The State of Home-Brew PVRs on Linux (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

O'ReillyNet looks at how to build a Personal Video Recorder. "If you wish to record a show and watch a live TV show at the same time, you will need two TV cards: one for recording and one for watching TV. I would highly recommend using one of the many cards supported by the bttv Linux drivers. If you wish to listen to FM radio, you can pick up one of the WinTV cards that include an FM tuner as well."

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The State of Home-Brew PVRs on Linux (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Nov 17, 2003 17:07 UTC (Mon) by BaldHeadedGeek (guest, #1078) [Link]

Having spent a couple late evenings the last five days putting together a PVR, I felt I could comment on this article. Overall, the author has written a nice intro to building your own PVR.

I chose to use MythTV instead of Freevo. Only because MythTV seemed to have the functionality I wanted. I mean the point of building a PVR was to be able to time-shift, and as the author points out, Freevo doesn't have this yet. He mentioned that Freevo was easier to get going which may be true but I thought that both have a learning curve, might as well invest time into the project that has the best chance to deliver what you want.

The author suggested using tv tuners that are well supported under the bttv Linux drivers. If you are going to use MythTV, you want to do encoding/decoding in hardware. You can get away with a lot less CPU this way. It enabled me to use an old AMD 700 machine I had and just added the WinTV 350 PVR card (Model 990) for $199.

With the help of postings in

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Users_F11/

I was able to get things up and running in a few days.

Good luck to you if you want to make your own PVR. It was fun.

The State of Home-Brew PVRs on Linux (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Nov 18, 2003 15:05 UTC (Tue) by davidl (guest, #12156) [Link]

How cool is this? As soon as I get my broadband connection, server and wireless access going I'm there.