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

Wed Mar 5 15:53:38 EST 2003

Storing Mp3's as blobs is an interesting way to do it, and I've done that for images and flash files in some projects before. The main problem with doing that for mp3's (from a scripting point of view.. could be a completely different animal if you actually linked libs to play the mp3's) is, how do you feed it to the player?  The simplest would be writing the blob out to a file in /tmp, playing it and then deleting it but, this seems a little intense to me..  <brainstorming> can you feed an mp3 to mpg123 with a pipe?  

I have a neat example of an mp3 jukebox that works.. it's a combination of php and perl. Two perl scripts, one to run as a cron job to index the mp3 files (stores the path, filename and an ID in a table) one perl script to play the mp3's (watches a table called 'queue' that has a file id, and an order.. if it returns a row off the top, it starts mpg123 with the path and filename related to that file id) and a php "page" for searching and adding to the queue.  If anyone is intersted in playing with it, let me know, I'll dump the table structure and files for you. It's a decent example but, it was written in much haste, and has lots of room for improvement.

And, for making it 'abuse' proof..  you could go about it a few ways. 

1. You could use a hardware solution where the power switch really wasn't a power switch, but instead controlled a relay that signaled the box by serial port to shutdown, waited a minute or less, and turned off the power. 

2. Use a journaling file system, or some sort of no write behind modification to ext2..  I believe that I read about someone doing it (tivo? zapmedia?) to ensure appliance like reliability

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-admin at ale.org [mailto:ale-admin at ale.org]On Behalf Of
To: ale at ale.org
Christopher Fowler
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 2:42 PM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] semi OT: ideas about building a PVR/XPC

I've heard of some people storing MP3's as blobs in a MySQL database on
their media device.  One key element is to make a device resemble not a
computer but a VCR.  Hitting the power button causes 0 harm to any of
the files on that box.

On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 14:29, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> I've come to the conclusion that the onboard sound that most
> motherboards (Amptron) provide just suck. Anyone else think the same?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 13:32, Keith R. Watson wrote:
> > At 04:06 PM 3/4/2003 -0500, you 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 )
> > >
> > >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
> > 
> > Lance,
> > 
> > I got to the party late, but I brought goodies.
> > 
> > 
> > MythTV
> > http://www.mythtv.org/
> > 
> > Dream-Multimedia-TV
> > http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/cat_eng/
> > 
> > eBox
> > http://www.bluelightning.org/ebox/
> > 
> > Freevo
> > http://freevo.sourceforge.net/
> > 
> > Building a Linux-based time-shifting box
> > http://www.linuxprofessionalsolutions.com/pavlicek/tv.html
> > 
> > Video Disk Recorder
> > http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/
> > 
> > keith
> > -------------
> > 
> > Keith R. Watson                        GTRI/ITD
> > Systems Support Specialist III         Georgia Tech Research Institute
> > keith.watson at gtri.gatech.edu           Atlanta, GA  30332-0816
> > 404-894-0836
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

---
Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.456 / Virus Database: 256 - Release Date: 2/18/2003

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.456 / Virus Database: 256 - Release Date: 2/18/2003

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale