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Myth TV + Multiple Video Arcade = Anime for All
x-blackout-x writes "Ian C. Blenke writes "The primary goal of the video keg was to build a reliable video box that was easy to transport with enough space to store 3 days worth of Anime fan-subs.
The secondary goal of the video keg was to make a home PVR system for video playback and time-shifting, along with a video arcade and perhaps a web browser.
The tertiary goal of the video keg was to find an affordable hardware platform so that we could buy 4 of them immmediately to service the primary goal's need for 4 separate video rooms.
For a PVR, the machine neeed to be small, quiet, low-heat, and still fast enough to run the software video player and arcade games."
You can read the full scoop on this project on his blog Ians Blog "
VideoKeg Whitepaper
I wrote this little whitepaper a while back for Amy Zunk to document the function of the VideoKeg/VideoJukebox boxes. Documented here for posterity.
The primary goal of the video keg was to build a reliable video box that was easy to transport with enough space to store 3 days worth of Anime fan-subs.
The secondary goal of the video keg was to make a home PVR system for video playback and time-shifting, along with a video arcade and perhaps a web browser.
The tertiary goal of the video keg was to find an affordable hardware platform so that we could buy 4 of them immmediately to service the primary goal's need for 4 separate video rooms.
For a PVR, the machine neeed to be small, quiet, low-heat, and still fast enough to run the software video player and arcade games.
For portability, we decided to go with a smaller mini-ITX style cube box.
The primary goal suggests redundant drives, but due to the smaller form factor chassis and heat requirements, it was decided that recreating a harddrive should one encounter problems would be a minor task.
Looking at the primary goal, mplayer seemed to suit the need of playing media with a variety of codecs with a minimum of fuss. Easy to script, easy to extend, low overhead, with the ability to normalize audio and clean up dirty videos - mplayer was simply ideal. This lead to the requirement of a ~1Ghz or greater box. The secondary goals would be served as well, though MAME would like a bit more horsepower for some of the more complex emulators.
In the end, we settled on a Chyang Fun Cellbox CF-7989EPIA (1Ghz EPIA-MII 10000) turnkey system with 128M of RAM, a Samsung 160G harddrive, and a DVD-ROM drive.
Once the boxes arrived, the decision at the time was which distribution to pick. If I'm managing more than one server for a given purpose, I like to use debian for package management. If this were a lone PVR box, I would have probably used Gentoo simply for the EPIA community support toward that end.
Starting off with Debian 3.1 Sarge, it was apparent a number of things needed fixing to get it to work with the embedded hardware.
Step 1, find patches and build a kernel.
Kernel patches
After roaming the net for hours, there really seems to be one good source for the latest in EPIA patches: the EPIA wiki:
http://www.epiawiki.org
The site has more of a Gentoo bent, but the patches work on a vanilla kernel just the same under debian.
CPU Optimizations
While building all packages, it seemed important to pay attention to optimizations to squeeze every last cycle out the 1Ghz processor. To that end, the generally recommended C3 Nehemiah CFLAGS are:
If you use gcc 3.3, there is a new arch designation for C3 Nehemiah CPUs:
Some in the commmunity think that the small 64k L1 cache on the C3 processors is causing starvation, and using -Os and not -funroll-loops actually helps performance:
Many others claim the following works best for them:
John
I always thought porn drove entertainment technology improvements...
Oh, wait: hentai.
Nevermind...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
3 days of anime fansubs at bitrate 2000 kbps (normally it actually is like 1000 kbps, but let's not underestimate) makes almost 62 gigabytes of data => a laptop with 80 GB drive.
I've been using a modded xbox plus the fantastic xbox media center to play my fansubs for well over a year. It's the only reason I own an xbox. The simplicity of setup (relative,) size, and power is really unmatched. Depending on the encoding, XBMC will even play some HD content.
Yes it's not a PVR, but it gets most of your goals done in about $100-130 and an hour or two.
This was originally a story on Newsforge.com (http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/10/28/1 625258.shtml?tid=132&tid=68&tid=5). It gives the reason why Ian created the video jukebox.
wouldn't this have been better served by modding a xbox? The Do It Yourself aspect is interesting but with the arrival of the Xbox 360 there soon should be plenty of cast offs that would require little modifaction to achieve the same result, granted a bigger hdd would be nice in an Xbox but.. that's why I have network cable :)
Looks like he's done with Video Keg what I've been planning to do with a MythTV box to manage watching my DVD collection, even the insertion of commericals (trailers) between playbacks.
A few more iterations of development to bring in a few more features and this system could be used to run a 24-7 TV station.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Did you notice the mod_rewrite crazyness ?
Weren't URL meant to be somewhat hierarchical ?
Not trolling but I think that sometimes Google SEO goes a little too far when the URL is meant to be only usefull to Google and not to the normal human user...
I'm more amused that he had an idea for playing commercials while waiting for a scheduled file to play. Now, if only Real Otaku Heroes had video to go along with them; that would've been very appropriate to play in between fansubs. Or at least play some Japanese commercials, since some of those are a riot, too.
mpeg2 hardware in/out (5% processor utilization on a amd 1700)
mplayer to transcode
and setup a cron job to recode your mpeg2 files to xvid
There is no quest... it's all pretty basic...
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
/me goes to watch Mythbusters.
Don't know about the article but anyone who can work "tertiary" into a sentence is cool in my book.
"Odd that something put together 3 years ago is getting slashdotted now." Uhh, yeah.
I thought someone finally combined a tv with a beer dispenser, and I was like, "EUREKA!", but no.... I guess I'll just have to wait till Adam corolla starts a line of products.
Damn.
... what did you expect, something profound?
So how do you get MythTV in the subject when the article is talking about a custom bash script and perl script to play Anime?
First rule of video keg is you don't talk about video keg
The second rule of video keg is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT VIDEO KEG!!!!!
The third rule of video keg is no shirt or shoes while watching the anime fan subs...
Considering that the project here is run by computer geeks who had to search the net for hours in order to get everything working, what are the odds that this will actually become a consumer device? Frankly, the description in the article sounds like more work than I want to do, espeically considering that Tivo's here are running about $40 here. If I work on it for 8 hours to get it working, that's $5 an hour. You can make better money at Wal-Mart and that doesn't even factor in the hardware he purchased to run his VideoKeg on.
He also writes about how hard it was to theme the interface. Frankly, one of the best things about the Tivo is the user interface. It's simple, inutitive and attractive. In short, it rocks. I will say that his idea of a touch screen is nice addition. A Tivo with a touchscreen at the bar, playing music videos instead of just songs could be a nifty niche market. There's also a lot of hidden functionality to the Tivo that allows me to do really nifty things.
Tivo on other hand, is largely "plug and play" - well with in the capabilities of the average end user (my parents for example). Tivo also has a rather nice range of capabilites. I can view my own photos, videos, etc. from my Tivo. I can also listen to my MP3 collection from my Tivo. Currently the only thing that the Tivo doesn't do is allow of web browsing and playing of games. I'm given to understand that in a rev or two, the Tivo will be able to do those things.
I think I'll wait for the Tivo.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Where's the LivdCD?
...that the primary reason he had three goals was to show he knew what word actually follows secondary :)
The tertiary goal of the video keg was to find an affordable hardware platform so that we could buy 4 of them immmediately to service the primary goal's need for 4 separate video rooms.
...the first rule of video keg is you don't talk about video keg
Just kidding, it looks very neat-- just the article intro struck a particular meme in my head.
Why aren't there any pics of this unit? I'm interested in not only the hardware, but the touchscreen, and just some general pics of it in action.
Considering the entirety of the anime industry is suffering from reduced sales, why is it that a method that is effectively illegal being promoted while the companies that produced this stuff, and legally license it, get the shaft?
Can anyone come up with a valid, sensical reason?
I use a set of python scripts developed to integrate XBMC with my myth backend
:)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmcmythtv/
These are pretty much like having a xbox optimized mythtv frontend. I was booting into linux to run mythtv for a while, but couldn't stand the 5min boot. I've been using this alternative for over a year and it has had a very high WAF.
I can't tell you the last time I used the xbox to play a game. I use it as PVR frontend on a daily basis.
Video "keg"? Please help an AC out and tell me either what a keg is in this context, or speculate on whether he built something that really belongs on mini-itx.com .
I like the look of kegs. That would make a cool project to put a mini-itx PC or cluster in.
Also, somebody humorously speculate on what the pump is for. I don't got much. Actual drinks? Circulating the coolant? Charging the battery? Reset button? Ctrl+Alt+Del button? Charging the fizzler? Fizzling the charger?
"Hey baby.. wanna come back to my (parents') place? I've got a(n anime) keg!"
I'm actually working on a very similar project, right now.
I'm trying to finish up the software end of things before I go out and purchase hardware, but I've got a sourceforge project up (AFX), although currently, I'm working on local versions of the source and not checking into CVS due to a major rewrite and complete lack of planning.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
From a post on Anime News Network forums:
Having attended several UK conventions over the years, I've seen AEGIS in action and it's pretty polished and reliable. The Mac port is, I'm told, a fairly recent development, and consequently has a few issues... audio starts slightly before video, so there is about a one second delay before you actually start seeing a picture on the screen - it's not out of sync, but it does mean the first second of video gets kind of cut off.
I don't appear to be able to find a website for it though; Googling it only brings up websites related to Gatekeepers or Gundam and even after eliminating those the only related site I could find is the ANN forum post I quoted above.
They do it because it's COOL. You just built your own custom setup that works seemlessly with your existing hardware! DIY is huge.
I doubt anyone with this project in their heart would follow the instructions exactly...customization is half the fun! They post the exact instructions because they are geeks and we are geeks and we all like to know how things work.
Blar.
Perhaps they were showing some of the "adult" anime, making the pump useful for... uh... I suppose it would depend on whether the viewer was male or female....
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
They have always been "slow-ass". Yet sales are decreasing while popularity is increasing. It is obviously because of piracy.
Quit complaining and pay for your goodies. By the time you have watched all the legally-available anime released in the US, your Japanese will be good enough that you don't need the subtitles anymore and you can just buy new stuff direct from Japan.
Btw, I do speak fair Japanese, and have rarely encountered problems with the official translations. Those that do appear are related to the vast differences in the language, not the translation itself. I can't comment on fan-subs because I do not watch them.
Plenty of bad anime made it to the states long before fan-subs, and virtually all of the good stuff. This argument is both impossible to confirm and rather silly.
sales decline, too. Also, you are the first person I have ever heard claim that they used netflix substantially for anime. More than half of the hardcore anime fans that I know are substantial pirates, however. They buy almost none but download tons. Fan-subbing has eliminated nearly half of the market by my estimation.
Btw, don't complain about prices - anime is actually cheaper in the states than it is here in Japan. I am not kidding. DVDs are $35/disk for normal movies and can be even higher for anime. CD's are usually $25 as well.
About a year ago I created a system which accomplishes the same thing. We use it to run the television station for BayCon. It's called Video::PlaybackMachine, and it's available on CPAN:
h ine-0.03/PlaybackMachine.pm
http://search.cpan.org/~stephen/Video-PlaybackMac
I haven't examined the code, so I'm basing this post on a quick read of the white paper.
The (known) differences are:
1. PlaybackMachine is based on Xine, while VideoKeg is based on MPlayer.
2. PlaybackMachine uses a postgres backend database, so it's impossible to schedule overlapping programs. (I'm not sure what VideoKeg uses.) It's also possible to reschedule programs while PlaybackMachine is running.
3. In addition to being able to play video short commercials, PlaybackMachine can play slides with accompanying background music.
4. There's a web interface to PlaybackMachine's scheduling system.
There are probably things that VideoKeg can do that PlaybackMachine can't, but I don't know about them yet. I'm very glad that VideoKeg is out there-- just having the hardware specs for the VIA EPIA box is a wonderful thing, and in this space the more the merrier.
From my research, Xbox (the original) only has USB 1.1 and no PCI, thus making it suboptimal for video recording. And the 733MHz CPU can't even handle HDTV resolutions for MPEG4/DivX type movies. Its performance with H.264 (AVC) would be even more limited.
And the GP didn't suggest 360, he suggested 360 would create cast-offs of original Xboxes. 360 is pretty unavailable right now, but I don't agree it is on purpose, and I don't think it will last long.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The quality is not particularly different (a random error every twenty videos means squat). And I am willing to wager that a significant fraction, probably the majority, of downloading is of videos already released overseas.
I presume that, on your honor, you immediately buy every video that you downloaded in advance when it is eventually released?
If not, it isn't speed or quality, but theft that is your motivation.
If you watch it or listen to it, pay what the authors ask. All else is theft. Simple.
oh wait, like anyone does that.
"I can't wait" is not an excuse to steal.