As most of you know I am hosting my own web site on a computer sitting here in my apartment. That computer is running Linux Red Hat 9.
When I installed Linux I thought that it was a great system and wanted to do more with it. I have started a new project for Linux and and it is something that I have wanted for a long time, ever since digital cable came a long and my VCR won't control my cable box. I don't know how many of you know what a TIVO is or the generic name a PVR is, so lets describe one in some detail.
A PVR, Personal Video Recorder, usually records video from a source and stores that video as an MPEG file on a hard drive. You can then watch that video at what ever time floats your boat. The other thing is you can skip the commercials (yay!). Now unlike a TIVO, a PVR can usually play DVD's and depending on the hardware, record DVD's of the shows that you have recorded on the PVR. The PVR gets the programming schedule from a site on the web and adjusts this information for your location. Now that you have a basic understanding of what a PVR is, lets get on to my project.
MythTV - A PVR IS BORN
I was informed that you could build your own PVR during a conversation I was having with a friend about a home brew MP3 player. I told him that I wanted a TIVO, but was waiting for the price to become more reasonable. He suggested that I look into building my own. So off I went to do the research. I came up with some software options.
Software
The software I decided to use is MythTV for Linux. There are others out there, but none that I found would pause live TV, which is a must in order to have an instant replay feature. Moreover, there are a lot of support forums on the web for MythTV and a lot of documentation as well.
Hardware
During my research on the web the I found the nicest looking computer case and motherboard for the project. The case and motherboard I chose was a Shuttle cube SK41G and to this I added an AMD Athlon XP 2400. I installed 512 MEGS of memory. I decided on two 120 GIG hard drives because they were inexpensive on a dollar per gigabyte basis. I wanted a DVD ROM for the convenience and ability of watching DVD movies with my PVR. For video capture I chose the Hauppaugh Win TV PVR 250, with lots of documentation on the web regarding how to do a PVR with this card, and the card comes with a remote control. (Nice feature)
Okay lets look at some pictures:
Now you can see why I chose this case and the components I put into it. You probably can tell it is really tight in the case once everything is installed.
The operating system for complete control of all the features of the PVR is the latest version of Linux Red Hat, and MythTV with all the subprograms.
| http://www.spacewalker.com/ | Shuttle cases |
| http://www.sudhian.com/index.cfm | Good articles on PVR's |
| http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-view_articles.php | The pvr hardware database |
| http://www.tomshardware.com/ | Toms hardware says it all |
| http://www.hauppauge.com/ | The card manufaturer |
| http://www.iwantptv.com/ | More info on PVR's |
| http://freevo.sourceforge.net/ | More software |
| http://www.mini-itx.com/ | Look what you can do with little cases |
| http://www.extremetech.com/ | More articles on PVR's |
| http://www.mythtv.org/ | The software |
People have asked for this list of links. I have include the ones that seem to have a lot of information trust me there are a lot more web sites about PVR's and you should look around. I would have recomended my case however Rene the guy who helped my get my MythTV going has a really sharp case. but the case I recomend would have to be the sn41g2 from Shuttle. well here are the links for you and good luck on your pvr.