[ale] semi OT: ideas about building a PVR/XPC

[Byron A Jeff]

>  
> I recommend the new VIA EPIA-M board for this.  I have one and aside 
> from it's "tiny" size, it can play DVD's just fine.  It has an XCard 
> MPEG2 decoder chip built onto the board, but the linux drivers are still 
> in development.  It has all the goodies: eth, firewire, 6 channel audio, 
> 4usb ports (but linux sees 6 somehow - maybe the chip supports 6).  I 
> got mine at casetronic.com for $245 for a sweet little case, dc 
> powersupply(NO FAN), and the board/cpu.  You can buy the EPIA-M board 
> for just over $100US at lots of places.  I recommend starting at 
> http://www.linitx.com

I'd like to echo this idea. It's the next thing on my buy list. I plan to get
either an EPIA M9000 or M10000 board.

My PVR project has been in full swing for nearly 8 months now. It was born out
of necessity: I teach 4 nights a week. My core component is an Iomega Buz
video capture card. While lacking in some respects (no onboard audio or
tuner) it makes up with decent hardware recording along with direct TV
playback, good driver support, and a great price. I've only paid $60 for two
units off Ebay.

The disk space requirements are steep. Raw footage at decent quality runs
about 6GB an hour. My stance is that disk space is cheap, most of what I
record is transient (which is why I want a digital PVR), and anything I really
want to keep I can convert into MPEG with a bit of effort.

I started out with 13G of disk and added another 15G from my disk graveyard.
On President's Day I bought a WD 200GB 8MB cache disk for the project. Also
I'm using an Acer IR keyboard/mouse combo I picked up a while ago. All this
along with a DVD and a $8 Cmedia soundcard are loaded into a midtower 533 Mhz
Dell.

I don't really need fancy X interfaces for this project. Currently I record
and playback with a couple of shell scripts I wrote. The record script has
evolved with timed delay, parameter checking, and record time checking. Each
was due to a specific failure (operator or system) at some point in time.

For the most part it's set and forget, except for the two or three missing 
puzzle pieces:

1) Tuner. I'm using a VCR to tune, but it isn't automated. I fiddled with LIRC
for awhile with limited success. But I'd prefer to have a positive feedback 
tuning system.

2) CPU speed. I recently added the DVD to play a couple of DVDs. mplayer has
the ability to play the DVD through the Buz. However it is a bit of a CPU
intensive task because of decoding and conversion from MPEG2 to MJPEG. So 
the 533Mhz Dell chokes at full speed. However it was OK with moderate frame
dropping, though the audio and video is somewhat desynced.

3) Size. ah size. A mid sized tower and a monitor aren't the best of tools in
a den entertainment center. Getting it in and out is quite the task.

4) More IR. LIRC controlling the whole thing will be a better proposition.

While I'm sure the MythTV is probably a more complete and more polished package
I'm happy with my homebrew setup. I've gotten a bead on a self contained
tuner that I plan to interface with a PIC, then connect to the serial port of
the PC. As for size and speed, that's what the EPIA is tasked to handle.

So just some insight into my foray. I'm quite happy with my setup.

BAJ
> 
> Regards,
> CB
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Geoffrey wrote:
> 
> | lance crocker wrote:
> |
> |> Hey all,
> |>
> |> I am planning on building a PVR ( Personal video recorder - like Tivo 
> ), an
> |> XPC ( Multimedia entertainment PC that will hockup to my TV and home
> |> theater ), or some sort of combination.
> |>
> |> I have thought of two basic choices for this attempt.
> |>
> |> 1. Buy an Xbox, hack it and install Xbox linux on it ( roughly around 
> $300 )
> |
> |
> | Do not, under any circumstances, put money in M$'s pocket, even though 
> they are losing money on the Xbox.
> |
> |>
> |> or
> |>
> |> 2. Build an XPC using current high end PC hardware  ( roughly around 
> $1700 )
> |>
> |> The Xbox idea is cheap but not very upgradable. The XPC idea is more
> |> expensive but also more upgradable and mroe useful.
> |>
> |> Have any of you guys ever built anything like this? Have any suggestions
> |> like recommeneded hadrware? software? OS? stuff like that?
> |>
> |> I would really appreciate some input as I have just started seriously
> |> thinking about this.
> |>
> |> Thanks in advance,
> |>
> |> Lance
> |>
> |>
> |> _______________________________________________
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> |> Ale at ale.org
> |> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> |>
> |>
> |
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