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I considered hacking my Tivo, but didn't want to break what was already working; thus I decided to build my own. Basically, I want my home brew PVR to have the following features:
I had actually been considering this project for some time; however, previously I felt that PVR software available had not matured enough to compete with existing PVR's such as Tivo, ReplayTV, and UltimateTV. As of today (Dec. 2003), I feel that are a number of reasonable alternatives to these products. To begin my research, I read a number of stories and visited several web sites of individuals that also had built their own PVR: Articles:
PVR Projects: I was suprised to learn that the hardware that Tivo is based on surprisingly modest. For my PVR, I wanted to insure that it would have adequate hardware for processor-intensive video encoding/decoding. Thus, my minimum hardware requirements were:
In my NES PC project, I had used a VIA EPIA mini-ITX form factor motherboard -- I thought this same mobo would be the perfect choice for my PVR. However after some tests using my VIA EPIA 800, it was clear that it didn't have the necessary horsepower for video encoding/decoding. Thus, I chose to use the more powerful VIA EPIA M 10000 (with a 1.0 GHz C3 processor) which has on-board ethernet, video, TV-out, and an MPEG-2 decoder. Thus, here was my starting hardware configuration:
TOTAL COST: $395 In comparison, a new 80 hour Tivo Series2 ($300) with Home Media Option ($100) and Lifetime Subscription ($300) would cost a total of $700. With regard to software, the 2 major choices to make are which operating system (OS) to use and which PVR software to use. Since I'm not preferential to to Windows or Linux, I evaluated both -- the PVR software available would make the OS determination. That said, I evaluated the following PVR software:
I decided to go with MythTV because of its rich feature set, availability of documentation and help, and price (it's free). However, I knew that this project was going to be a challenge based on other users' experiences. My favorite quote from one of these sites: "Neither MYTHTV nor FREEVO are ready for rolling out onto your grandparents' settop boxen (unless your nan knows how to install MySql, or hand-edit dodgy XML and Python config files). Both suffer slightly from that post-Enlightenment open source development strategy of coding until you hit a cool enough screenshot, then moving on. But when you can get them to work, they *do* work." -- Dave Green NTK.net 1. The Cubix 2699R case with power supply...
2. The case with the VIA EPIA M10000 motherboard mounted...
3. Next, added the slimline DVD drive and hard drive...
4. Then added the Hauppage WinTV PVR 250 Tuner card. The VIA PCI riser card simplified the installation...
5. The rear view of the almost-completed PVR. Notice the 2 case fans which keep things nice and cool...
6. The completed PVR sitting atop the Sony DAV-S500 Dream System in our bedroom...
Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or comments. |
