lazyweb: pvr research

[egypturnash]

Has anyone out there done any serious fiddling with MythTV or the other Tivo-like boxes out there? I'm looking at my mom's elaborate setup of three daisy-chained VCRs that she programs each week, and thinking there's got to be a better way to do this. Especially when one of them is starting to show some major tracking issues in stuff it records!

Her requirements:
* has to work with OVER-THE-AIR broadcast; she does NOT have cable and doesn't want it.
* must not need a subscription to a schedule-listing service (somehow I suspect this rules out anything but free software)
* needs to be able to record up to 3 streams at once. She has this many VCRs in play and does occasionally have them all going.
* needs to be forwards-compatible with the forthcoming change to digital broadcasting - we don't want this to become useless in feb09 when the analog signals go dark.

So what's your experiences? What've you tried playing with, what was hell to set up, what worked instantly?

OS doesn't matter; what matters is that she can run it without much more technical acumen than her existing setup requires. I won't be trying to implement this right now; I'd just love to hear what's worked for people.

Comments

[ravuya.livejournal.com]

The terrestrial demand is one I haven't encountered before, but if you're going to build your own, I can recommend GB-PVR for the software. It's fairly solid and works with a large range of VIVO chipsets; has a free channel guide as well.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I can't argue with her refusal to have cable; I don't even have a TV, myself. I will take a look at GB-PVR, thanks!

[barberio.livejournal.com]

MythTV is pretty much out for 'technical acumen' reasons. It suffers similar 'design by programmer' issues that 'the GIMP' does, so makes sense to the programmers, but won't to normal users.

If you do want to go the computer as recorder route, you can get ATSC decoder cards, and USB boxes. And you use a TV watching application to watch/record TV. On the PC side, there's a common standard for ATSC decoder cars drivers called 'BDA', so any BDA capable software can use them. On the Mac side, you're going to have to find a card or USB box that works with ElGato's Eye TV. (http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/home.en.html) ElGato produce their own decoder hardware, which probably works best with their hardware.

I'd probably recommend a mac-mini with as much disk-space as you can get, suitable TV display adapter, and appropriate Eye TV hardware dongle. I'd go for one of the Eye TV Diversity USB dongles, and intend to get one myself at some point.

However, having said all that...

The best thing for your Mom is probably a Set Top Box all in one Digital Video Recorder. You will not save money trying to build one from a PC, because it's really not a mainstream thing to do with PCs. You can get a DVR for the same cost as an Eye TV Diversity.

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

The closest I can say is the Neuros OSD with a USB hard drive and the digital converter box for OTA broadcasts. The problem is, it acts very much like a regular VCR.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Their front page makes it sound like it's mostly a box for ripping your tapes/dvds/whatnot to an archival drive, rather than the timeshifting aspect - and she mostly uses her VCRs for timeshifting.

[revar.livejournal.com]

I gave up on MythTV because at the time it crashed frequently and annoyed me. But that was a couple years ago, so maybe it's better now. Also, it could not record from Dish satellite. It can do CableTV, though.

To get over-the-air or cable DTV signals, you need one or more ATSC tuner card like pcHDTV HD-5500 card. More cards means more simultaneous recordings you can do, or background recording while watching another channel.

I have a pair of pcHDTV HD-2000 cards from the same company that work okay, and are earlier predecessors to the HD-5500. Given that I abandoned the MythTV project a while ago, I can sell them to you for $75 each.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

pcHDTV's cards are a great buy right now because the cards do not honor the broadcast flag

AWESOME

And I may well be taking you up on that once I start fooling around with this. Unless I end up finding a totally off-the-shelf solution that fills her needs.

[otter3.livejournal.com]

I'm actually planning on putting up a setup like this for my own computer fairly shortly. Not sure exactly what I'm going to use yet, although I have a feeling I may take a shot at Vista's Media Center capabilities and see where that takes me.

Can probably whip some sort of demo up at some point in a few months.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I will keep an eye on your experiences! My hope is to give her something that operates entirely from a remote and never presents a "computer" kind of UI.

[otter3.livejournal.com]

Ars technica (http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200804.ars) has just posted a guide that might be helpful to peruse. But as they note, buying a DVR would be far easier if you can find one that actually fits your needs.