Linux PVRs Highlighted 264
foolinator writes "Yahoo News is featuring an article highlighting TiVO alternatives. This includes MythTV (my favorite), Freevo, and even sites on how to start as a newbie. All of us who subscribe to the mailing lists be prepared to help out the newbies as Linux PVRs become more mainstream."
TiVo uses Linux too! (Score:5, Informative)
But remember, TiVo uses Linux too! There's a TiVo hacker forum here [tivocommunity.com].
Don't forget pcHDTV (Score:5, Informative)
What a breath of fresh air. Now, back to watching hard-disk recordings of Alias featuring the supremely-cute Jennifer Gartner, who, in high-def, has many supremely-cute freckles.
Re:Schedules (Score:2, Informative)
For those who haven't looked more closely, MythTV uses a web listing service (I believe Zap2it) to get its listings. It really wouldn't be very useful if it had to be manually programmed, would it?
Actually have (Score:5, Informative)
Gentoo Linux and an Athlon XP 2400 mate up very nicely. Only thing missing is that WinTV-PVR-350, deffinately the most expensive piece of hardware but well worth the $165+ price tag. We started with FreeVo, but decided on MythTV. It was much more mature a year ago.
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:5, Informative)
But zap2it.com is catching on and just added XML data downloads to their labs. They call it datadirect or some such nonsense. No more parsing hundreds of webpages for the listings. You just get a nice XML download. Mythtv already supports it great.
Check it out yourself at http://labs.zap2it.com.
MythTV has a code to use for signup in their setup documents and with that and a short survey you are in business.
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt that I could build a computer to do what TiVo does for less than twice what a TiVo costs (just the hardware), add monthly fees - and I'm thinking that it would take two or three years to break even.
This stuff is really cool - and I like the fact that a single system can stream video across my home, but I wouldn't realistically use this.
Finally, with David Letterman (Late night talk-show host, for those whom don't know) plugging TiVo continuously on his show... I doubt that TiVo is going away anytime soon.
Re:Actually have (Score:2, Informative)
I just use Mencoder and tvtime (Score:2, Informative)
Mythtv Setup Guide (Score:5, Informative)
www.wilsonet.com/mythtv
Mad props to Jarod Wilson
I originally had a fedora core box, but I recently switched it over to gentoo.
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:3, Informative)
"
Fair point... except most of the major homebrew PVR software applications no longer use screenscraping. IIRC the latest XMLTV uses a direct connection to get the guide data (from zaptoit i *think*)... the guide data is starting to find ways to partner with the diff software out there...
Also although it's not free (either as in beer or speech) software like SageTV [www.sage.tv] (which i'm in love with for it's pvr 350 support) and snapstream's beyondTV include the listing service, if i'm not mistaken...
*shrug*
e.
--> hey
I've looked into this, but... (Score:2, Informative)
any news on this front? are the Linux PVR apps more mature featurewise than the monthy pay options?
I *want* to build one, but time (and money) are my current obstacles.
CBV
Re:The saw us comming ... (Score:5, Informative)
I meant to spend the day readying a nice new dedicated server for byopvr. I spent the day hot potato getting the site migrated off the VPS (after the first crushing courtesy of reuters/yahoo news)... then pvrblog [pvrblog.com] graciously linked to the site and that influx of new visitors crushed the new server, before I could even get to optimize it... now this... now this... =)
The site you see now is slightly pared down to help it limp through the crisis. I didn't really think anyone would post it to
e.
Re:PVR with digital cable (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No HD Solution! (Score:2, Informative)
My old coworker and friend uses this card and loves it, he just wishes he had better reception to get the HD channels in his area.
Linux makes great media box, for lazy bastards. (Score:2, Informative)
It's a tuner that encodes it output into MPEG stream. Note that I am using experimental IVTV drivers, so the quality/stability is not garrenteed. But it works for me. The device file that gets used is
All in all it's pretty primtive. I am to lazy to setup a real PVR program. Basicly to make a recording you can go like this:
cat
To play directly from the card:
mplayer -vo xv -vf pp=lb -framedrop
I wrote a script called "recorder"
(script)
#!/bin/bash
# Usage: recorder name channel length quality
# length is in minutes
echo "16000000 is great 8000000 is good 4000000 is normal for quality."
echo "name channel length quality"
~/bin/ptune.pl --input
echo "recorded $1 on channel $2 for $3 minutes at $4 quality at `date`" >> ~/media/recorded/recorded.log
if lsof |grep
then
killall mplayer
fi
cat
POO=$!
sleep $3m
kill $POO
(end script)
So I use it to scedual recordings of shows I want to watch. I use tv.yahoo.com for the listings.
So to record a show I use the at command. It goes like this:
at 11:25
recorder randumbshow 32 40 8000000
^d
And that sets the job to run at 11:25 for 40 minutes on channel 32 at medium-high quality.
That will take like 4gigs of space. To scedual recordings to go everyday at the same time I use "crontab -e" command. Syntax goes like this:
55 0 * * * $HOME/bin/recorder futurama 51 40 6000000
That sets it to record everynight at 00:55 (military time) for 40 minutes on channel 51 at medium quality. Simple stuff.
MythTV setup not for the faint of heart (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PVR with digital cable (Score:3, Informative)
Linux PVRs can be a pain! (Score:5, Informative)
- Dedicated PVR systems are always cheaper than building your own from parts
- PVR systems based on old hardware will be slow. It doesn't matter if you throw a hardware encoder/decoder in your Duron 850, it will be slow. You want all the CPU and disk speed you can get. Trust me.
- Be prepared to spend 40+ hours over the next three months setting up, configuring, debugging your system. Less if you don't care about customizing and tweaking. More if you're less experienced, and want to compile from source, or don't have popular hardware.
- If you use your Linux box for other things, be aware the system resources mythtv demands may make it slow and chunky.
- Setting up a MythTV box requires installing lots of stuff. The mythtv software works with LIRC (remote control drivers), iVTV (tuner drivers), and a bunch of stuff I don't remember. This isn't an install one thing and you're done project.
I enjoy tweaking systems, but I wasn't aware of the amount of time I'd have to put into MythTV. This in no way detracts from the project - it's a great project. Just know you're getting into something that's fairly technical, and requires troubleshooting.
For the record, PVR 350 + Athlon 1800 + 512 megs/ram on my mythtv box. Debian.
Re:Article is not broad enough (Score:3, Informative)
I figured that Memorial Day weekend was a good weekend to try and get this working.. I had found a handy-dandy step-by-step guide on how to install MythTV on Fedora Core here.. I figured, how hard can it be?
I was wrong, by far... I never could get LIRC to run under Fedora Core 1, let alone the two instances I need (One for my remote, and the other to control my homemade IR Transmitter to control my digital cable box).
So, I tried another alternative, that being KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv], a Knoppix disc customized for MythTV. By far, I've gotten much better results with this. I was able to get the second LIRC instance going too. I don't get the pretty gewgaws out of the box (KDE or Gnome, etc), but it does have the virtue of working.
For those considering building their own, and aren't Linux gurus, I would suggest going with the "standard" hardware in use (Nvidia video cards for TV Out+Hauppauge PVR250, or a Hauppauge PVR350).. You'll find much more help that way.
Re:Advert skipping (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PVR with digital cable (Score:5, Informative)
The other way is to get a cable box with a serial port (that works with MythTV). The only one I know off the top of my head is the Motorola DC2000 series. If you ask your cable company for a firewire-equipped box, they're most likely going to give you a DC2000. Also, if you get an HDTV cable box, you're most likely going to get a DC2000.
If you have the serial port setup, digital cable changes channels fast and works like a charm. A superior solution to the IRBlaster.
Side note: In this setup you don't even need a TV tuner card. Just some sort of video input to your PC. However, if you do want to get a TV tuner card, make sure you buy a WinTV PVR-250 or a PVR-350. They have built-in MPEG2 encoders which look absolutely beautiful and take quite a load off your CPU.
Re:HDTV will kill Homebrew PVRs... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pchdtv.com/
Re:Don't forget pcHDTV (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, check out this [linuxtv.org] site to get the dvb drivers. For ease of use, they also have a patched kernel tree in CVS you can pull down and compile.
Second, if you're a non DirectTV satellite customer, you can get HDTV sat streams if your provider conforms to the DVB-S standard (ie not DirectTV). Or, if you're in Europe and your standard cable provider conforms to the DVB-C standard, you're in luck as well. Snap up one of the TechnoTrend cards from here [usa-x.org]. These have been reported to work with MythTV.
Now, for us in America and some other select countries, we're out of luck in the cable market.
We've seemed to create another standard called OpenCable [opencable.com] that the big boys like Time Warner are using.
As of right now there are no OpenCable cards available for Windows or Linux. The best we can do is OTA ATSC...
Re:PVR Distro (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Windows Media Center Edition? (Score:5, Informative)
1) If you use a Tuner card with an MPEG encoder, it records in MPEG2. If you use a Tuner without an MPEG2 encoder, MythTV uses your CPU to record in either RTJPEG or MPEG4 (user configurable). MythTV can transcode these formats to pretty much whatever you want after the recording is done.
2) MythTV can automatically flag commercials during recording. When it later transcodes the recording, it auto-skips these flagged areas. Works quite well, but can occasionally mess up (mostly it doesn't miss parts of your show, but might record an extraneous commercial or two). It has some newer experimental commercial skip features which I haven't tried yet. It's all user-configurable.
3) MythTV doesn't require a tuner. You could hook your cable box up to a video input of some sort on your PC and use it with an IRBlaster or serial cable (assuming your cable box can be controlled by a serial port).
4) If you buy a WinTV PVR card, it comes with a remote and IR interface... These work flawlessly with MythTV. However, I should note that MythTV works with LIRC... So if you get any old IR reciever working with LIRC, it'll work with MythTV. Essentially this means you can use MythTV with just about any remote you can get your hands on.
5) MythTV supports TV, Videos (auto-metadata lookups which is sweet, checkout the screenshots page), games (MAME, SNES, NES, Linux games, very cool), weather (My favorite module), RSS Newsfeeds, DVDs (which includes a nice ripper), and some others I can't think of off the top of my head right now. There's also a MythPhone module in development that works like Netmeeting/Gnomemeeting (http://www.zen13655.zen.co.uk/mythphone.html).
6) It's Linux, however, there's hooks and things in the code so that it might run on Windows some day. We'll see.
MythTV RIGHT NOW is an amazing piece of software, but because it's open-source, it's rapidly developing into something much, much more. Right now it's the PVR leader and I suspect it's going to remain that way for quite some time... A very promising future.
Re:PVR Distro (Score:2, Informative)
Tivo shares drop 14%... (Score:4, Informative)
The bulk of TiVo's new subscribers last quarter came through its partnership with DirecTV, which offers TiVo service built into some of its television set-top boxes so that users can pause live TV, easily set up recordings and skip past commercials...
AP Online [marketwatch.com]
GB-PVR free as in beer windows software (Score:1, Informative)
It supports multiple tuners. Hardware decoders like the PVR350, Hauppauge MediaMVP and SigmaDesigns XCard. Its a work in progress, but seems to be making great progress.
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:3, Informative)
I have a working tv_grab_nz which scrapes off the TV1,TV2 + Sky Web sites. Works about 95% of the time at the moment.
I planning a rewrite of it to make it a lot more reliable, and fix up some of the quirks that trip up mythtv a little.
Once working to my liking, I plan on submiting up to the tv_grab people, so us NZ's are left behind in the stone age.
Re:Linux PVRs can be a pain! (Score:2, Informative)
Most certianly took all off 40 hours just to get functional, then another few hours every few days tweakin
73 de n8twj
Re:Actually have (Score:3, Informative)
The picture quality on the PVR-250 is much better than a WinTV (bttv card), and it's hardware encoding does take a lot of strain off of the CPU (if you want to use a slower CPU).
But, for me, the best part is the native MPEG-2 encoding. If I decide to save something that I recorded, I can load it into any MPEG-2 editor, cut out the commercials, and then I have a perfect MPEG-2 file, ready for putting on a DVD.
-- Joe
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:1, Informative)
Money must be tighter for you than than it is for me. I'll gladly keep paying the five bucks a month.
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:4, Informative)
I wish more companies would follow Zap2It's lead here in the U.S. and provide listings as direct downloads. You can go into labs.zap2it.com and prepare your North American listings and when you go to connect you just download the channels you setup. It's 100 times better than screen scraping the old web site and all you have to do is fill out a 2 or 3 question survey every 3 months to maintain your free membership. All my problems with MythTV in the past were not really mythtv, but xmltv breaking. All zap2it had to do was change a single character in their website display and xmltv would break requiring a new release which usually meant a new release of MythTV was needed. It was fscking ridiculous. As a North American user I'm glad I won't have to worry about that anymore.
Re:Screwing TiVo Screws Linux (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:3, Informative)
TiVo doesn't, either. Next troll, please...
(FWIW, I use both.)
Re:Windows Media Center Edition? (Score:2, Informative)
First, proprietary format. You're right on. I have to install Media Center 9 to even watch something and then the quality is less than stellar in light of its compression ratio. I have noticed the differences between their codec and some others too, but that's not a criticism as much as an observation.
Fast forward is fine. The 30 second skip feature's invaluable but auto commercial skipping I think is a legal landmine and it's a bad perception thing. I have no problem hitting that button 4 times in a row fast.
I have a tuner card so I don't know about other options. There was some kungfu going on with getting drivers working but once it worked I didn't touch it.
Remote works great. It's got a much wider angle than even the tivo remotes. You could get one for myth too though
This is really incidental. I guess those are almost order qualifiers at this point. They're so easy there's no excuse to not, but I don't use them.
Yeah, and here's some more complaints that you wouldn't probably ever envision without the joy of testing one.
There's a database corruption issue about once every 4 days. I'd imagine it follows a poisson distribution, but the corruption will randomly occur. When that happens it will record scheduled shows, but it won't add any new ones or accept changes to any existing ones. Also it can't / won't update guide data or do anything other than record and watch what's there.
The sound will sometimes be overcome with static. I suppose this could be a video card issue but a restart always fixes the problem. It also seems to retroactively affect shows although I haven't really figured this one out yet.
Guide data is notoriously unreliable. This may be a function of the ever occuring database corruption which prevents any new data from being added, but either way it's annoying.
The machine it's running on is a beast compared to the processor that powers a tivo. That and I imagine the drive in it will last another year if I'm lucky.
Menu ergonomics are awful. Once you're used to it it's not bad, but the 'back' button is relative and it's nearly impossible to switch between 3 different menus without having to return to the root menu to get back to it. The animations are pretty, but that's the best part. They get on your nerves too when they pause for 10 seconds and load the data you're trying to get at. There are a bunch of other menu issues that I've managed to adapt to, but it's not intuitive.
The menus, when they're not crashing/pausing, are faster than tivo series one, but about on par with the series twos.
I like it because it gives me a dvr that's working and free (for the moment), however windows is certainly not the 'innovator' in this field. A 2.4+ machine that you have to restart at least every week is hardly competition to a tivo that runs solid for over 2 years.
MythTV for Mandrake 10 users... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TiVo uses Linux too! (Score:2, Informative)
I think Sky+ [sky.com] probably has it beaten... I certainly don't think there's anything like the range of hacks available for that one...
Re:Windows Media Center Edition? (Score:2, Informative)
6) There are not only hooks to windows, but WinMyth exists. That is, there is a windows myth front end [sourceforge.net] written nativly for windows.
you can also compile mythtv via cygwin in windows, but in my opinion that's not quite as clean.
Re:The TiVo double standard (Score:4, Informative)
The ads that TiVo downloads help support TiVo and keep them up and running.
They're one of a very small number of companies who are extremely customer focused, and who try to do right by the people who buy their stuff all the time. This needs to be respected and rewarded.
That, and they unofficially support hacking of their system to add capacity and features.
The reason the boards don't allow certain topics is so as not to sour that relationship.
Re:Advert skipping (Score:2, Informative)
As also mentioned, you canm tell Myth to automatically skip the commercials once you've finished recording.
It's very cute, and works very well 90% of the time. Ad splash comes up, skip, program restarts.
Re:TiVo uses Linux too! (Score:4, Informative)
That's one of the things I use my Tivo for...playing MP3 files off my desktop over 802.11b.
> I will never, ever understand supposedly open
> source advocates using and promoting TiVos,
> possibly the most closed PVR system available.
I wanted an appliance that just worked, that I didn't need to build from scratch or support.
Oh, and here are some links for hacking a Series 2:
http://tivoutils.sourceforge.net/
http://www.d
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/forumdis
In hindsight, you are a troll.
For those of you wanting to get started... (Score:2, Informative)
There are also IRC channels (#mythtv and #mythtv-users on Freenode) and very active and helpful mailing lists [gossamer-threads.com] to ask for help if you get stuck (at some point or another, you will!).
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:2, Informative)
Side note: Appears there is some issue with the TV3/C4 listings on Sky at the moment, as the website isn't showing anything one the guide 8-(. I might have to look at scaping either Tv3's website or TelstraClear's to get reliable listings for those 2.
Re:The saw us comming ... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:3, Informative)
I also find it incredibly handy to run a Myth front-end on other machines so as to be able to watch TV/recordings where I don't have cable drops or another TV.
Re:On Slackware.... (Score:3, Informative)
OK - What I want to know is if anyone out there has been successful in getting MythTV (or FreeVo) working successfully under Slackware.
I've tried (and I am certainly no Linux newbie) and could not get all the dependancies to work/compile/install. I spent the better part of 3 days working on it when I gave up.
>>
well a great user on byopvr site put together a guide for just that.
Homebrew's guide to installing mythtv on slackware [byopvr.com] (w/pvr350 support)
also see this forum post on the subject [byopvr.com]
Good luck...
E.
No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Tivo has three data collection modes: Opt in, Opt Neutral, Opt Out.
You can Opt-out by calling up Tivo and asking to Opt-out. They send a command down to the box that sets a flag not to send the data anymore. You can verify this flag has been set on your box by turning on backdoors and looking at the system information screen. Or you can believe me or other people who have opted out and seen this happen for themselves. Your call, who do you trust?
Opt-Neutral is the default data sending mode, and it sends data that has been scrubbed of any identifying information other than the zipcode. Actually, it hasn't been "scrubbed", it's simply that that data doesn't get put into the log file in the first place in this mode. This has been verified by Tivo hackers, including myself. Again, who do you trust?
Opt-In sends the tivo serial number in the data file itself, along with adding a whole host of extra info. You can do this by joining http://www.hotline2hollywood.com . This means that all the stuff you watch will be trackable to your box. Not to you personally, mind you. Despite the rumor, there's no camera built into the box behind that "eye" looking thing on the front.
I'm opted-in. Why? Because I don't give a damn if they know what I watch. Hell, I don't care who knows it. It's not critical to me. Maybe they'll realize that I thumbs down all the reality shows and tend to skip crappy commercials. With any luck, this info will filter its way up to the suits and they'll improve the crap currently on TV. Forlorn hope? Probably. Still, it's nice to think that maybe I can make some kind of difference in the shit that's on TV now.
Re:Does this really apply? (Score:3, Informative)
Also, they now provide a multiunit discount, after the first TiVo additional units are half price for monthly subscriptions.
Re:The TiVo double standard (Score:4, Informative)
No, it doesn't (Score:3, Informative)
They've been really open about this since the beginning, i.e. 4 years or more. They collect data on viewing habits, and provide aggregate stats on those viewing habits, but they don't tie them to individual viewers. If you don't even want them to do that, then you can ask them not to, and they won't. Simple, no?