My TV, my way
With TiVo working hard to piss off its customers and the FCC working hard to screw over the entire U.S., I’m seriously looking into building a homebrewed Personal Video Recorder (PVR).
About a year ago, the FCC adopted the broadcast flag mandate rule (link to 430kb PDF) which, in a nutshell, requires any device that has the capability of recording a television broadcast of any sort to respect a flag telling it whether or not consumers should be able to record the broadcast. So, not going to be home for the new episode of Law & Order and want to record it? You might be out of luck, depending on if the TV studio wants you to be able to record it.
Luckily, this broadcast flag rule doesn’t take effect until July 1st, 2005. Any devices manufactured before that date don’t need to respect it — so, if someone like me wants a good, unrestricted PVR, now’s the time to build it. I’ve got approximately six months to plan, purchase, and build this thing, and as I make progress I’ll keep this blog updated.
Here are my key considerations for building a PVR:
- Stability — I want it to run without trouble for days or even weeks on end, if need be.
- Quick startup — When I hit the power switch, I want to go from zero to sixty in under twenty seconds.
- Simultaneous views — I want to be able to record one show while watching another.
- Remote-controlled on-screen display — I want to be able to program it from the comfort of my couch.
- Samba-shared recordings — I want to be able to mount the PVR’s hard drive as a remote Samba share on my desktop, so I can access the files from my main PC.
- Huge storage capacity — When I’m away from home for a week, I don’t want to run out of recording space.
- Low price tag — less than a comparable TiVo with lifetime subscription, about $500.
- Linux-powered — I don’t like Windows.
A good place for me to start is Build Your Own PVR. SHS PVR also looks like a useful resource, as does MythTV. Any links or tips from readers are appreciated.
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I know nothing at all about the technical aspects of this, but I can address hopefully a few of your points. (And you might already know some of these, so if I’m trudging through familiar territory for you, I’m sorry.)
1. For the record, this is not a problem that I’ve had with TiVo. If it’s something that would be run off a computer or be based on normal personal computer technology, I can’t imagine there would be any issue with this whatsoever. The only thing you might want to worry about would be power consumption (for both the PVR and the cable box, if need be), as this has been the one thing about my TiVo that really surprised me and costs me more money than it should. But that’s me, and might not necessarily apply to you.
3. Some PVRs can already do this. I know that the box offered by Time-Warner Cable in New York is capable of doing this, so that might be a good place to start. Why this isn’t directly possible with TiVo I won’t even begin to speculate, but communication of any kind between the cable box and the PVR is probably a necessity, and TiVo is in most cases so dodgy in this area that I suppose it doesn’t really surprise me. But this shouldn’t be something out of the realm of possibility, at least in theory.
4. I absolutely, totally, 100% agree, but I know nothing about how remote controls work, so I can’t instruct you on this at all.
6. This brings up the issue, if tangentially, about recording quality. TiVo offers several different recording modes, three or four. The TWC box offers just two, I think, and the quality of the recording you select will greatly impact the number of hours you’ll be able to record. So that’s an issue that will have to be dealt with. One thing that I would think would be a necessity in designing a PVR would be the ability to easily add storage capacity, whether by adding a hard drive to the existing one (or two?) you already have or replacing one hard drive with another. This is one aspect of TiVo I think is severely lacking. Despite the considerable hacking community that has sprung up around this, it should be as simple as possible, a basic function that allows for almost infinite expandability as technology allows.
7. Again, I have no clue about this. But in terms of the R&D costs involved and the testing aspects involved, I’m not sure that’s really something you should aim for, since it might (MIGHT) be unrealistic, especially if you’re serious about implementing all the features you talk about. But if it works out and you’re able to get something you’re satisfied with, then I would think you might be able to sell them at least on a limited basis and maybe make some money off of the thing. How many you’d be able (or willing) to sell I couldn’t say, but if you design something really good, I don’t see it as being outside the realm of possibility.
Anyway, good luck with this. My tech skills with regards to this are extremely limited, but I’ll be happy to help however I can.
Matthew,
You’ve brought up some good points.
1. Power consumption is an important thing to take into consideration that I hadn’t thought of.
3. I think to be able to do this, I’d need to have two TV tuners in the box. Some tuner cards come with two tuners on-board, so that might be a good solution. I consider this functionality necessary — there are often two shows on at the same time, both of which I want to see.
4. Again, some tuner cards come with remotes, which hopefully can be programmed to do what I want. I’ll have to experiment, though.
6. I expect that, for my own purposes, a couple hundred gigabytes will be enough to start with. A 200gb hard drive is only about $100 these days. But you’re right, setting the system up to smoothly expand its storage space is an excellent idea.
7. I wasn’t actually planning on selling these things. But I think the $500 cost-estimate is relatively doable, if I’m willing to go with components that aren’t necessarily the latest and greatest.