Re: [SLUG] Homebrew PVR's, tiny hardware and Holiday Cheer

From: mark@bish.net
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 11:58:11 EST


After you get done with the bong - let me know.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Matt Moen wrote:

> While racking my brain trying to decide what to get my folks for
> the holidays, I finally settled on a PVR. So I went to go look at
> Tivos. Nifty gizmos, and they're only $200 now. Well that's great, except
> they want ~$13 a month, or you can pay for ~2 years worth of service up
> front ($300) and get lifetime service. This is all well and good, and
> yes it includes software support and updates, but I can get the TV
> listings online with XMLTV and the other toys that Freevo and the other
> free PVR solutions use. For $5 a month, I wouldn't be writing this
> e-mail, but $13, or $300 up front plus $200 for proprietary,
> one-purpose hardware, whose future software updates may remove features
> (which, as I seem to recall, has occurred in the past), is just too much
> for a PVR for the folks. They can get half of a fairly nice stereo upgrade
> for that price.
>
> And then there are the "freedom" issues. With some sort of home-brew
> PVR solution, you're not restricted by any sort of DRM nonsense. If
> you really like something, you're not limited to the disk on your PVR.
> You can burn things onto CD or DVD roms. Or slap them on that huge
> 160GB drive, over the network.
>
> So I started looking at freevo.sourceforge.net and am reasonably
> impressed. It seems to still be a bit rough around the edges, but
> certainly promising.
>
> Has anyone played freevo and/or MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/) or
> anything similar? Any suggestions for tiny hardware with about 3 PCI
> slots (1 for NTSC output, 2 for TV tuners (for simultaneous viewing
> and recording)). I'm probably going to clock the processor down some,
> and attempt to go fanless, except for, perhaps, a quiet power supply.
> Diskless too, although that may require an upgrade to Gig Ethernet
> depending on the bandwidth consumption of the PVR.
>
> Any suggestions?
> --
> Matthew Moen
>
> Microsoft Exchange: Incontrovertible proof that sometimes you
> /should/ shoot the messenger.
>
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