) can decipher. and finally...they can just approach the ftc for a more restrictive broadcast flag that the providers and the other box manufacturers would gladly approve. so before y'all get comfy...remember...Tivo pushed for the year contract stipulation to entrench folks into their service. do you really think they'll let this go by without a fight?
Is it 5:30 yet?
I have used MCE2005, and MythTV, and I got sick of both of them. There were too many problems with DRM with MCE and it wasn't as customizable as I wanted. I still wanted to use my computer to play games, and switching between dual booted OS's got annoying. I finally went with www.xlobby.com. It is a free, completely customizable HTPC fontend. It supports programs like SageTV, zoomplayer, ffdshow, winamp, etc (the most popular HTPC programs). It has built in control via xremote and your pocket pc or tablet. Its easy to install and customize. I would highly recommend this program.
Informative Amazon.Com link at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 7YFQCG/ref=pd_cps_e_2/103-7029232-5221404?v=glance &s=electronics
...and under active development. I set it up on my old PIII box to serve music, DVDs, web browser, and there are even some games I can play with my MCE remote. Nice FREE alternative to MCE, Snapstream, etc. The PVR functionality is there for when I have time to play with it, otherwise it makes a great media content server. MediaPortal: A Free PVR for Windows
We need cablecard support for HTPCs. That's the stumbling block. I can do better than an SD tivo with an HTPC, but until I can get HD recording from something besides OTA broadcasts, I'll just keep the tivo.
I do have an HTPC, but it mostly gets used for gaming, since there's little OTA HD programming I'm interested in and the tivo does a decent job with everything else.
This is one topic I'm rather passionate about and I'm always talking to my co-workers about PVRs and how having one has changed my viewing habits. For example, we (the wife and I) just used to watch whatever was on and our experience wasn't the best. But now, we find that we watch what we want to and consequently, watch less TV overall.
Personally, I'm really excited because GB-PVR has a built in MediaMVP server which means that you can have a ~$40USD small, quiet front end for all your TVs and keep the huge, noisy server in the basement or whatnot. Having seperate front-ends and back-ends was a major plus in my book for MythTV, but I was getting concerned about the cost of building small and quiet (wife-acceptance factor is really huge here) front-ends for my TVs. With a MediaMVP (a wireless version is in the works), I won't have to worry about it.
The Kerr Divine: My wife's battle with a mysterious illness.
Living in the southern US, everyone down here likes to refer to generic products by their brand name. Every soda in the word becomes a "Coke" even if its a Pepsi, every portable mp3 player becomes an "iPod" even if it's an "iPlay" and now ever PVR device is being referred to as a "TiVo" when it's really a Comcast PVR (which is probably made by Motorola or some other company).
Coca Cola has (or used to have) its own trademark police that would bring infringement suit threats (or suits) to bear on any restaurant that served them another cola when they asked for a "Coke". Are they slipping up down your way? (I'm sure they'll be very interested in where, down south, this is going on, so they can come stamp it out.)
Xerox, Kleenex, and a number of other brands have to do something similar. To maintain a valuable trademark you have to make a show of defending it when it threatens to become a generic. (Otherwise it BECOMES a generic and anybody else can use your former brand to describe their similar product.)
If this is happening to TiVo and iPod I wouldn't be surprised if we see similar (if not so extreme) action from them.
You notice that media companies are squeeky-clean about this issue. That's NOT just to keep potential sponsors happy or fish for placement revenue. Misusing a brand name as a generic on a multitrillion dollar media conglomerate could let the brand name holder cut a BIG hole in their deep pockets - and pretty much require him to try, or lose his mark.
IMHO a trademark/service mark or similar branding uniqueness enforcement is one place where a government-enforced monopoly is appropriate.
Even - especially - for open-source stuff: When reputation (and/or resulting perks from it, like job offers or consulting work) is your main benefit for your efforts, letting somebody else file the serial numbers off your work and deprive you of those benefits to his own gain is the closest thing to actual theft you can find in the Intellectual Property field.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I am using Leadtek's PVR software for the WINFAST 2000 TV tuner. It has time shifting, burns directly to DVD or VCD. The guys from Leadtek updated the drivers for my old card and the pvr software(it didnt work on WIN XP) and now I have a decent PVR. It's an elCheapo solution,but pretty decent app nonetheless. (The Winfast XP version comes with Stereo and SAP, the older ones do not)
Most people have a DVD player, so being able to watch DVDs on your "media PC" isn't important.
And Tivo is *cheap* you can get the base version for $50 after rebates. A lifetime subscription is $299. So, for $350, you have the best PVR. Can you build a "media PC" for that much? Not really. And the Tivo's interface is far and away the best of all the PVRs.
Basically, Tivo still wins. At least, it does if your cable company isn't offering a PVR for an additional $5/month over your current bill. Most are, but only if you have the "digital cable" package. My experience with the cable-company-provided PVRs is that they are pretty good. Interface isn't as slick as Tivo, but all the functionality is there, and it's easy enough to use. It's hard to justify buying a Tivo if your cable-company offers the equivalent.
Can we PLEASE stop with the elitist line? Everyone I know, including myself, who have Tivo are are highly educated people with busy lives. Some have technical careers, some scientific and a couple in the health care field. We simply want a solution that's quick and easy. Not everyone wants to dick about with roll your own solutions. Why is that so hard for geekdom to understand. I've been an alpha geek for decades and *I* get it.
Not everyone is enamored with getting elbow deep in computerdom. Not everyone that has different outlook on the issue than you is "sheep". Others, like me, already have a full plate of computer related projects.
The record flag and autodelete are still not active, and when I queried other Tivo owners about it, they shrugged and said something along the lines of "it's only TV" or "I guess I won't watch that show". It's just not that important.
And trust me- the market will make quick work of the record flag and autodelete.
And as for too much money- fuck you, asshat. We all work damn hard for it. Deal with it, or get more marketable skills.
I just saw this post some 30 minutes ago. Its really great to see alot of talk about the PVR space, our company has some really dedicated programmers working on making a greater tv media experience! It's too bad the article did not get to review BeyondTV 4 (which we will be releasing pretty soon). I think this is a good article in general though, it reflects alot of things that I hear about on a day to day basis here. Down with Tivo! =) If anyone has any questions about SnapStream or software PVR questions i'll be happy to forward it on to anyone in my company to try to get any replies on the comments here. =)
I don't understand what "service" you have to pay for if you use TiVo or the PVR's cable/satellite companies provide. From what I know, the only purpose is to record shows to a hard disk, and play them back later... what the hell is the monthly fee for?
>> service contracts, and 'features'
>> like self-deleting shows
Tivo does not have any of these.
There are no "mounting price hikes." The monthly and annual subscription prices have been stable for years, and the monthly fee for your second and subsequent Tivo in the same household has dropped.
There is no service contract in the sense that phrase is used in the cell phone business. If you want the Tivo service, you pay for it. When you stop wanting it, you stop paying for it. There is no contract that requires you to keep paying for it, and there is no early termination fee.
There are rules about keeping the service for a certain number of months in order to qualify for a rebate. That is ordinary business sense, so that you don't sign up, take their money, then cancel. That is not a contract.
Lastly, there is no "self-deleting show" feature. I am aware of the recent brouhaha over at TivoCommunity.com about Tivo's new compliance with Macrovision copy protection. A larger tempest in a teacup is hard to imagine. No one had any shows deleted. A few local stations were improperly encoding their shows with the wrong flag, and Tivo responded as it was designed to do. When Tivo Corp found out about it, they contacted those stations and got the problem fixed at its source, the stations.
Tivo is the only DVR system I know of that can follow a show to wherever it is pre-empted.
Recently, the show Lost was moved for one week only (at least in the Boston area) from its normal time slot on Wednesday night to Saturday night, to make room for a Red Sox playoff game. My Comcast DVR (which I have because it records HD) is dumb as dirt, and doesn't know anything about shows or seasons or episodes. Like a loud VCR (you should hear the disk whine on that box), all it knows about is day of the week and time. It completely missed the pre-empted Lost episode and tried to record some baseball for me instead.
By contrast, my Tivo knew it was a show in a series and found the new episode in its pre-empted Saturday slot, and recorded it normally for me, even though in standard def. But I didn't miss it.
I, too, have looked into building my own HD-capable DVR. But until one can follow shows around like Tivo, they're just noisy VCRs.
TiVo has no need to be worried about software-based PVRs. It's got the entertainment industry behind it on that one. We talk on Slashdot from time to time about the broadcast flag and how it would essentially prevent software-based (and especially open-source) PVRs, but what gets a lot less notice is that the same restrictions already encumber digital cable TV. Digital cable TV boxes output an analog signal at a lower resolution than HD, but for the purposes of software-based PVRs, that's where it ends. The HD digital signal is also an output option from a digital cable TV box, either through DVI or Firewire, but that signal is restricted by the 5C DTCP content "protection" system, which prevents a signal from being transmitted unless the listening devices are compliant.
Someone could probably come up with a software solution to defeat 5C, but with the DMCA in place and without the DMCRA to defend our rights, doing so would be illegal. Essentially, it takes open-source PVRs, which are legal and worthwhile in the analog domain, and puts them in the category of tools for piracy when used in the digital domain. And what's more, the DTLA (which administers licensing of DTCP) will, just like the DVD-CCA, never ever ever grant a license for someone wanting to build an open-source PVR.
TiVo has nothing to worry about from software PVRs - they'll die off slowly as the shift to digital HD continues. Then the entertainment industry can finish TiVo off at its leisure.
I've got an older model that allows the Internet Sharing & auto commercial skip. (Way cool.)
The newer ones lack these features, but are otherwise great PVR's. Just wondering why nobody ever mentions them.
Blogging because I can...
in Snapstream's BeyondTV, if you hit E or have a remote button assigned to E then you get a semi-transparent program guide without having to stop LiveTV/playback. The author of the article was unaware of this apparently, as he thought you had to stop playback of a recorded program or LiveTV to get to the program guide. BTW, been using BeyondTV for over a year here, and couldn't be more happy with it. Had some trouble at first due to the capture card I was using (software-based) and after getting a pair of hardware encoder (hauppauge pvr-250) cards all was great.
Ideally, I would like to have a device that is: cheap (I only want to spend more than $300), small (limited space near TV), quiet (I don't like to have noisy devices on all the time), and extensible (I like adding neat stuff like weather, games or my own custom programs).
Ideally, I would like a small, quiet computer that runs MythTV, which is incredibly extensible. However, building a small, quiet computer that runs MythTV takes lots of money to buy the small form factor equipment and the quiet power supplies, CPUs, hard drives, etc.
And there are lots of other applications where a low-noise, always-on, low power (except when crunching hard - so make that variable clock), GP platform would fit - at the right price point.
which could be achieved by volume production and a bit of marketing - like one or two stock configurations with the right I/O options and .
Which suggests a market opportunity.
The price point could be achieved by volume production and a bit of marketing - like one or two stock configurations with the right I/O options and installed free software to be a canned application, in addition to the bare platform for user configuration of other applications.
I find that Tivo, which is cheaper, provides everything except the extensibility.
Proof of concept: The technical issues aren't insoluble. Making the tuners pluggable options and providing additional slots for more simultaneous option instalation may raise the cost of goods a bit, but not prohibitively.
Followon revenue from service subscriptions could be reproduced by selling such a service - starting with one that works out-of-the-box for the stock configuration and perhaps a version with a published interface so others could subscribe to use with non-stock configs and/or homebrew software. Optionally bundling a subscription committment could lower the entry price point, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sheep with too much money?
DirectTiVo: $99
Rebate: $100
---------------
Cost $-1.00
+ $8/month
And it works, 24/7 no problem.
I would like to see more features and I am upset that the new DirecTivo is unhackable, but when it all comes down to reliability. My TiVos have never failed me.
I would love to put together the same functionality with software. But the hardware cost alone would be > $500. I also consider myself to be capable of putting one together- but I didn;t want to deal with all that work. And what if the distro I chose was no good? There are people complaining about problems with MythTV, etc. How much time and effort do I need to spend on it?
I just got my MythBox with a PVR-350 running. I'm pretty impressed so far. I was using Gentoo, but there was a lot of manual tweaking to be done. I installed Fedora Core 4, and I had the whole thing running in a few hours.
The TV-Out of the PVR-350 puts a really nice picture out. I've only had a couple of annoyances so far:
- it takes about 3 seconds to change channels
- a couple channels are coming in distorted (these same channels look great on my tivo)
The cable system in my condo is supposed to be old, but I've never had a problem before. Maybe the Tivo has a better receiver than the 350. I haven't had much time to mess with it yet.
If you are going to build one of these, I highly recommend using the Fedora Myth(TV)ology HOWTO.
All things considered, TiVo needs some real competition so that they'll stop bending over to the MPAA and remember who their real customers are.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
On top of that, they have some really cool plugins that work with with Beyond TV and Beyond Media, like weather, Movie showtimes, DVD library and many others.
IF ever Beyond TV 4 is released, it will capture not only in MPEG-2 but DIVX as well. Not to mention the ability for HD over the air capture.
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work. --John G. Pollard
And that driver is...?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I had SageTV and BeyondTV for quite some time, playing around with timed video recordings with my excellent Hauppauge PVR250.
Unfortunately, for the last couple years, I was never able to get "Tivo" functionality, since all the channels that matter to me come in digitally through the cable box, and I can only grab output (RCA audio and S-Video) from the cable box to my Hauppauge card. Recently, however, I invested in a My.TV IR Blaster device, and set up SageTV to use it as a tuning device.
Now, I finally have real Tivo functionality. And it rocks.
I don't have lots of demands. I like to keep a queue of The Daily Show, Lou Dobbs on CNN, BBC World News, RAI News from Italy, and the occasional one-time recording off TV. I also do Family Guy quite a bit now. Recording all this stuff with Sage is a snap, and Sage manages my free space to always keep the most recent and unwatched stuff. I skip commercials, which saves loads of time. And the quality is excellent. Important shows that I catch I burn to DVDs and give to friends. It's really nice.
Couple SageTV, a Hauppauge 250, an My.TV Blaster with the ATI Remote Wonder RF remote control and the free plugin for SageTV available on the ATI Remote Wonder plugin website, and you have a real nice PVR solution.
I am finally happy with this stuff. Computers are actually working for me, not the other way around!
Is ATI going to get on the stick? I got an ATI card for teh sole reason of plugging its S-video into my TV set. Unfortunately for me, I can't get any distro of Linux to work with it and I really REALLY miss Mandrake.
Unfortunately for all the rest of you, win 98 is no longer supported by icrosoft and there's no way in hell I'm shipping any more money to Redmond, so Y'all are probably getting a ton of spam from my box. Tough, you don't like the spam send me a copy of an OS that works with ATI that I can get patches for.
My car is a 1988 model, ten years older than my OS. Why shouldn't my 1998 OS work just as well as my 1988 car, especialy considering that there is nothing to wear out in the OS?
If it were determined that my old '88 had a defect that caused it to catch fire (or send spam), the government would make them recall it and fix it on Chevy's dime. Why hasn't my win 98 been recalled for its security defects?
(mind reading capcha isn't reading minds today)
When will we have the ability to take a digital signal from cable or satellite and watch/record it on our computers?
This is what I am waiting for. Why waste my money right now on technology that is really out of date.
There's a great program for ARM pocketpcs called The Core Pocket Media Player. It's F/OSS and runs absolutely great. It'll play divx, mpg, wmv, mp3, ogg, asf and some more on top of it. I'd highly recommend that over the media player that comes built into windows mobile these days.
http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about
From the article:
Not really, unless you're a geek with too much time on your hands. The DIY option will become appealing when it's as easy to install and set up as any other off the shelf appliance. Until then, a DIY PVR a hobby.
TiVo, for all of it's faults, is still trivial to set up and use. In fact, it's so easy to use that my six year old child (who can barely read) figured it out. My wife and I were so happy with ours that we just purchased a second TiVo (the current rebate didn't hurt).
Since Comcast (and many other cable companies) are starting to rent out dual tuner, HD PVR's for $10 a month or so, which is less than the cost of a monthly TiVo fee, I don't see why people are going to hassle making a PC to do this. If my box gets outdated, the cable company gives me a new one. If it breaks, new one. If I'm someone that doesn't pay for cable then odds are I don't care enough about TV to want a TiVo anyway. This is what will wind up killing TiVo, not free computer PVR's. Sure, the software isn't as nice, but with all the other benefits (not to mention not needing an extra box), I'm going to stick with it.
Build Your Own PVR community site
if you need any help, pointers, project exampls, product reviews, tips, discussion, yadda yadda yadda...
*shrug* I had a few issues with this "round up" but most people already hit upon them... but it's a nice comparison of the major features, drawbacks, etc of the different main commercial windowz PVR applications out there...
can;t believe they included powercinema though?! also see Meedio, GBPVR (free as in beer), CTPVR, ChrisTV,Media Portal, for other windoze options... also I think nero just announced some sort of PVR/HTPC-esque software...
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
People talking out of their ass with no idea what they're saying get modded up to +5, and all the replies below him pointing out how wrong he is don't.
Retard.
A lot of the decent ATI cards, and all of the Hauppauge cards (that I know of) run with Linux.
Just because you either a) bought a crappy card, or b) have no idea how to get Linux running, or c) are a Microsoft fanboy does not mean that you have to order a "specialized Linux supporting card."
Double retard.
Galleon and other projects provide many of these functions (such as weather) to your off-the-shelf network-connected TiVo
Yeah, just like people who buy Toyotas/Lexus's are also sheep with too much money, 'cause no competent mechanic would ever buy a car that came pre-assembled from the factory and didn't need to be worked on. Add the fact that a TiVo box can be had for under $100 plus $200 for lifetime service, I find myself wondering how little money you must make to consider $300 "too much money"...
The lack of HD stuff - especially for DirectTV is another concern. You'd think that Tivo would be kicking the ass of DirectTV, etc, in order to get their product out to market in a timely manner.
TiVo doesn't have a whole lot of leverage with DirecTV. DirecTV has been hemming and hawing over dropping TiVo entirely and creating their own DVR platform for a while, in essence making it clear that TiVo is really only there at their sufferance.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Upgrade your Series 2 DirecTivo to the 4.x OS and you'll get most of what you'd want or need on your $99 Tivo box without having to shell out for a new system.
There's excellent documentation on how to do this over at Weethet Tivo 4.x for DirecTivo. It'll cost you about $25 for the OS and toolkit.
This hack will open up the Home Media Option functionality which allows you to serve up music, images, movie listings, webcam images, podcasts and more through your Tivo from other servers on your network. Why dedicate a much more expensive server to be a media center when you can just stream it through your Tivo box? To get output to your TV you have to buy pricy tuner cards / video cards to replicate the basic Tivo functionality. Then you have to muck around configuring it all to make that Tivo equivalent functionality family friendly. Your time is better spent adding functionality to the open source JavaHMO app you'll run on other boxes on your network to serve up all those extra goodies. A side benefit of the hack is that now you can put on TivoWeb(plus) and other apps on the box to allow you to control it over the web; and you can even stream out recorded shows to PCs.
The only drawbacks I've found so far are that 1) the channel locking functionality appears to be broken so I can't lock the kids out of Nickelodeon, and 2) JavaHMO is a little buggy so it intermittently isn't able to retrieve some images and web pages.
But the menuing system into my 1000+ songs works great and we've been using that a lot since the hack. Plus the USB 2 driver update allows me to pull down shows 4-5x faster than before.
I've never used MCE, but does it support HD cards? I know that Windows HD cards come with their own software, but I've never used it.
I like Mythtv or VDR because they both have very good digital TV support. Mythtv will even record via Firewire, though I've never tried that. Personally I just record off-air HD using the HD-3000 card from www.pchdtv.com. The commercial detection in Mythtv works well.
One of the nice things about recording HD content is that it archives to DVD's nicely. I can de-res the picture to 720x480 and copy the AC-3 audio (no conversion) and the finished DVD looks almost professional quality. Though, this doesn't seem worth it anymore since many popular TV programs are released to DVD shortly after each season. It's nice to save current events this way (political speeches, etc).
I know one person that doesn't own a TV and just uses Bittorrent for the programs he likes. He lets others figure out the capture problems.
For those of you "not in the know," you can get a cablecard from your cable company to put in certain TV's. This allows you to decode the digital and HD content without the need of a box. The problem is you get a lot with the box with digital cable (On-Demand and DVR).
Tivo's working on a unit that would take these cards and allow you to record anything on your digital cable: HD content as well as the digital channels you're licensed to. It records everything straight to digital, so you don't lose the quality at all.
Seriously, my Comcast dual-tuner box is giving me serious problems and I can't wait to see what the Tivo product is going to be like. I hope they release it soon though.
I've got a dual HD tuner MCE box that is now running almost flawlessly. Being within spitting distance from San Francisco's Sutro Tower, I get all the networks, PBS, WB, UPN and others for free OTA. That said, I have over $1000 and countless hours invested in the project - building the box, getting it to not crash, getting stutter-free HD, figuring out how to transfer programs to other devices and formats, etc... It would have been a whole lot easier and more economical to pay DirecTV the $500 + $10/month for their HD DirecTiVo, but what's the fun in that? For me, it wasn't about saving money or getting some functionality I don't have (I have an SD DirecTiVo and love it), it was about having a new and complicated project to geek out on. I'll admit that I love listening to my MP3s over my home stereo and viewing my photos on my TV, but there are way easier and cheaper ways to that as well. There's just not enough variety in off-the-shelf HTPCs right now to be able to buy one that affordably does everything you want it to do, so you're forced to build - that alone takes it out of the mainstream.
ReplayTVs suffer from none of the issues that the poster says plague the Tivo. Indeed soft PVRs may be helping to wipe out Tivos, but soft PVRs still got nothin' on ReplayTV!
The biggest thing holding me to Directv and Tivo is the built in dual tuners. I have not found any pci sized sat decoders that will allow me to ditch the Tivo. Until I do all of these other software solutions won't work for me.
http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/
;) (Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 33.9))
it is open source and :
General
Flexible XML based skinning engine - Create your own skins, or choose one of the available skins !
Extendable via plugins. Media Portal can easily extended with extra plugins. Plugins can be overlay windows, modules, tag readers, players,...
Time, Date
Dynamic keymapping. You decide which keys you want to use for which actions
Remote Controller support (using an external program like girder)
Switch between graphics & LiveTV as background when browsing the menus
Internal support for several remotes (streamzap, MCE, redeye, winlirc, hauppauge, FireDTV)
Mediaportal comes with opensource MPEG2 audio/video codecs, written by Media Player Classic
Topbar support for basic remote functions
Windowed and fullscreen support
My TV
and so on...
Being a current MythTV user, I am quite impressed with what I am seeing in GB-PVR. Lot's of similiar features between the two. If they can get MAME running in there, that would rock.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Well the reviewer is just plain wrong about Beyond TV. You CAN bring up the guide while playing live TV, and it is even a transparent guide so you can continue watching. I believe the key is F7. I use a Snapstream Firefly remote so all I do is hit the A key on the remote.
//m
It's SageTV for me. I built a tiny two tuner MiniATX box running Win2000 3 years ago and it has been running flawlessly since then. It pulls down listings for free off of my DSL network, automatically records series, switches the cable box via IR transceiver, plays back without a burp, and stores in standard MPEG-2 files (NO DRM) which record straight to DVD or compresses to PSP or GameBoy Play-Yan files. The IR learning system means that I can use a universal remote with the unit.
While the system isn't open source it is fantastic and a steal in terms of pricing. Also they are building linux versions for embedded boxen.
who are we talking about here? TiVo and ReplayTV. I stopped using my ReplayTV because charter rolled out Moxi. I hate it and its difficult to use but it works without some lame IR blaster. My cable company offers cablecards now but where is the offering from ReplayTV or TiVo to take advange of that? There isn't one. They are killing themselves IMO.
Transparent Guide
Or... roll your own. That's what I did with Fedora Core. Mine is actually just the standard GNOME interface with a bunch of Bash scripts, some easy to understand icons and the excellent Zenity GUI plugin to allow Bash to interact with users via GUI elements. Since my wife is very familiar with the concept of using standard GUI features like menus, icons, and the like, why force her to learn a new interface? Instead I have launcher icons for "Watch TV", "Schedule a Recording", "Pause TV", etc... right on the launch bar. And Xine is the backend engine to the whole thing. She is absolutely elated at how easy it is to use. Just press a button and a minimal number of dialogues or effort are required to do just about anything. We can easily skip commercials, schedule for an entire season, pause, archive from MPEG2 to DiVX, etc... The only reason I haven't released this is that people would probably laugh at the scripting. But hey... it works. And my wife is somewhat of a computer-phobe too. So this is a testament to the truth that standard GUIs are better than GUIs designed for set top boxes.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
PVR is just a bad idea forced upon you by backwardsthinking providers. Why should everyone have to store the same episode locally, and make sure their expensive toy is programmed to record it? Video on demand have existed for a long time. You start your cheap setopbox, browse through the virtual video store, select a movie and watch it, instantly. What are the providers waiting for?
A PCI or PCI express based DirecTV decoder, so I can setup like.... 6 of them in a box and record up to 6 channels at once.
As for MAME support, GB-PVR has a very nicely done plug-in system (from what I've heard, I haven't actually done any myself). And I wouldn't be suprised to see that come along in the near future. There are a bunch of people working on plug-ins and tons of support for them, just check out the forums.
The Kerr Divine: My wife's battle with a mysterious illness.
I have cable TV service, but aside from the kids watching cartoons, it is on at most 4 hrs. per week. (one football game and maybe a Daily Show). Otherwise, all my TV viewing comes via newsgroups and re-writeable CDs and DVDs. I can wait a day for the new Lost or Galactica episode, so I can watch it without commercials. Plus, I can watch new movies, too. On occasion, if the newsgroups fail me I will resort to BitTorrent, but I use it strictly for TV shows. Okay, maybe it's a bit more manually intensive than TiVo, but all my stuff's already burned to disc for archiving and portable watching. If only alt.binaries.kidstuff was a little more active, I could do away with real-time TV altogether. I used to be the worst kind of TV-aholic. I knew the network schedules by heart. I watched all the new shows to see which ones I would follow. I would plop down after work and flip channels all freakin' night. Once I got separated, though, I realized I had time for fun anti-social things (like gaming and reading /.), and TV quickly became unimportant.
Snapstreams BeyondTV will continue playing the TV with a largely transparent guide over it so you can still (sort of) see it and hear it.
I have used Tivo for years. I suspect if I ever leave it, it will be because Tivo isn't inovating fast enough. Its kinda funny that if you read through the forums or messages that people write, all the innovation has been though of, it just needs devloping. For example, everyone is begging for the day that Tivo finds a way to just "podcast" (or I think at that point Tivocast) television shows. It would solve soooo many problems that Tivo users face. People (or more accurately their Tivo's) could download shows when it is convienint. You could get the whole show, and not have to mess with ABC cutting off 5 minutes to combat DVR's. Much more likely that commercials would be altered so as to show in similar fashion as online content (e.g. commercials are in the beginning and the end, preserving a continuous show). Etc...
Basically they have listed over 100 ideas that all Tivo users would love to have, and are realistic in both engineering and businesswise. They just require Tivo to get off their butts and get to work.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
I asked some higher ups here at SnapStream [snapstream.com] about getting some photos of Beyond TV 4.0 =) Enjoy. - Main Menu [flickr.com] - This shot shows of the new theme for BTV 4. Please note that the red bar color itself is likely to change. Its currently a hot topic on the beta forums for some reason. - Library Information Screen [flickr.com] - A really useful screen that you can do compression to divx, copying, playback, and browse information about your recorded shows. - Time-Shift Dock [flickr.com] - This is the control panel that you can use while watching tv to pause, stop, rewind, record, and back-capture tv. My appologies for having to use static. Don't want to get sued here. - Transparent Guide [flickr.com] - The transparent guide allows you to browse through whats on without ever having to stop viewing what you are watching. Very nifty feature. Once again, sorry about the static. * PLEASE NOTE (FOR ALL YOU TROLLS), THE ART THEME IS NOT FINALIZED
I believe reven has already written a front-end MAME plugin for GB-PVR - see here or here. (And yep - it's my PVR of choice too).
As silly or stupid that article may appear but it has a good point on how much TV eats up you time. That time could be potentially used to do something useful or god forbid even healthier. Just my two cents..., btw I do own a tv set
Who controls the information, controls the world...
I have a Dish Network DVR. Sure, it doesn't have all the fancy features of a Tivo but: ...and it works great. It doesn't learn my habits and randomly record shows I might like but it costs a lot less in every way and does everything I need. PC's are never going to be Tivo Killers, the real killers are Tivio Knock offs that are given to us free with a service contract.
1. I already have dish
2. I paid $24 S/H to upgrade to a 100Hour DVR
3. Nice Radio Remote that works all over the house
5. Costs $10 a month = $5 service + $5 rental
Does anyone else think this is pathetic? I mean, MCE is good (on a scale of Good, Great, Excellent), but there's so much room for improvement:
Additionally, there are some noticable delays in things like changing the channel (hit the #5, and it sometimes takes a second or two to show up onscreen, and sometimes it simultaneously changes the channel because the delay was so long). Even the folder navigation is slow and unresponsive at times.
Overall there's so much room for improvement in MCE that I can't believe there aren't any 3rd parties making MCE look like the My First Sony of PC PVRs.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Most of those alternatives don't have the good features that TIVO gives you.
The real problem is that you subscribe to DISH rather than DirecTV. I paid $100 for my 80+ hour unit, $250 for a lifetime subscription and I have a better satellite service to begin with. All in all, I can't see how you save anything when you pay $10/month. In the three years that I have had my unit, it costs nothing while you are still paying for yours, I don't see that as being less expensive.
What good does a radio remote do if you can't see the TV? Or are you "illegally" using one box/DVR for multiple sets in the house? Sounds like you must be for that remote to be beneficial.
Does DISH do the upgrade to their DVR you are renting or did you send it to a third party to enhance it?
As the parent says, MCE is a performance hog, which means you need a grunty CPU, which means heat and lots of it. Heat requires cooling, and cooling is the prime cause of noise.
Trust me - you dont want a noisy PC in your living room.
Myth runs very well on low spec fanless EPIA mobos.
It *is* possible to reduce cooling noise significantly in a box running MCE, but the price is driven up, and you often end up having to customise the box. Further, there are likely to be water pumps or fans still in there.
Myth is a *pig* to install (even with Knoppmyth, which I use), but you can build a completely silent system.
Dont underestimate how much the noise will bother you.
I have a decent solution that is quite cheap. half the cost of an ATI AiW. works great. no bs. I bought a PNY one but there are others available. It was from newegg but they don't have it anymore. ~$75.
And of course here we sit posting on /. That's not a time sink, useless, OR unhealthy. No sir! ;)
I've been a subscriber for a while and was considering switching to comcasts dvr sicne it was cheaper. TiVo immediately countered with $6.95/mo and i've been on that for almost a year now. We've got one of the earlier version 2 boxes and i think we paid almost $200 for it so tivo have probably broken even on us.
I bought a laptop which came preinstalled with MCE, so I tried it out.
When I began to configure it, I discovered that MCE had no easy fine tuning of frequencies (registry keys must be added manually for each channel). This might not be a problem for most people, but my cable uses the hrc frequencies. While all other tv programs I have tried allow the user to select the appropriate frequency table, MCE did not; it did not detect it either.
MCE therefore does not work for me.
Having just procured a series2 Tivo with a lifetime subscription, I've found that the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) to be very high. I upgraded the hard drive to 300gb (336 hours of Tivo!) and did this with free software. There is a large support community (www.tivocommunity.com) who is willing to help you with ANY problems you might have with your Tivo. I fried a fuse in my Mom's series2, and within 4 hours someone had posted a work-around and had me on my way with a easy fix (solder an in-line fuse holder to replace the burnt out fuse).
Nothing can beat the little things that Tivo can do for me, and like a Mac-user I feel it is the fact that it works is worth the supposed premium. My Tivo is silent, looks good with the rest of my components, and integrates seamlessly with the rest of my network. I can download music/pictures/etc to my Tivo for view on the TV. I can also download the Tivo files for view on my laptop when I'm travelling, etc. There is also a very simple way to get around the DRM on a Tivo, you just have to go looking for the answer. The network connect is a little slow if you're not wired... But it isn't worse than any other wireless transfer of gigabytes worth of data.
Also, there are plenty of mod stores such as Weaknees and PVT for your precious Tivo that allow you to keep it running almost indefinitely. The two most common problems, power supply and hard drive failures, can be solved. You can backup your Tivo drive for restoration/replacement, and power supplies for each model are readily available through mod shops. Your lifetime subscription should last much longer than the average life of a piece of technology.
Now, I will say a few things about the other options, such as Sage.tv or MythTV. I compared these options for a very long time and found them to not be a viable option.
First off, computers make horrible component devices! You can make them silent, blend in with the rest of your stuff, etc, but it a.) won't do it as well, and b.) will cost a premium to do that.
Second, the cost of procuring this hardware/software setup will bring the total value of the device astronomically higher than a comparable Tivo. I bought a 300gig hard drive and my Tivo (40hr with lifetime) for a little less than $500 (minus rebates already). To build a seperate computer with enough power, multiple tuners, and procurement of the software would run you almost double that. You can do it cheaper using stuff you already have, but chances are your computer isn't that component style that looks good. I just can't imagine doing that.
Anyways, I could go on, but I'll let it sit. I'm very happy with the capabilities and how easy Tivo is. It truly is a feeling similar to a Macintosh, until you've used one and understand how simple/effective they are, you won't understand. You're paying for a working product that won't let you down.
Take the Tivo jump, it's been great!
5 years of monthly payments??!?!?!? What possible reason could you have for turning down the lifetime subscription? You've paid well over $600 for something that you could have paid less than half that. Of course, if you blame Tivo for taxes, maybe I'm wasting my keystrokes.
(insert attempt to be witty here)
This is off-topic, but... Macs are great, provided you do what Apple says you can do with them. The second you go outside the Mac "norm" you'll run into just as many problems as you would on Windows or Linux. Or BSD. Or Solaris.
I'd be interested to know whether the state of NY actually increased its sales tax accordingly.
Cyberlink does the job but the interface is horrid. I have a DTB PCMCIA card in my notebook but unfortunately the arial wiring in my apartment doesn't seem to be able to handle the bandwidth of the HD signals, I can only the SD ones semi-reliably.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
>Most of those alternatives don't have the good features that TIVO gives you.
Umm, yeah, I said that.
>What good does a radio remote do if you can't see the TV? Or are you "illegally" using >one box/DVR for multiple sets in the house? Sounds like you must be for that remote to >be beneficial.
That really puts the ass in assumption. I have a DVR that has dual tuners so it powers 2 TV's in 2 seperate rooms.
>Does DISH do the upgrade to their DVR you are renting or did you send it to a third >party to enhance it?
Dish network does it, does it matter?
What a weird reply, I've never met anyone who was militant for DirecTV, I compared both of them when I signed up and guess what? DirecTV lost because it didn't provide enough value; I wasn't willing to pay more for channels I didn't want. Something you might not realize is that not everyone values the same thing you do when selecting products.
So if you want to upgrade to have a nice dual tuner HDTV DVR rather than your old 80-hour single tuner box what will that cost you, another $300, $400? I'm stll $10 a month.
Also, I hope you realize that I can switch to direcTV and get your crappy deal at anytime and yet I don't..hmm.
I doubt any of those software-packages could stand a chance against VDR. It's an open source PVR application specialicing on digital satellite television (it can do other media, too).
Essentially in the normal solution you have at least one $150 full featured DVB-S card which has an input going to your dish and an output going to your TV. The card contains a fully contained satellite reciever. Because of this you don't need to have a fast computer all it needs to do is getting the datastream (about 4 MegaBits/sec) from the card. Things like timeshifting work. With special plugins you can have things like PiP. Of course is also features an EPG bug that's standard in europe as it's delivered with the signal.
With one card you can record up to about 5 channels at the same time (they need to be on the same transponder), but you can use several cards. There are users having up to 5 cards in their computer. Those extra cards can be cheaper $60 cards without buildt-in MPEG2-decoder. There are plans to make it run completely without the expensive cards.
Best of all, you don't need to have an extra computer like with the Windows solutions. You just plug in your card, install the software and there you go. You won't even notice that the PVR is running unless you look at your TV.
HDTV is in the work, currently only software decoding works there. (That's early considering there is virtually no digital HDTV in europe except for tests. It almoust looks like HDTV is going to fail yet again as it already did in the 90s.)
Of course there is no commercial pressure behind this project so it has no features removed, no fees no nothing. However it does support PayTV with some variants of those cards. (of course you need to have your own CAM and smartcard)
http://www.vdrportal.de/board/portal.php?langid=1
>I have a DVR that has dual tuners so it powers 2 TV's in 2 seperate rooms.
Dual tuner devices generally means that you have the ability to record multiple programs at one time while watching a recorded program. TIVO/DirecTV doesn't offer a multi-tuner device with outputs for each tuner. Seems a bit odd from my experience. With TIVO and DirecTV, you have a single box which contains 2 tuners (unlike what you seem to believe, makes me wonder how much comparison you made other than pricing and talking to a DISH salesman) and supplies one television. If you wanted to send the signal out to multiple televisions from one box you'd have to split the single output signal. I don't see the advantage to your set-up, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work for you. If one device goes bad in your set-up, then you lose two televisions rather than one. In the DirecTV set-up, that won't happen.
I just looked into the DISH site a bit and you have a slight misconception about HD. If you want their HD-DVR, you need to buy it, at this point. Check out the DISH Player-DVR 942 which appears to be a purchase only device for $700. So, you don't just get to upgrade it without paying for it, just like everybody else.
>Dish network does it, does it matter?
Certainly it does. If DISH didn't do the work, then you've gone to the trouble of altering a device that you don't own, which isn't what you've done. While I can pop open my devices and hack them to my hearts content, another major advantage to buying the device rather than renting it, in my experience. Whether I decide to hack them myself or not, I have the right to do it if I choose to.
Anybody has the freedom to switch at anytime. I found that the first company to market with the products that owns the satellites has been the better company all along. I also find that a great user interface makes a huge difference, I've experienced the DISH interface and it's clunky and not very user-friendly unlike the DirecTV interface. The TIVO user interface is also the most user-frinedly DVR interface that I have run across with the most useful options that everybody else have attempted to duplicate and failed doing so in their attempts. I never said that everyone values what I do. It sounds like your major concern is doing things on the cheap, while mine is all about the user experience. Nothing wrong with either. I'm not militant about DirecTV, I just wanted to point out how your rental agreement isn't such a savings as you seem to want others to believe it to be.
SageTV, like WinMCE continues to record and display your curent selection while you are scrolling through the programming guide. This is why it's a bad idea to copy/paste large sections of the original article, out of context.
I have an old ReplayTV box in my closet - auto commercial skip and all. Loved the fact it was networkable out of the box and easy to get video off of. HATED the fact that it was single tuner and had compression artifacts. I now have a dual tuner DIRECTivo and can still easily pull video off of it over my network. Upgrading the drive was cake too. When Replay has a box with two tuners, networks, and is integrated with say DISH or DIRECT so the local hardware isn't doing the compression I'll become interested again. Until then my TIVO is doing just fine thanks anyway...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org