Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute? 743
thepuma writes "Since I'm cheap, and don't want to pay monthly fees to Tivo, I am researching building my own low-budget Personal Video Recorder and player. Free software options include Freevo and MythTV. Hardware options are the main cost factor. How would you go about building the perfect low-budget PVR?" We've looked at similar questions before, but the guts of such a system (both hardware and software) have been improving -- MythTV, for instance, now supports Hauppauge's PVR-350 card. How would you build a system like this now?
I have a Myth box (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I have a Myth box (Score:5, Informative)
The important thing for me is that the WAF is high (wife acceptance factor). We're almost never home so to be able to watch whatever we want whenever is a real plus. And she really loves the image gallery feature.
IMHO MythTV rules.
Re:I have a Myth box (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess my WAF is pretty high. I wanted to take mine down to rebuild it with the PVR-250 cards and erase whatever it has recorded (about 500 shows) but my wife freaked out and offered to buy me a DVD writer for Christmas if I'd back up her shows. I reluctantly accepted her offer. :-/ I guess it got accepted pretty good for what I had originally setup as a toy project to catch Seinfeld episodes I had missed in first-run.
Re:I have a Myth box (Score:5, Informative)
If you are building a box from the ground-up, it's best to copy what someone else has already built, or do some serious research into your hardware first. (The Asus Pundit system seems to be popular, and pretty inexpensive. Not to mention it's not much bigger than a VCR.)
My biggest concern with mythtv is the use of XMLTV for the guide data. You just know that someday soon, the websites that are being scraped are simply going to start blocking XMLTV (at least one website has started doing it already), and then you are left with a really expensive VCR and no guide data.
That said, once up and running, myth is quite nice. Sure, it could use a few tweaks here and there, but I'm sure those will be worked out eventually. If you don't want to keep updating the software, get a TiVO
Re:I have a Myth box (Score:5, Informative)
Try Mandrake.. (Score:4, Interesting)
urpmi mythtv
Thats xmltv and everything.
Re:I have a Myth box (Score:5, Informative)
Having finally got it up and running however I am continually amazed at its performance and functionality. MythTVs interface is clean (and plugable which is fortunate) and architecturally very sound. My 1.6 GHz Athlon XP easily handles recording and watching television. The commercial skip warrants the cost by itself. Furthermore, after getting LIRC working, it is completely controlled via a universal remote. After some work, Xine worked flawlessly as a DVD player. That in addition to the music interface (with excellent full screen visualization) and a game emulator module and it blows away commercial products. What I've found particularly cool is the optional web interface allow remote scheduling for recordings.
In response to the buggyness, despite initial difficulties, a 20 day up time thus far is pretty good to me (considering it was only restarted as part of testing).
This Month's Linux Journal... (Score:4, Informative)
Go to this site :-) (Score:3, Informative)
TV Cards [tv-cards.com]
Pretty helpful site for beginners.
Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to do it because you think there are other benefits, or because you like to tinker, go right ahead.
You will spend more than the cost of a Tivo plus lifetime service by the time you are done, though.
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Informative)
Coolermaster component case atc-620 -$88.00
Motherboard with processor and integrated items-99.00
128 meg of ram $28.00
120 Gig hard drive - $99.00
OEM-boxed PVR-250 capture/tuner card $80.00
IR reciever + remote that is lirc compatable $40.00
$434.00 + tax
all from my local computer shoppe. It would have been cheaper if I went looking on ebay for the parts.
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Lifetime TiVo service $299
Total $398... And you don't have to do any work.
Though I don't know why you would buy lifetime service instead of paying the $4/month for service through DirecTV. You're probably going to upgrade in less than 6 years.
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, for the Directv/Tivo unit, you can't. There is no lifetime service option with Directv/Tivo, only the Tivo standalone units. You have to pay $5/month to Directv, who presumably shares some of that with Tivo. Plus, if you sign up for the full DTV package (HBO,Starz,etc) the $5 fee is waived.
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, don't expect a hard drive that's constantly writing to last forever.
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of all, none of this addresses the fact that the only reason this guy said he wanted to build his own was price.... And that's what I was talking about. You're not going to get a cable or sattelite company to subsidise your hardware if you build it yourself. He's probably paying for cable anyway, so why turn down free money?
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:3, Informative)
Re:remember the old phrase... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Insightful)
You can probably make a scalled down version for $800 - $1000 to do capture and burning to DVD's now (especially with DVD burners being only $100 now as opposed to the $300 when I built mine).
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pioneerburner.com/ [pioneerburner.com]
http://devsdeals.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.
Is your video editing and gaming that you can do on pretty much any PC woth the extra $1800? Didn't think so...
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't do it for cost (Score:4, Informative)
I want to do it because there are no TIVO like boxes available for sale in Canada (except one that is built into a satellite reciever).
If us Canucks want a PVR, we either have to go cross-border-shopping for something that doesn't require a subscription (which is not available for sale to us) or hack together something.
Which option do you suppose yer typical Canadian Slashdotter will go with?
A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tivo + Lifetime sub $300-$400
I know which I'd go for...
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:3, Insightful)
High quality PVR card $200
PC $0
benefits of learning? priceless.
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just getting the dependencies right for MythTV (most of which are *not* documented) took about half a day.
Then there's the kernel patches for the card... at least two different ones, none of which compiled cleanly and had to be manually hacked.
For the price of your 'high quality' card you could have bought a Tivo, you know... they sell for half that.
Learning is irrelevant - the OP was trying to save money, not learn.
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:4, Interesting)
MythTV is not *THAT* hard to set up. I see people on the mailing list complaining about it all the time. And usually, the reply that gets them fixed is a pointer to the appropriate place in the documentation.
I have about six months work in my MythTV box, and I only got the parts a few weeks ago. I subscribed to the mailing list for about five months before I even attempted to start the project because I had heard stories of how horrendous it was to install. I printed out a hard copy of the documentation, and two different installation tutorials. Even after that, I read through all that about three times over.
Preparation is everything, I have found. You cant expect to have something of TiVo quality without putting in a lot of work your self. You have to remember that TiVo has employed a lot of people for a long time to get where it is, and it is very far from perfect as well.
About the best thing you can do to help yourself is to subscribe to the mailing list and learn from other peoples mistakes. Here's a hint in case you didn't already get it: The #1 mistake is not reading the documentation, which lists every dependancy that you need to fulfill.
If I were to be completely honest with myself, I would be forced to concede that nobody should ever build a MythTV machine because they think it will be cheaper. It probably wont be. In fact, 99.999% of the time if you are making a dedicated box it will not be. But if someone is looking for something they can change, something they can upgrade, something for a hobby, then THAT is the person who should use MythTV.
Personally, I don't regret a single minute that I've put into my MythTV box. If I did, I think I would have to question why I was doing it in the first place. IMHO, saving money is not a good enough reason.
Disclaimer: I did save money when I built my MythTV box. I managed to find a quiet dual proc PIII 633 for $100 and two AverMedia M179's for $50 a piece. That, after trying not to buy a PVR-250 for several months. Patience is indeed a virtue. Luckily, what I lack in patience I also lack in fiscal terms too.
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:4, Informative)
You're better off spending that $100 on a larger hard disk (bout 100GB for $100), and hacking it in.
You negelect to tell people one thing: Standard warranty on any Tivo/DirecTivo is 90 DAYS. Tivo lifetime subscription is linked to the box. Day 91, if your box burns up, you're out the whole bill. The only way you can transfer your subscription is if the box dies and is REPLACED BY THE MANUFACTURER UNDER WARRANTY. Many, many people have been burned by this.
I am a Tivo (series 1) owner. I'm going to build a MythTV box because I can't bring myself to blow another $500 on a single use box that I can't even web browse or play DVD's on. If the experiment fails, I have a PC for my daughter. If it works, I still have a PC for my daughter that also happens to record TV.
after a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
And at the end of a month, he will probably know a thing or two about managing video streams, caching, fs tuning, how TiVo works in the first place, and probably a thing or two about building small databases with large BLOBs attached, and maybe start figuring out how to network the FreeVo together with the rest of his LAN so he can watch CNN from his laptop on the porch.
At the end of the same month, however, one who just buys a TiVo will probably know how to watch television.
Whatever happened to taking on a challenge just because it's there?
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, for the SageTV thing mentioned earlier they state:
MPEG 2 capable receiver (the ones listed on sagetv are analogue ones... really you need one that can do satellite or at least DVB) - minimum $100. To be the same quality as Tivo you'd need one that's RGB in and oh dear they don't exist.
PIII-600 256M - $100ish depending on where you get it.
Video card with TV Out - $50
Big hard drive - at least 120GB - $100
That's $350 *before* you've put in the cost of the rest of the PC... Shuttle cases for example are $100 a throw.
Then there's the noise factor. Tivos are whisper quiet... To make a PC that quiet wou can easily add another $100 onto the base price.
Hrrmmmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:who says you have to buy new? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, yes, actually.
PVR-250 is hopelessly inadequate for modern PVR. It's got an analogue tuner, FFS!!! At least get a DVB card.
Re:A cheapskate and you want to use a PC? (Score:3, Interesting)
Budget (Score:5, Interesting)
If budget is important, consider estimating electricity costs in a do-it-yourself solution. You might be surprised how much money worth of electricity a PC can use in just a year.
As an example, I've seen people "save money" by reusing old PC's as firewalls instead of buying a cheap $50 unit that does the same job. They're spending more money in electricity than it would have cost to buy the dedicated unit.
-Teckla
Re:how much? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no way a PC without a monitor is going to draw 300 Watts unless it's a specialty super-computer. (i.e. Runs at 100% CPU power at all times, while making use of heavy draw hardware such as GPU rendering.)
150 Watts is a much better average. 24 hours a day, with ~30 days in a month, at 150 watts gives:
24*30*150 = 108,000 Watt-Hours = 108 Kilowatt-Hours
Look up what you're paying per KW hour and multiply that by 108. For example, 10 cents per KWH gives you a monthly cost of $10.80.
Re:how much? (Score:4, Informative)
This is exactly the reason people should take an interest in mini-itx motherboards for home servers. A 60W power supply could feed one of the fanless 600MHz mini-itx boards at load. I don't have the means to measure, but I suspect at idle it runs around 15W (assuming the hard drive gets spun down during idle, which is not good for the lifetime of the drive, but good for power savings).
Re:how much? (Score:5, Informative)
I've researched this a little bit before. IIRC, it works out to about $6 or $7 a month. There are a tremendous number of variables so it is difficult to predict a particular situation. for instance, many of the "old" PCs that people toss in the corner as headless file servers don't support idling. Rather than go into a low power state, the CPU runs at full power in a noop loop. Sometimes older machines don't spin down the disk properly either. Newer machines should go to a low power state much more readily, but will require much more power while they are running.
The grandparent post was correct that running an old pentium as a firewall rather than buying a LinkSys box for $50 is a foolish economy. Of course, if one requires capabilities that the simple box doesn't provide - that is a different story.
I'm a fan of the VIA mini-itx systems for "always on" applications. With judicious use of eBay, one should be able to assemble a decent low power system for less than $300. I'm told that the 1 GHz Nehemiah based systems have good integer performance but not so good floating point performance. Think of them as about a 500 MHz Pentium equiv. Great little machines for a home file and print server, and they are practically silent aside from being good for the electric bill. If you run a mini-itx as your server/web-browser/email box and only use that Dual Athlon machine when you are actually gaming, you should see a noticable drop in your electric bill.
Re:how much? (Score:3, Informative)
My laptops use ~45 watts with the screen on, without the screen it is about 35 watts (one is a PII366, the other a PIII-1GHz, both have 12" screens)
My P4 systems all use about 150 watts (no monitor) in idle (not powerdown, drives spinning) state. The worst I could manage running benchmarks was around 200W. Monitors vary a lot. Mine run about 3w in sleep, about 20W active.
1kwH
Re:Budget (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm, first of all, an out of the box firewall is not $200, but more like $50. You can even find cheaper.
Let's compute the cost of a PC running 24x7 for you. Your number is here for a 300watt PC. At idle time, it will draw approx half of that: That's $1.20 bi-monthly, or
Guide Information (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Guide Information (Score:3, Interesting)
The UK version of xmltv is pretty sucky - it's missing half the channels and there's no series information on most of them (I only managed to get 4 channels out of 30). There's a program to strip the Radio Times website of listings but it takes hours (and isn't very friendly to the website!).
You can program a Tivo using xmltv data, although the people who know how to do it (tivocanada) are pretty tight lipped about how (if you're lucky you might
1 year.. (Score:3, Insightful)
urpmi xmltv
Not much trouble and the flipside is I've got a full featured PC plugged into my HDTV (sure was nice watching those Quicktime Matrix previews on a big screen).
DirecTivo (Score:5, Informative)
If you are a new sub. you can get the DirecTivo for about $50, and with a DirecTivo you only pay $4.99/month for the Tivo service (and that is for the account not the number of boxes). For me in my area DirecTV is MUCH cheaper than cable. Also the quality of a DirecTivo is far superior than any other option available for non-HDTV PVRs. It records the direct MPEG stream no encoded done on the box. Also the DirecTivo can record 2 shows at a time!
Course if you want to do it yourself you can and it would be fun, however it would most likely not be as stable, quality not as good. And you probably wont save much money if you already have cable or directv.
Re:DirecTivo (Score:3, Funny)
Dear Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
psxndc
Xbox makes a GREAT frontend. (Score:5, Informative)
When I am recording off my old win-tv capture card and I am in gnome running mozilla, etc. I can tell a big difference in video quality as when I am not doing anything on the computer. So if you have a slow computer, you want to use X/mozilla/etc, or just want better video quallity get a hardware video capture card (happauge pvr 250/350). A pII 400mhz would do very very well with a pvr 250/350.
My main frontend is a Xbox with gentoo installed. If you have a Xbox and you are as disappointed as I was with the games the xbox is your best bet for a front end for a TV. It "fits" beside the tv, I mean who wants a tower computer beside the tv anyways? Also some guy made a xbox-linux/mythtv [blkbk.com] distro. I haven't tried it but it looks really neat.
My other front end is a laptop with 802.11g card in it. I must say mythtv does QUITE well wireless.
Upfront Cost is Hard to Beat (Score:4, Insightful)
FWIW, I am a DirecTV subscriber and the DirecTivo gives you a lot of functionality that you just can't easily replicate. It stores full quality video from the satellite feed on the hard drive. It also allows you to record two shows at the same time. That makes it well worth the price. Of course, mine has a 120 GB hard drive hacked in to give over 100 hours of storage.
Now I just need to figure out how copy the video from the Tivo. I can ftp and telnet into the system, but I haven't investigated the state of the extraction software lately. One of those projects I need to get to...
not necessarily cost effective (Score:4, Informative)
And the bottom line is, you don't have to pay tivo a monthly anything. Just buy the tivo and don't subscribe to the listings. Or you can buy the lifetime and not deal with monthly payments. Or buy a used tivo(with lifetime service) on ebay and get a deal. Lots of folks are trading up to series2 this way.
I have to admit that the series2 with home media is awesome. Get a $30 usb nic, and you can stream images/audio from the network. There's a sweet *nix program called byrequest (http://sourceforge.net/projects/byrequest/) that lets you serve files without windows, and they claim is will serve video also...
So why don't you go put that in your pipe and... nevermind.
Very Happy with MythTV (Score:4, Informative)
Has anyone else used one of these clearly beta units? Ack!
That lasted about 3 weeks. So I sat down and looked at our needs and our options:
- Two tuners (the only nice feature of the SA8000)
- Intelligent recording options (record once/series/all)
- Sufficient storage (enough to fit the entire Tour De France: 20 stages x 3hrs. That was our unit of measurement. YMMV)
- Ability to record network channels (NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox)
- HighDef is a nice-to-have
Options:
- DirectTV with DirectTivo (No Rochester locals then) (~$550 for Series2 unit with big HD)
- DishNetwork with the Dish921 (High Def! Have to lie to get Plattsburgh locals) ($1000+)
- DishNetwork with the Dish721 (Have to lie to get Plattsburgh locals) ($500)
- Time Warner with SA8000 (Ack!) ($5 + $9 rental/mo)
- DIY box (???)
Wife gave the project a green light, and I bought the parts to build it. Motherboard with integrated LAN and VGA, $100; AthlonXP 1800+, $50; PVR250 Tuner cards, $130 x2; Wireless mouse & keyboard, $40. I already had a case and 120Gb drive.
It took a bit of work and a weekend to get it running the first time (Myth 0.11). Thanks so much to Jarod's guide [goldfish.org]. I tweaked it and broke some stuff about 3 weeks later, and rebuilt it. Only took 8 hrs that time.
Tweaked stuff again and broke it again. I should realize that it's a TV device, not a playtoy. This time I rebuilt it in 3 hrs. (That included restoring a backup of the programs saved on the HD.) ATRPMS with apt-get (thanks Axel) makes it a breeze.
It's been fine for the last month. It sits quietly mounted between floor joists in the basement crawlspace storage, where it is keep quite cool. As a bonus over Tivo, it has a picture gallery viewer of all the PCs in our house, it runs MAME and ZSnes, plays MP3s and shows the weather.
Thanks Issac and all the developers who put so much hardwork into a great project. Your efforts are very appreciated.
By the way: The best part about this being an open source, Linux based project? When there's a problem with the app and I'm not at home, I can ssh to it and fix it remotely. No more trying to explain things over the phone!
Repeat ad Nauseum (Score:4, Funny)
Networked (Score:3, Interesting)
I just did this (Score:5, Informative)
- CPU: Athlon XP 2400
- MB: Some random Gigabyte motherboard, about $60
- Case: I splurged here and got an HTPC-looking Cooler Master ATC-610
- Video: GeForce2 MX 440
- Capture: Hauppage WinTV PVR 250
- 120MB IDE HD
- 802.11 wireless card
- DVD-ROM/CDRW drive
In total, I spent around $700. This is clearly not cheap compared to a TiVo, but I can do a lot of things that a typical TiVo can't and I don't have any service fees to pay. If I really wanted to save money, here's what I would have done:Re:I just did this (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody who is trying to save money by building a TiVo substitute is going to end up losing in the end.
Do it because you love to hack, do it for the satisfaction, do it for the feature set, but trying to save money is not going to work here.
Re:I just did this (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I just did this (Score:3, Informative)
I have a 120GB drive on my ReplayTV, and most of my recording is at 1GB/hour. With MythTV, you can do offline transcoding to mpeg4, so you can store a lot more on there.
Of course, if you're using an ATSC source, you'll need a lot more storage (ATSC is the HDTV broadcast standard). I think that's upto 8 or 9GB/hour.
I'm going to start with a 200GB drive for
Not really cost effective... (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, if you've got DirecTV, then there's no DVR that you can build that's going to do as good of a job of capturing the signal as the DirecTV DVR w/TiVo (DTiVo). The DTiVo simply copies the already MPEG encoded stream that DirecTV sends. Thus the DTiVo doesn't need an expensive (and relatively low quality) hardware MPEG encoder. Which means that the DTiVo can be found for serious cheap, [valueelectronics.com] sometimes even for free. [rapidsatellite.com] Assuming that a homebrew DVR costs about $800 to build, you could get a free DTiVo and put the $800 towards 13 yrs 4 mos worth of monthly fees.
Still it sounds like a fun project. But it seems like you'd be paying for the entertainment of putting it together. Not for the low cost of the DVR.
Why I love my MythTV (Score:5, Informative)
BUT!
There is no subscription fee - TV listings are downloaded via XMLTV.
I can store CDs and DVDs on the HD.
I can run multiple front-ends, enabling me to watch TV/recordings on another machine on the network.
I can update recording settings through a very friendly HTTP interface.
I can extract and re-encode recorded shows.
In addition, people have written lots of groovy addons, including:
A MAME frontend
A CallerID module (when the phone rings, callerid information is displayed onscreen!)
A weather report module
The possibilities are endless.
Splurge on the hardware! (Score:3, Informative)
The $45 ATI TV-Wonder you can get at best buy isn't going to cut it. This thing is ok for watching TV, but it's not even great at that. You definately want a TV tuner card with hardware MPEG2 encoding, preferably at 12MB/s. I'd recommend a Hauppauge [hauppauge.com] product. You may even want to look into HDTV tuner cards, although I have no experience with them.
In the end the quality of your hardware is going to matter most, because regardless of the software you use to accomplish your goal, the end result will only be as good as the hardware that was used to capture the image.
I had a TiVo, but sold it after I built my own PVR. TiVo is great, and did some things my PVR doesn't (like suggested viewing), but all in all there's nothing better than your own home rolled PVR
MythTV (Score:3, Informative)
I cannot recommend MythTV any more highly. It really is the way to go, especially for those who love to hack around with Linux.
Compare these costs: (Score:4, Informative)
Hauppauge's PVR-350 tv tuner card: $200
Tivo after rebate: $200
It's hard to justify the cost of building your own when a tivo is so cheap. I'd like to build my own, but I can't do it as cheaply as just buying tivo hardware. (Yes, I have a Tivo).
My setup (Score:4, Informative)
On the downside, there was far too much fiddling I had to do to get things right. If I were to do it all again, I probably would just by a TiVO and get the home media option.
Bottom line: Whatever you do, get a PVR250/350 for your capture card. Software capture cards simply don't hold a candle. Everyone who starts with a WinTV Go or other software card ends up upgrading to a PVR250 (yours truly included). Do yourself a favor and go straight for the PVR250.
Linux HTPC How-to (Score:3, Informative)
Linux HTPC How-to [sllug.org]
--brian
A couple of things Myth and Freevo can do (Score:3, Interesting)
With that said, I will only buy a PVR if it has the following options:
1. Built-in DVD player that does VCD/SVCDs, Divx and Xvid.
2. 10/100 ethernet
3. Standard network file system access to my recordings with NFS and Samba file sharing.
Via Epia-M board (like SolarPC), with Reservations (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.solarpc.com/20.htm
It has:
Those are the bare neccesities if your just going to be cheap. I am cheap/poor too, so that is all I have. Someday I'll get a nice DVD burner so I can archive stuff I might want to see again somday. I also want a wireless keybaord.
For further info check out the PVR Hardware Database:
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-view_ar
They have a page with some nice installation guides:
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?
As you can see I am all for building a MythTV box, but having built one, I have to warn you that the software isn't perfect yet. It really kicks Tivo's ass in terms of functionality (I love the MythWeb interface, and you can set it too completely cut out commercials, which it does surprisingly accurately), but it still can be a little buggy sometimes and should only be used by people who like to tinker.
This is how I built my "Tivo" (Score:5, Interesting)
For case, I used the Morex Cubid 2699R. It's about the size of a 12" pizza box (much smaller than the VCR that it replaced!), and uses a 50W external power supply, which *significantly* cuts down on noise. My hard drive is the biggest contibutor to noise with this setup. I got my case for about $80 US.
I keep it in my TV cabinet without an attached mouse, keyboard, or monitor. Just connected to TV and my LAN, and controlled via remote control.
You can see pics and a review of its older cousin at:
http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/2688R/
As for the rest, I got:
Motherboard:
VIA EPIA M10000 ($150-$160 US) - Has onboard ethernet, 5.1 audio, video,
and one PCI slot. Processor is already on it. Processesor has
exceptionally low power requirements (compared to high-end AMD/Intel).
Memory:
Crucial 512mb DDR (if you do decide on the 2699R case, make sure the RAM
height is below 34mm or it won't fit - the Crucial fit just fine)
Tuner:
Hauppauge PVR-350 (less than $200 via pricewatch.com)
Its included remote works really well under LIRC
DVD:
Some generic slimline DVD player for $55.
If you get the 2699R case, you need a slimline which means more $$
Note that as of current date, MythDVD and MythVideo don't work
with the PVR-350, so you won't be able to watch DVD's (yet).
Hard drive:
I used an old IBM drive laying around, I plan on upgrading to a Seagate Barracuda which is rated at 20dB while idling.
Now the pros and cons of my setup:
Pros:
Very small, very quiet
PVR-350 with the Epia M10000 uses only 3% (!!!) CPU utilization during
playback and record
Front of case has firewire/usb connections if I need later on
Even without MythDVD or MythVideo support, it's already better than a
commercial Tivo because (1) I can record at higher bitrate and resolution,
and (2) I have direct access to the recorded videos, so that (3) I can
archive to DivX or DVD...
Cons:
No DVD or avi/quicktime/etc. file playback since I've using a PVR-350 (hopefully soon though!)
I couldn't use the already built 0.11
PVR-350. I ended up compiling both IVTV and MythTV CVS instead.
Since there's no attached keyboard/mouse/monitor, I need to ssh from
a different computer on the network, but I actually prefer it this way
Hope that helps
The cheap option is now to buy a real one (Score:5, Insightful)
With a new account (1 year contract) at DirecTV or Dish you can get a free or cheap PVR included... and many other benefits (3 rooms, free installation, etc. etc.). Certain plans (Platinum level or some shiiiiii) even give you the PVR subscription fee included (or included in your receiver mirroring fee).
I'm not saying you shouldn't try building one yourself, but the argument was usually "I could build one cheaper with parts I have lying around" however most people then went out and spent $75-$100 on a brand new capture card. With subsidized
MythTV has definitely progressed along the years, but it's still not 100% reliable (what open-source anything ever is truly complete, tested, and waranteed). That being said, it definitely has some other cool "Media" functions that I really would like in my family room. Of course, I'm not willing to live with the ugly beige box and noise (before you say silent processors and slimline cases, add those costs to your initial argument).
If I truly had the hardware lying around (I don't) and I truly wanted a project not just the end Tivo functionality (I don't) and I was willing to put up with all the tinkering and annoyances required (I might be, wife definitely isn't) then I would consider doing it.
--Darren
Cool question... (Score:5, Informative)
The reasoning for the different items are as follows:
A similar model of the motherboard got good reviews [tomshardware.com] by Toms Hardware Guide (yes, I know some people in /. hate Tom). The integrated sound on this board was recommended to me by an ALSA developer. It's also got SATA, LAN, USB and Firewire and, as a nice bonus, both coax and optical digital sound outputs.
Samsung...didn't matter much as long as it had DVD and CD-RW capabilities, black front was a nice touch though.
WAG311GE, one of few cards that support A, B and G wireless networking. Supported in Linux by the MadWifi [sourceforge.net] drivers, unfortunately not truly open source, but neither are any other ABG card drivers.
Intel processor, I usually like Athlons but temperature (and thereby cooling requirements) is much more important in this box than speed.
Hauppage, well supported by MythTV and able to do MPEG2 recording and playback in hardware.
MSI GeForce, has VGA, DVI and TV-Out, also fanless and really cheap. Closed drivers but that's kinda hard to avoid.
Maxtor drive, I really wanted a more quiet Seagate but the SATA models were kind of impossible to find in any nearby store for decent prices. Also most stores seemed to have the ones with the least storage capacity.
Coolermaster, the case isn't "designed" to be a HTPC case (such as this one [quietpc.com]) which means it doesn't have the same silly price tag. It was also the exact same width as my stereo components (well, 3mm wider) and similar color.
Now all I have to do is wait...
Hardware MPEG-2 if you want to record TV or DVDs (Score:4, Insightful)
The general rule about software MPEG-2 encoders is this: quality, low-CPU, realtime; pick any two.
If you don't care about being able record to DVD, and/or you want to record to DiVX and envision a house where all of your DVD players are DiVX-capable, then a $30 stereo tuner card will suffice for now.
I have two AverTV Stereo cards that are going up on eBay, because I decided that I really do want to record good quality MPEG-2 to DVD. I need to be able to hand my wife/kids a DVD of the favorite shows that she missed because I made them leave the house. I will be getting a PVR-250 like everybody else.
Note also that this advice applies to Windows people just as much as it does for Linux people. There are no software, high-quality, realtime MPEG-2 coders that don't require an overclocked cryogenically cooled CPU, regardless of what OS you run.
-Rick
Knoppmyth, yet again... (Score:5, Informative)
You can burn the iso, assemble your pvr/media machine, boot of the iso, provide a few usernames and passwords and Knoppmyth will partition and install everything you need to get MythTV running on your system including mysql, xmltv, mythtv. As a bonus you get the magic of apt-get to install almost anything else you might want. The fontend program is very nicely done and it supports remote controls and external channel changers too.
-dameron
The "Wife Factor" (Score:4, Funny)
[Obligatory_ReplayTV_comment]Our ReplayTV systems have been very stable and reliable. They are basically "appliances" that simply work. No muss, no fuss. And the wife is very happy with them.[/Obligatory_ReplayTV_comment]
Trust me, after you've heard the line "So, how do I turn on the TV?" coming from a very pissed-off wife, you won't regret your buying decision...
Buy a ReplayTV 5040, save time/money/headache (Score:3, Informative)
I chose replay over Tivo because it was much ($100 or so + $5 a month) cheaper for the ReplayTV with ehternet and sharing and picture viewing and all that, plus it has auto-commericial-skip (beware: the 55xx series does not). I wish it had the thumbs up/down thing, but nothing is perfect.
Now, if mp3 and video game emulation are must-haves, then build the MythTV box. Tivo also supports mp3, but you have to spend $100 + $5 a month or something for their permission to listen to your music.
Snapstream (Score:4, Informative)
My HTPC is an Athlon 2800, 1GB of RAM, an all-in-wonder 9600 Pro and a 3ware Escalade 7506-12 with 12 200GB Maxtor drives (two RAID10s of 600GB each) and 2 160GB Samsungs. It's in a 4U rackmount case with a 550 Watt PC Power and Cooling PSU. I use an Asus A7N8X Deluxe for a motherboard, with its support for Dolby Digital 5.1 on digital outputs. The PC is connected to an Integra DTR-8.2 receiver (that's its name, not how many speakers it supports) which itself can be controlled with its own radio frequency remote, and whose video switching and AV zone support I make full use of.
The whole thing is sitting in 19" rack in a closet, so I don't have to listen to it be all noisy.
It runs 2000 Server, mostly because, at the start of its life, I was working with 2000's soft-RAID features, and "Pro" versions of Windows don't do redundant RAID.
I use Snapstream PVS for TV-watching and recording, primarily because it integrates nicely with my ATI RF remote, and because it supports tuning my DirectTV receiver via a serial connection.
The PROBLEM with Snapstream is that it's not the paragon of stability that it should be. Every few days it flies off the deep end and takes my poor HTPC with it. I have a 35-hour DirectTivo for a back up and second video source, just in case.
I also have three 400-disc DVD carousels of varying ages that I use to house my collection of movies. The DVPCX985V is the newest of those, and the one I appreciate the most, since it support SACDs. The 3 jukeboxes are connected to each other and operate as a single logical unit.
Regular daily viewing is done on a 32" 16x9 Princeton display. It can handle HDTV signals but I haven't coughed up the cash for DirectTV HDTV reception or a video capture solution that works with HDTV. I also have an ancient, 800lumen, 800x600 Sony projector that I plan to replace when its bulb dies, probably with an NEC HT1000 (3000:1 contrast ratio).
I have a MythTV box (Score:5, Informative)
You *SHOULD* build a MythTV box IF:
- You are an experienced Linux user, have some extra hardware lying around (or money is no object), and are looking for a fun and interesting project to mess around with.
- You are an inexperienced Linux user, have some extra hardware lying around (or money is no object), and are looking for a fun and interesting project to learn Linux with.
- You are not one of the above, but absolutely must have the single best Multimedia Convergence box you can possibly have at all costs.
You should *NOT* build a MythTV box IF:
- You are an inexperienced Linux, user and have no money and no hardware lying around.
- You have no interest in learning Linux.
- You are an experienced Linux user, have no money and no extra hardware lying around.
- You want something that works now, not something that is sorta great now, but will be absolutely great later.
This exactly what I've been telling my friends when they get jealous of my MythTV box. I suspect in about a year or so, building a MythTV box will be a LOT simpler. Until then, follow my guideline above.
Bryan
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:4, Insightful)
To be really useful, a homemade pvr has to solve the problem of obtaining program listings.
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:4, Insightful)
> just the hardware if you want. Of course not having the program listings and
> scheduling features kinda defeats the main benefit of PVRs.
If you plunk down $300 for the hardware, may as well plunk down the $250 for a lifetime subscription as well.
Just pretend the hardware costs $550, but in this way you will have full guide listings and no monthly fee.
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:3, Insightful)
But a used TiVo with an intact lifetime subscription should be worth at least $100-150 more on the secondary market than one without, shouldn't it?
It was always my understanding that the lifetime subscription was transferrable (since, as you point out, it's for the life of the unit).
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:5, Informative)
May I direct your attention to this [membled.com].
This is currently what MythTV uses [mythtv.org].
Regards
elFarto
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:4, Informative)
Old Series 1 TiVos can be used without subscription, as a sort of digital VCR.
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:3, Interesting)
sure just buy a tivo if all you want is a PVR... (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, if all you want to do is PVR, then just buying a TiVO makes sense. But if you really want a convergence device to tie your tv into the network -- tivo can't compete.
with a roll-your-own, you could add all sorts of functionality:
. streaming non-mpeg2 video clips from across the network
. listening to your mp3 collection on your living-room sound system
. watching a slideshow of digicam vacation pics . firing up an emulator and enjoying some pong
. actually web browsing from a fully functional machine (a
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'd just buy one (Score:4, Funny)
Frankly, Tivo is a company that has shown a very cooperative corporate attitude towards tivo owners and hacking. They recognize that a tivo hacker is a tivo owner and a tivo owner is a tivo customer. What kind of bass-ackwards company would try to prevent their own customers from excercising fair-use with legally purchased products... oh nevermind.
Re:The one pitfall for homebrew PVRs... (Score:5, Informative)
When MythTV wants to change channel on the cable box, it calls a user-definable external script. I use LIRC [lirc.org] to emit the IR control codes to switch channels on my General Instruments cable box.
Re:Just buy a vcr (Score:5, Insightful)
Compared to a Tivo: You have to switch tapes They only hold 8 hours You have to rewind them It's a pain to find that 30 min show in the middle of the tape They're louder (at least mine is) when FF and Rewinding Tivo has automatic scheduling
I'm sure there are other advantages, those are just off the top of my head.
Tapes have the advantage of being portable and everywhere so you can take what you recorded to your buddies house, but overall Tivo or some other similar DVR blows the VCR away.
Re:Just buy a vcr (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the big ones that most people don't mention is that with a TiVo you can watch your show from the beginning 15 minutes after it starts. With a VCR, even if you've managed to get it programmed the way you want it, and you've always got a tape it, if you get home 5 mins after your favorite program starts, you have wait until it's over until you can see the beginning. With a TiVo you just start watching.
Also TiVo records
Re:Just buy a vcr (Score:3)
True story: Got the GF
Re:Just buy a vcr (Score:4, Insightful)
Problems with a VCR:
1) Management. If you've recorded a season's worth of show, you have to make sure that they are all recorded in order with no repeats. Rewinding and forwarding is a pain in the butt. Since tapes are only 8 hours, you have to manage the tapes as well as the content.
2) Sharing. You can't watch a recorded show on your computer in the bedroom when your spouse is using the TV in the living room. Most of these machines can be networked so that you can at least transfer files.
3) VCRs cannot function as DVD or media centers
Re:It will be tough (Score:4, Informative)
Not true (about the processor) - The Hauppauge PVR-350 and PVR-250 do all the processing onboard.
Here's a good resource: HTPCNews.com [htpcnews.com]
Re:Sage TV (Score:3, Informative)
The worst mistake I ever made.
Look on the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sage TV (Score:3, Interesting)
Which HD tuner do you use? Would you recommend it? How is the image quality? How much did it cost?
Thanks,I've got to go with MythTV (Score:3, Informative)
- Record two standard (...) Check... in fact, the recording devices can be on different machines.
- Record standard TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-1, (...) OK, Myth's codecs are wrapped up in hybrid nupplevideo and require a touch of effort to convert.
- Playback using Dscalar to deinterlace the vide
Re:I've got to go with MythTV (Score:5, Informative)
I really don't understand what's creepy or annoying about that feature, the box is going to be powered on anyhow, there's absolutely no reason not to use that feature.
And, if for some reason you don't like it, as the previous poster said, you can EASILY disable it. You go into the Settings menu, and just tell it not to record Suggestions.
Re:Two stations at once? (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you do have to have a box...I think you can rig up one of those 'IR Blaster' setups..that point the ir lights at your box...and the computer changes the box's channels that way.
Re:Sage TV (Score:4, Interesting)
Then here's a response to you:
Problems with SageTV:
Um.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:buy a fucking tivo (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if "How can I pirate TiVo's service to use on my non-TiVo box without paying for it, I could see where this comment would be appropriate. But just because TiVo is Linux-based, anyone who looks for another solution is somehow a hypocrite?
For shame, Mr. Coward, for shame. And you wonder why mom always liked me best?
The way I see it, TiVo has three components: The hardware, the software, and the subscriber information stream. The hardware is basically a small computer with a big hard drive, and its primary advantage over a beige box is a quality I like to call "Media center friendliness." Oh, and it comes with a remote rather than a cron daemon.
The software consists of the Linux kernel and some schnazzy proprietary interface software. The latter is what adds value to the product for most users.
The subscription information is the final piece of the whole TiVo experience, because it gives the box the ability to find stuff for you even when you didn't know it was on, and make recommendations.
So let's get this straight: TiVo provides a certain experience, but not everyone wants precisely that experience. There are plenty of reasons someone might want to build a computer with some of the capabilities of a TiVo. For example, they might want the PVR capabilities but not the features that rely on the subscription stream. Or they may want to be able to back up shows onto DVD, or rip DVDs to the box, or use the box as an all-in-one PVR/DVD player/router/firewall/webserver/gaming platform, just so that they can turn the whole thing into a flaming pile of silicon by getting it Slashdotted while it's trying to record "The Simpsons."
That's what I'd do, anyways.