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Building the Godzilla of PVRs
EvolvedHumanoid writes "In a blog post, Percy Bell of SnapStream Media details how he built 'Godzilla', an 11-tuner PVR machine with HDTV support using off-the-shelf components. At $4284.90, the end result sports 1TB storage for recorded content and has to be one of the coolest PVRs ever built."
With all that hardware, I'd guess that it is, in fact, one of the hottest PVRs ever built! ;)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Pentium EE...dual core with htt...bad combination...very silly choice. FX-60 would be more impressive.
You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
Manufacturer's Warning:
Not suitable for resale in Japan.
I don't get it.
Only two comments posted, and it is slashdotted already.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Is there 11 channels of porn?
Is this the result of open source driving the price of software down? If this were a Microsoft product, just the word "Server" on the package would cost you an additional $300 or more.
That's a whole lot of heating being generated. Exhaust fan failure=lots of dead harddrives?
What about heat on the TV tuners? Or the video card?
Methinks one would be much better serviced by a rack of systems, this thing would run WAY too hot.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I always love to hear about stuff like this. However, good luck finding enough content worth recording. I have a PVR with 1 tuner and I struggle for stuff to record. Most of TV is crap except for Battlestar Galactica of course and Family Guy :)
http://religiousfreaks.com/My Setup:
2.6 Terrabytes of Disk Space (2x Raid 5 array's in 2x chassis').
6 Tuners - 2 SDTV, 2 HDTV, 2 Digital Cable (QAM256)
MythTV is very powerful, supports alot of tuners, and ALOT of folks out there have small-to-large setup's. 2005 was the year of the PVR - this article is simply a mine is bigger statement that can't be backed up.
While this is mostly a solution in search of a problem, it would be kind of cool to have in a dorm room environment. You could install it, and then have some sort of signup process through which users reserve specific chunks of time, for their various shows. While it's doubtful that one person would ever want to watch 11 programs that were on simultaneously, 11 different people might.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
RTFD (Read The Fine "Department").
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Here it is, it works great.
No, I'm not a karma whore. I'm posting as an Anonymous Coward and won't get any karma for it. I just want people to be able to actually read the article, because it is pretty neat and I want one. Have fun!
"Heat is the biggest enemy when building a quiet HTPC system. "
Uh... sure. Agreed.
"You have to sometimes sacrifice a quiet HTPC so the machine can cool itself efficiently. "
Hmm... so it supposed to be quiet, but not really.
"We choose the Intel Pentium D 840 "Extreme Edition" Processor!" :-)
Ok, quiet is RIGHT OUT now, and what a way to add to your heat problem
"While trying to push the Godzilla PVR to its limit we experienced an overheating and fan noise issue. "
LOL. Stopped reading right about there.
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make popcorn! And then, get a soda machine or beer keg, catheter for, well, you know and...voila! The ULTIMATE home enterainment system.
Blog already slow (database connection error at first try), following mirrors had time to do their job :
MirrorDot
and nyud.net
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Cost is the problem with all DIY PVR machines. As soon as you buy a PC with enough CPU or Video horsepower, you have already spent more than double what an off the shelf unit would cost. Then there are the issues with size, noise, heat, aesthetics...
Until you can buy a two tuner PC with a highquality video card for under $300, DIY PVR's make no sense.
Since the post appears to have been slashdotted already, can anyone shed some light on how he got so many tuners into a computer ?
There has to be some USB connected boxes there - I haven't seen any motherboards that can handle that many PCI cards at once.
I would add a decent remote control, like the Logitech Harmony 890 for about $400 (that's right!), merely 10% of the total cost. ;-)
Too bad they didn't build the Godzilla of Servers to go with it.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
"What makes the "Extreme Edition" processor different from a regular Pentium D processor? A regular Pentium D processor has two cores which Windows XP sees as two physical processors. The Extreme Edition processors adds hyper-threading to each core! This allow Windows XP to run 4 simultaneous threads at once!"
Maybe someone can correct me on this, but I though the difference between the regular Pentiums and the Extreme Edition was a fuckton of cache. Does Intel intentionally disable hyperthreading on the non-Extreme Pentium Ds?
// Dumps core here
I have a dual tuner PVR (Dish Network 522) and am really happy with it. I have yet to run into an issue where I want to record three programs at once. Do I just not watch enough TV or do these people watch WAY to much?
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And, since you are not married, is it going to be stuffed with only Sci-Fi Network shows, ripped movie DVDs, and top-quality pr0n?
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
a PVR with enough storage space for all my favorite shows and movies, plus an alternative heat source!
It'll add the realism of being able to actually cook marshmallows in front of that recorded fireplace video!
Free Beer!
Wordpress fall down, go boom.
for $4200.00 I'd rather buy a new biger TV
We have a new winner...
The old king was a 45 year old 350lb man who spent his days in his parents basement watching porn and playing WoW pretending to be a 16 year old girl.
But these guys that built an 11 tuner PVR becasue they just couldnt get enough porn blow right past 11 on the loser scale.
Please find your nearest suicide booth, ASAP.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
RTFD (Retrieve the Fire Department)?? Yes this device may require them.
I used to live in a house with 7 people, and we had a DVR that had 2 tuners. (so, you could record on one, and watch on the other)
Occasionally we would have conflicts with someone recording a movie during a regularly recorded TV show, and someone else was bored and wanted to surf channels - but even with 7 people, 3 or 4 tuners definitely would have done it. 11 is so overkill it's not even funny.
However...technology for technology's sake, I suppose.
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catheter + pr0n = bad times
Mmmmm, the blog server smells like burning.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
What's a PVR anyway? Pathetic Virgin Russian? No, thanks, I've been living in Moscow for 5 years and I'm tired of them already. And now the Godzilla comes...
Look at me, I can spend money...
More interestingly, does anybody have any suggestions for cheap hardware to get started playing around with GnuRadio and what I can use it for? FM or shortwave radio would be nice...
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I don't get this geeky thing where you'll spend godawful amounts of money on hardware (and create a huge electricity bill and cooling problem to boot) but take a hissy fit about paying for a DVD or a CD you want to enjoy. It reminds me of clients my law firm had who'd spend gobs of money for us to fight their personal tax assessments.
At $15 each, you could buy 285 DVDs. I can guarantee that when you pay for entertainment you're a lot more choosy about what you watch. It reminds me of software pirates who spend so much time and energy collecting software (or porn fanatics, too, I guess) but never actually enjoy what they've collected.
The correct question is:
Are there 11 channels of porn?
To +5 Insightful!
You sir, are a genius. I bet you hear it all the time! This has got to be the best invention since, well, whatever Ron Popeil last invented. It's simply outstanding, because not only can you grate your cheese, you can melt it over your tortilla chips at the exhaust side of all of those hard drives. In fact, it may be ideal to have a nacho conveyor that would simply do it all for you!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
"Heat is the biggest enemy when building a quiet HTPC system."
With _noise_ a close second?
Quote corret, and needs modding up IMO (Re: Drive failure destroying array)
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
In that pic they are trying to use the static electricities to loosen up the electrons. With the electrons loosened they can tranfer the datas faster. They said when the electrons are too tight only 10 of the tuners can be used at a time.
Haha, holy sh!t, you all just slashdotted and digged us at the same time ;P
Is there any place where someone can buy a 250GB hard drive that is pre-loaded with movies or Simpsons episodes? If not, then maybe I should start a little black market business...
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Off topic and even if you took credit, you're the 2nd post. [chuckle sound] But to put this thread on topic, this PVR sounds like if it is left unattended, it could become the Godzilla of melted balls of plastic and metal! Ahh... I love the smell of burning PCBs in the morning.
There are no uninteresting things. There are only uninterested people.
Well congrats to him, he must have some serious talent and patience. (Coming from a fairly technically savvy person who spent a whole day gettng LIRC to work with a Dish Network receiver on MythTv. Sigh...)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
This might be a stupid question... but where does one get the source feeds for 11 tuners?
Granted, I haven't used digital cable in years, but last time I had cable they told me they couldn't support more than 4 tuners in my home due to bandwidth issues.
I currently have DirecTV (DirecTiVo) and I would need 3 dishes to feed 11 tuners.
I have a two-tuner TiVo with my DirecTV. I record TONS of movies. Most of it I capture and write DVD. I very rarely have a conflict where I'm trying to record more than 2 things at once, and even when it has happened, I've always been able to find at least one alternate time among the three movies to reschedule one. 3 tuners, and I'd NEVER run into the problem. 11 tuners? Who the fuck needs 11 tuners? Sorry, but this article goes into my "Waste of time and money" bin.
The server's already as hot as the PVR must get, so I don't know if it answered my musing... What kind of signal quality is it getting? I can't imagine the owner sprung for digital cable x11 lines, so there must be some kind of split. I'd like to see how the signal-to-noise is being held up. Ok, I'm done musing.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
Dual Xeon w/ dual core w/ hyperthreading.
My other first post is car post.
> I don't get this geeky thing where you'll spend godawful amounts of money on hardware (and create a huge electricity bill and cooling problem to boot) but take a hissy fit about paying for a DVD or a CD you want to enjoy.
The hardware doesn't have this pernicious notion that we should have to agree to 800 page downs worth of legalese in order to use it. Nor does the bit of legalese it generally comes with ("limited warranty--if it breaks you get a new one") compare to the legalese we're starting to get with CDs and DVDs (e.g. Sony's "we 0wn you, bi0tch" EULA + rootkit combo).
Build Your Own PVR Community Site for news, reviews, howto, tips, and forum.
also see HTPCnews as well.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Even better would be a mobile-ish setup with a Centrino or Turion. If you're looking for cool and quiet without sacrificing too much speed, that's really the way to go.
Just my $2.0e-2.
This sig rocks the casbah.
Maybe if they hosted the blog on the PVR, the blog would still be up.
O.K. Although, I agree with the folks that state that this just didn't seem well thought out, I have an app that could make use of more than 11+ video capture streams. Home security. During Christmas, I signed up for some "home automation" catalogs. I don't buy any of the stuff because its way out of my price range, but I was startled to find some cool things listed. Apparently several companies are selling a 4 camera setup, with 80 GB HD PVR for I think somewhere $1500-2000 for home security. They said that it would record 4 weeks of video. (I'm not sure if that is 4 weeks with 4 camera or 4 weeks with one camera though.) I keep thinking to myself that it seemed like a cool product, but I'd want alot more than 4 cameras, but I wouldn't want to just buy multiple systems. I'd want a HD solution that had several TB in RAID5 and designed to record as many camera feeds as possible. I'd want to have security camera feeds storaged into a nice very lockable cabinet that should survive a burglary.
the Mothra of toaster ovens or the King Ghidorah of filing cabinets?
It is the 21st century and the time for Klax has passed.
Either these guys know very little about hardware, or they got a big fat check from Intel. AMD CPUs costing 30% less will run circles around the Intel CPU they picked, and produce half as much heat. Also, why RAID-0? With all those drives, the space lost to RAID-5 would be minimal, and it would give them actual redundancy (which is what RAID is all about). Maybe they know a lot about PVRs, but clearly they don't know much about setting up a server / workstation...
Republicans hate the working man. They will destroy the middle class.
FC3 and Lindows run fine on it, but I have to get the accelerated CN400 (H/W HD MPEG2 decoding) drivers, and build MythTV for it.
You could've hired me.
So assuming he finds 11 items to actually simultaneously record, and given that practically nothing scheduled is less than 1/2 hour in length, this thing running for 1/2 hour gives him 5:30 worth of TV to watch. (Assuming that all he watches are sitcoms with 8 minutes of commercials each, he's still got a minimum of 4:02 hours per 0:30 hours of recording ... and probably more because he's likely recording a movie or seven in their too.
4 hours of TV a day is already getting high - if the PVR runs for a full hour, it becomes a full time job just to watch all that TV. If the PVR runs for 3 hours at capacity daily he will be recording far more content than he can possibly ever consume.
Did I miss something about the Digital Cable issue?
In My area, TWC mirrors 95% of the analog channels on the digital tier.
So in order to get my Dig channels i would have have 11 Dig boxes?
Sure everytime you split the cable you lose 3.5 to 7db depending on which leg of the splitter you branch off, nothing a Cable Amplifier cant fix, digital channels are fine to about -15db to -20db, what im wondering is where the Cable Card support?
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
...meet Slashdot.
My other first post is car post.
During testing, the PVR had an issues with audio/video sync. Both audio and video were working, but the test movie which contained screams of frightened Japanese never matched up. They're still working on the issue.
Every time S-ATA comes up, some jerk says "but hard disks don't even saturate the bandwidth of parallel ATA, so S-ATA is useless!".
They always seem to ignore the fact that S-ATA cables are much, much nicer to work with. Can you imagine building Godzilla with ribbon cables?
This thing has got to be LOUD! Even if they put a decent quality CPU cooler in, you still have 3 92mm fans to cool the case, and SIX 7200 RPM hard drives, which have to sound like a jet engine, even if they are mounted on washers. I wouldn't want this in my living room, so it kinda defeats the purpose. I built a media center PC (that I'm using now) with all 120mm fans (except for the CPU cooler, which will eventually be replaced) software controlled for low RPMs. It doesn't have the monsterous specs of that machine (only dual HDs, dual tuners, and a Pentium D 820), but you can barely hear it 4 feet away, which makes it much more practical for actually watching TV.
they needed speed, so raid0 was the way to go. if reliability was their primary concern they wouldve done things differently.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Now I call that a PVA (Personal Video Archiver)!
is recording a football game where they have multiple cameras in the stadium, each camera being broadcast on a different channel. Once the game is over, you can cut-up your own highlights from various angles and just about anything else you want to do as a producer.
I believe this was done at some college football games this year. I don't know if halftime was included. I'm sure some marching bands wouldn't mind recording some of their shows from mulitiple angles.
Offtopic, I know, but I thought I might point this one out: http://www.angryflower.com/aposter.html .
he must need it to record all the CSI shows coming out.
The world is facing the end of copper and they are wasting it by cooling CPUs in a PVR?!?!? Oh, Gaia is crying!!!
I just put together a 1TB PVR for a customer for $999.
For less than $100 it could have had 4 tuners instead of 2 (but why?).
It used AMD chips to run much much cooler and have better video performance.
If I removed the disks, I could build 3 of them (with 12 tuners all together) for under $2K. They would each run pretty quiet and cool. Then I could spend about $2K on a 3TB storage server with RAID5 and super fast disk speeds.
For a little less $$ than these folks spent, would I have the coolest PVR around? No.
I would have some ridiculous monstrosity, probably named Ultraman just so it could beat up Godzilla.
I swear to goodness, you want to means test, stress test, or otherwise find weak points in some techno gadget, post it on /. In short time you will find more opinions, suggestions, mods, and corrections then you ever would in a year of testing.
/. it! In one day a poster will have found more holes, or more improvements then they could have in a life time of boring walkthroughs or brainstorm sessions. Now there could be IP ramifications "Hey, that was my idea you made millions on", but if it betters the world is that not the prize?
This is what I love about this site. Next time NASA wants to start project X, have them post the basics on slashdot. Built something but not sure how to improve it?
This is Open Thought in action and I really enjoy...and learn from it!
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
When choosing the processor to go in Godzilla we thought to ourselves, "What CPU should we choose to power the 'King of all Monster PVRs'?" We choose the Intel Pentium D 840 "Extreme Edition" Processor! What could be beating in the belly of a beast like Godzilla but the best processor Intel makes?
A run of the mill AMD chip?
An Athlon 64 3200+ runs $160.
The Intel Pentium D 840 EE runs $1010.
Q: Which one is cooler? A: AMD
Q: Which one is quieter? A: AMD
Q: Which one uses less electricity to watch a movie. A: AMD
Q: Which one uses less electricity to record 11 movies simultaneously? A: AMD
Q: Which one is capable of displaying 11 movies simultaneously from 11 onboard tuners? A: AMD
(Witness the melting of their PVR, and the deafening noise of half a dozen fans at full speed.)
Guess which one can handle 11 TV tuners?
I definitely record more than 11 show episodes a week on Tivo, but that's counting some things I record daily, like The Daily Show, Leno, and Olberman's news show. And it would occasionally be useful to record two shows at once, or very rarely 3 shows if there's a good movie on. But mostly that's too much television.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The video cards are already converting to MPEG-2 - if you want to squash that to MPEG-4, you don't _have_ to do it in realtime, you just have to have some spare disk space for scratch. You'll almost never be recording 11 shows at once except to be silly - if you can keep up with 2-3 simultaneous recordings, that's almost always enough for realtime, and if you've got too many, you can convert the rest later - or watch them unconverted, if you're in a hurry.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Godzilla, sure.
- movies-like-Inspector-Gadget-probably-because-he-m arried-that-horrid-looking-Sarah-Jessica-Parker PVR.
What I'm looking for is an actor-well-past-his-prime-and-forced-to-do-crappy
Or maybe a Bobcat Goldthwait PVR. Something to use in my Evening At The Improv shrine.
Come on, engineers. Give us something we REALLY want.
Seriously in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, I FINALLY got my LowenHart 20" rims (20" x 9" + 37 offset) for my '99 Nissan Sentra (tough to find with that offset, I had to jack them off a Mercedes SEL down on Vine after like, weeks of looking). Took lots of pictures (including diffs between old 19" and the new LowenHarts) and plan to write something up and post it here on /.)
Car rides like a steamroller now, but I have to get new springs for it and maybe bushings (Hyper-Flex performance polyurethane).
I mean come on, what on earth would anyone ever need to record 11 shows at once for? When would anyone have time to watch them all? This was made sheerly for Tim Allen's grunting "More power! Owh! Owh!"
This guy needs to get off the couch.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
And I betcha it comes pre-rooted.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
How many cards/channels could a midgrade desktop machine handle in a PVR capacity? Specifically, like a 2GHz Pentium with PCI (not PCI-X)? I know it's less than 11, but where are the bottlenecks with PVRs? PCI bus or DiskIO or CPU?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Can we go over this again?
I have a meager MythTV box that I built out of $800 worth of parts and some stuff I had lying around, and it specs out about the same as this guy's. CPU is a bit slower and I only have 5 tuners (3 regular, 2 digital cable) but I have a TB of disk space (is that even impressive anymore?) and it records everything I've ever wanted.
I've also had this setup for 6 to 9 months. Do I get a slashdot article on me? This is just some guy dropping way too much money on an overpowered CPU (I use an Athlon 64 3500+ and have never, ever had speed problems, even when transcoding 2 shows at once and watching another.)
No more than a successfull PR-trick from Snapstream. However, If they decide to use these 11-channel-godzilla-mammoth to P2P-TV-SHARE Desperatre housewifes for me, I will probably shut up :-)
"Never EVER mess with a jumper you don't know about, even if it's labeled 'sex and free beer'." - Dave Haynie
I'd be surprised if a 2GHz P4 couldn't handle at least 5, and maybe 10 simultaneous streams. As long as the tuners are doing the encoding in hardware - and you aren't running commercial-detection or other jobs while that's happening - all the CPU is doing is routing data to the hard disk.
The PCI bus won't be much of a limitation, most of these cards encode at a maximum of 10 or 12 megabits/second, which at 10 streams comes out to 120 megabits/second - or a measly 15 megabytes/second.
Now, if you want to watch some of those as you're saving them, doing pause/rewind operations, then I can't really say - but remember that some of the commercial DVRs which can do live pause/rewind have a measly 33 MHz CPU in them. Of course, the encoding and decoding on them is done in hardware, but there's no reason that can't be the case in your machine as well.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I don't know if somebody touched this but If you have Digital Cable or DirecTV you have to have a receiver for each card espically if you wanted to record non-air broadcast HD channels or if you just did not want to mess with an antenna. Then each card would have to be tried into the receiver to make the receiver change Channels. Is there going to be a solution for this in the future ie a receiver with 2 or 3 outputs? Now that would cool, but I would think that networks would nix that in a hurry, wouldn't want us to skip those commericals.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
Ampzilla 2000
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
But what does that doubled cost get you?
At that point you have a bare PC. There is no operating system, no drivers, no PVR software, nothing. You have spent double acquiring hardware alone. Your journey, as an earlier post called it, has only just begun. You now have to install and properly configure all of the software.
After days or weeks of fiddling (that's no exaggeration, it's not easy even when using KnopMyth), you have a big, ugly loud, HOT PC in your entertainment center. Also, you can't use this device with most HD cable systems as they require special converters or cable cards.
Meanwhile, $250 - $300 gets you a fully functional P/DVR that is quiet, much cooler, much much smaller. The unit requires that only a couple of cables be plugged in for you to be up and running. If you get the one form your cable company you can use it for HDTV from your cable. There's also a warranty on it so if anything happens to it for the next year, you are handed a new one.
How easy or not Myth is to set up depends on your hardware. In particular, TV card support is a bit dodgy in Linux,and if you don't have a compatible card, good luck. Also some cards require extensive configuration to be done and still don't work right. If you do your research beforehand and buy a card that is supported you should have very few problems.
You also might experience any of the other standard configuration difficulties with linux - video, soundcard, etc. But again, if you have compatible hardware it shouldn't be a problem.
And if you're wondering who I'm going to lay blame to for the configuration mess, it's the hardware manufacturers, but NOT for lack of support for non-Windows systems. It's because every single manufacturer has to use a different method of communication between the card and driver. HELLO - It's a TV card. How big a deal of it is it for them all to standardize on one interface?