GiVo
I have created what I affectionately call GiVo. I didn’t come up with the name GiVo, but I’m going to run with it anyway. It’s a PC whose sole purpose is to perform at or above the TiVo level of performance in PVR terms.
It’s a standard PC with a PVR-250 video tuner card. It is hardware based, so recording is not dependent on the CPU. Since the processing of the video feed is performed at the tuner card level, the video stream is not choppy at all. We’ve managed to almost fill 80G within the first two weeks. The OS is a Linux distribution with the sole purpose of being a PVR. Basically, the distribution includes MythTV as the backend system. Being a standard Linux OS, all sorts of cool stuff can be done with it. SSH, Apache, MySQL, all the expected stuff works. The MythTV software includes a PHP based TV guide accessible over the web. How cool is that? I actually find it much easier to use than the guide on the TV.
My setup includes the incoming cable feed first goes through the digitcal cable box. From there, the cable goes to the TV tuner card. An S-video cable is connected to the TV-out port on the PC video card. From there the S-video cable is converted to component, then connected to the TV. I don’t have an available S-video port on my TV. For sound, the sound out is passed through a cable and converted to component. From there, it is connected to the receiver to go through the big speakers. Also, the tuner included with the card is only able to deal with 180 channels. I connected a straight-through serial cable from the PC to the digital cable box. The MythTV software can be configured to change the the channel on the cable box, thus allowing me to watch all digital cable channels. Instead of the meager 180 channels, I have access to ALL digital channels, that is awesome.
As far as comparing the performance of the GiVo to a TiVo goes, the TiVo is a better performer in terms of picture quality. However, in terms of flexibility, user interface, and storage capacity, the GiVo is the winner. The GiVo is able to pause live TV for up to an hour, that’s REALLY a nice feature. Once you unpause, the feed simply continues from where you left off. Not missing a bit of TV you actually want to watch is a great feature.
Being that the GiVo is running Linux, I am able to easily SSH to the box for any admin or tweaking needed. The people at KnoppMyth really made the initial installation and setup a breeze. In terms of difficulty overall with the setup, it is meant for someone comfortable with Linux. However, their FAQ, user forums, and mailing lists are incredibly helpful. Countless hours were saved thanks to the user forums. The community as a whole is extremely active and knowledgable. What’s also nice about the distribution and Linux PVR movement is around the TV tuner cards manufactured by Hauppauge. These cards, PVR250 and PVR350 usually, work great with the distribution with some minor tweaking. My recommendation if one were to persue this endeavor is to go with one of the Hauppauge cards over other TV tuner cards.
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