The Personal Video Recorder, DIY TIVO.

For a number of years I have been playing with software and hardware combinations that convert or make a PC display and record live TV. These programs also add control options to the viewer so that like the TIVO, you can record and watch things later, pause and resume in real-time along with other features and tricks that makes the old ‘watching programmed TV’ fun again.

TIVO has become really popular because it takes the ‘programming’ out of serial TV transmitting, life is more dynamic now, I want to be out having a late dinner at 8:30, not at home watching a movie then and there. I might be a shift-worker or busy on the internet, I want TV to be available when I want it, not when the station executives and their advertisers expect me to watch it.

For the last few years there has been an influx of add-in cards for PC’s that allow you to watch and record TV on your PC. Anything from $35 will get you one and they work. Many now operate using the full Digital TV transmitted by a land based tower, DTV-T (Digital Tele-Vision – Terrestrial) or DTV-S (Satellite). Either way, on your PC you can watch or record TV, but it’s a cute idea only, in practice you don’t want to watch TV on your PC much, your lounge chairs are in another room, the screen is too small, it’s just not right. But we do have a solution…

OK, so you get it working and your lucky enough to be in a one bedroom flat where your computer is next to your decent size TV and you plug it in there, isn’t that good enough? To start with yeah it will seem that way, but now the computer is barely more than a glorified video recorder, you can schedule some recordings, even convert those to DVD but there is no guide based schedule information and it’s noisy because your PC is on all the time, and it’s busy running the program so you can’t do much on your pc while your partner is watching last nights ‘prison break’. In practice it’s just not that nice.

I also found with this setup that after a while I wanted to ‘tinker’ with it a bit. The software that came with the card was limited in functionality and looking on the net there are a lot of other programs that offer so much more. In practice I found that these systems take a lot to get right and they cause you much more grief and hair pulling than I was prepared for.

One of the biggest mistakes I had was thinking that it can be done in Microsoft Windows. I love windows but for video work it sucks. For a long time I persevered with GB-PVR and the program is great, but the implementation of how it links with the internal Video and Audio drivers (also known as codecs, muxers and de-muxers) are appalling, and fixing these within windows is a nightmare. Many of these codecs need to be paid for or come as extras with other DVD/Video encoding programs like Nero, and there is no basic way to install the program on an OS and have it work.

I am not a Mac person, I don’t hate them and I understand for video work like this they are great, but I think the hardware and open-source software available for them to do this is also still very limited, so what are the other options?

MythTV is what I have settled on. It’s totally open-sourced, linux based software that does a great job, it is still being enhanced and it’s the most reliable choice, once you get it running, and like before it’s not cut and dried, it takes some work but it can be done.

In this series of articles and discussions or guides I am going to outline what I have done to get a great PVR system working with MythTV, what I run it on and some of the tricks that I have had to do to get it to work.

So why am I doing this?
It’s an opportunity to clear my head on the topic. Over the last 5 years or so that I have been playing and struggling with it I have learnt a lot and I still see today out there others doing much the same. I also need to de-clutter my head and get it down in writing so I can move on, it’s been a big learning process to get to this point so it will be good to release it.

What is my background, what makes me an expert?
Well I like TV, movies and video in general, I am also a bit of a geek/nerd that has been into computers for over 30 years now and I have seen and learnt about much of it, as a hobby of course. In my roles as a web engineer, project manager and software trainer I have developed skills that allow me to deliver information well to people, I hope to help others by putting this in writing in a way that it may help you. I am no expert and I am open to other ideas and ways of doing it, but on this topic I believe my eyes are fairly wide open to what’s out there and how it works and why.

So here it is, my experience and DIY guides to setting up your own PVR.

1. Introduction to MythTV
2. Selecting the Hardware
3. Installing the Software
4. Making the configuration changes and setting it up
5. Enjoying the experience, getting more out of it now that it’s running
6. References for more help

NEXT: Introduction to MythTV