Anyone heard of Myth TV?
Building a TiVo, a Step at a Time
By Leander Kahney
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,59088,00.html
02:00 AM Jun. 04, 2003 PT
Forget TiVo and ReplayTV. If you want a really super-duper digital video recorder, you have to build your own.
All you need is knowledge of Linux, plenty of cash for hardware and, if anything goes wrong, hundreds of hours to troubleshoot the device.
Thanks to several open-source projects, you can build your own digital video recorder that will blow boxes from TiVo and ReplayTV right off the shelf.
About a dozen collaborative software projects are in the works that will transform a spare computer, or one built from off-the-shelf parts, into a homemade digital video recorder, or DVR.
Given the right hardware, most homemade DVRs will do everything expected of a digital VCR: They pause and rewind live TV, and automatically record favorite shows week after week.
They also can record multiple shows simultaneously, archive shows to video CD, play digital music and computer games and display photographs and local weather forecasts.
Boxes from TiVo and ReplayTV offer some of the same functions, of course, but they charge extra for features like programming information, streaming music and displaying photos.
"I always wanted to buy a TiVo, but I thought it would be pretty cool to build my own," said Isaac Richards, who runs MythTV, one of the most complete home-brew DVR projects. "Trouble is, I definitely don't watch as much TV as I did before I started this project. It's more fun to work on it than it is to watch TV."
Richards, a 25-year-old programmer from Cleveland, launched the MythTV project a year ago with the idea of building a simple, highly configurable DVR.
Thanks to the combined expertise of about half a dozen hackers from all over the world, the project is close to assembling a complete software package for homemade DVRs. Version 0.9 of the MythTV software is due out next week.
Based on Linux, the free software features an easy-to-use graphical interface, which can be navigated with a standard remote.
The MythTV software offers all the basic DVR features -- it can pause and rewind live TV, and fast-forward through shows and ads. It supports multiple tuner cards (and multiple simultaneous recordings) and boasts picture-in-picture capability if there's more than one tuner card installed.
It also offers basic video-editing capabilities and allows shows to be archived to video CD.
MythTV grabs programming information from the Net using XMLTV, an open-source project that scrapes television listings off the Zap2IT website.
The software supports a wide range of hardware. It can make a fairly basic device out of a spare computer, or an über-DVR that can record hundreds of hours of programming and up to four programs simultaneously.
For example, Raffi Krikorian, author of a forthcoming book called TiVo Hacks, is planning to build a MythTV DVR from scratch that will record two shows at the same time, store about 250 hours of programming, play DivX movies downloaded from the Net and archive shows to video CD. The DVR also will record radio and play MP3, Ogg Vorbis and other audio formats, while grabbing free programming information from the Web.
Krikorian estimates the parts for the device will cost a cool $1,200 -- about three times the price of a top-end TiVo set-top box.
"If you want something that just works, a TiVo is your best bet," said Krikorian. "But if you want to build something, (MythTV) is the way to go. It's like building your own car. You can customize it however you like."
Krikorian, a graduate student at MIT's Media Lab, put an offer on his blog last week to build a MythTV DVR for anyone willing to cough up the money for parts. He got about 35 offers. If the offers hold up, he plans to assemble them in coming weeks after getting the first one up and running.
MythTV has a nifty distributed architecture that allows multiple machines to work in concert, recording and streaming shows to each other over a home network. Controlled by a master scheduler, the recording and playing of shows on multiple devices is "completely transparent" to the user, according to Richards.
Robert Kulagowski, a networking engineer and a MythTV contributor, has three MythTV DVRs scattered around his Chicago home. Working together, the devices can record four shows simultaneously and store up to 300 hours of programming.
"My wife and my mother-in-law both use it, no problem," said Kulagowski. "It's very easy to find programs to record. It's very flexible."
Kulagowski estimates he spent about $600 on building his three DVRs, and just a few hours setting them up. "A motivated amateur could get MythTV operational," he said.
However, others warn that building a homemade PVR is not always so simple. Hardware that is not supported by Linux can throw a hacker for a loop.
"It's not easy to get running," warned Richards. "This is one of the more complicated things you can do on a computer. It definitely requires some knowledge of Linux to get installed and working properly, though we've tried to make the process as painless as possible."
There are about a dozen home-brew DVR projects, all based on Linux. Others include Freevo, eBox and the Dave/Dina Project. Krikorian said MythTV was probably the most complete and up-to-date. A list of the projects can be found at the Linux PVR Depot, which also maintains a database of the hardware used by various people.
LINKAGE 2 MYTHTV
Seems kinda fun. Maybe a hobby for the summer.8)
By Leander Kahney
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,59088,00.html
02:00 AM Jun. 04, 2003 PT
Forget TiVo and ReplayTV. If you want a really super-duper digital video recorder, you have to build your own.
All you need is knowledge of Linux, plenty of cash for hardware and, if anything goes wrong, hundreds of hours to troubleshoot the device.
Thanks to several open-source projects, you can build your own digital video recorder that will blow boxes from TiVo and ReplayTV right off the shelf.
About a dozen collaborative software projects are in the works that will transform a spare computer, or one built from off-the-shelf parts, into a homemade digital video recorder, or DVR.
Given the right hardware, most homemade DVRs will do everything expected of a digital VCR: They pause and rewind live TV, and automatically record favorite shows week after week.
They also can record multiple shows simultaneously, archive shows to video CD, play digital music and computer games and display photographs and local weather forecasts.
Boxes from TiVo and ReplayTV offer some of the same functions, of course, but they charge extra for features like programming information, streaming music and displaying photos.
"I always wanted to buy a TiVo, but I thought it would be pretty cool to build my own," said Isaac Richards, who runs MythTV, one of the most complete home-brew DVR projects. "Trouble is, I definitely don't watch as much TV as I did before I started this project. It's more fun to work on it than it is to watch TV."
Richards, a 25-year-old programmer from Cleveland, launched the MythTV project a year ago with the idea of building a simple, highly configurable DVR.
Thanks to the combined expertise of about half a dozen hackers from all over the world, the project is close to assembling a complete software package for homemade DVRs. Version 0.9 of the MythTV software is due out next week.
Based on Linux, the free software features an easy-to-use graphical interface, which can be navigated with a standard remote.
The MythTV software offers all the basic DVR features -- it can pause and rewind live TV, and fast-forward through shows and ads. It supports multiple tuner cards (and multiple simultaneous recordings) and boasts picture-in-picture capability if there's more than one tuner card installed.
It also offers basic video-editing capabilities and allows shows to be archived to video CD.
MythTV grabs programming information from the Net using XMLTV, an open-source project that scrapes television listings off the Zap2IT website.
The software supports a wide range of hardware. It can make a fairly basic device out of a spare computer, or an über-DVR that can record hundreds of hours of programming and up to four programs simultaneously.
For example, Raffi Krikorian, author of a forthcoming book called TiVo Hacks, is planning to build a MythTV DVR from scratch that will record two shows at the same time, store about 250 hours of programming, play DivX movies downloaded from the Net and archive shows to video CD. The DVR also will record radio and play MP3, Ogg Vorbis and other audio formats, while grabbing free programming information from the Web.
Krikorian estimates the parts for the device will cost a cool $1,200 -- about three times the price of a top-end TiVo set-top box.
"If you want something that just works, a TiVo is your best bet," said Krikorian. "But if you want to build something, (MythTV) is the way to go. It's like building your own car. You can customize it however you like."
Krikorian, a graduate student at MIT's Media Lab, put an offer on his blog last week to build a MythTV DVR for anyone willing to cough up the money for parts. He got about 35 offers. If the offers hold up, he plans to assemble them in coming weeks after getting the first one up and running.
MythTV has a nifty distributed architecture that allows multiple machines to work in concert, recording and streaming shows to each other over a home network. Controlled by a master scheduler, the recording and playing of shows on multiple devices is "completely transparent" to the user, according to Richards.
Robert Kulagowski, a networking engineer and a MythTV contributor, has three MythTV DVRs scattered around his Chicago home. Working together, the devices can record four shows simultaneously and store up to 300 hours of programming.
"My wife and my mother-in-law both use it, no problem," said Kulagowski. "It's very easy to find programs to record. It's very flexible."
Kulagowski estimates he spent about $600 on building his three DVRs, and just a few hours setting them up. "A motivated amateur could get MythTV operational," he said.
However, others warn that building a homemade PVR is not always so simple. Hardware that is not supported by Linux can throw a hacker for a loop.
"It's not easy to get running," warned Richards. "This is one of the more complicated things you can do on a computer. It definitely requires some knowledge of Linux to get installed and working properly, though we've tried to make the process as painless as possible."
There are about a dozen home-brew DVR projects, all based on Linux. Others include Freevo, eBox and the Dave/Dina Project. Krikorian said MythTV was probably the most complete and up-to-date. A list of the projects can be found at the Linux PVR Depot, which also maintains a database of the hardware used by various people.
LINKAGE 2 MYTHTV
Seems kinda fun. Maybe a hobby for the summer.8)
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