PVR's

[Tom Legrady]

What about doing PVR on Mac?

I have the promise of a generous wad of cash for my <very large  
number> birthday, and I was thinking of building a Mac-based  
entertainment centre

Tom

On 20-Dec-05, at 9:56 AM, Colin McGregor wrote:

> --- Paul Mora <paulmora-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On 12/19/05, Merv Curley <mervc-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Staples had Haupp. 150 cards on sale this week,
>> but it seems spending a
>>> bit
>>> more would be worthwhile.  Like much more
>> reasonable than the $800 for
>>> some
>>> of the commercial units that are available.
>>
>>
>> Building a PVR on MythTV is not necessarily cheaper,
>> but definetly more
>> fun.  Also, you can do so much more with it than a
>> dedicated PVR appliance.
>
> Very true, if you want to build a MythTV box with
> 100's of terabytes of storage, able to record from 8+
> video sources at once, MythTV will let you do it (for
> a price). When I was writing my article on MythTV I
> found you could easily get used Tivo on e-Bay for
> under $100 (U.S.) about what you would pay for one
> PVR-150 card (without remote). Granted said used
> Tivo's would be without the TV listing services (which
> would add a few $/month), and you would be limited to
> the 40G hard disk included with the unit. So, if
> anything you should expect a MythTV box to cost you
> more up front than a Tivo, the reason people go for
> MythTV are:
>
> - You don't have to pay any fees for listing services.
> - You don't have to worry about the Digital Rights
> Management @#$%.
> - You can build the box with as much storage as you
> kernel, your hardware, and/or your budget will allow.
> - You can put in as many tuners as your CPU/hardware
> will support.
> - You can make the box look the way you want (and
> there are some very nice looking cases out there).
> - You can customize the look/feel of the front end.
>
> Bottom line you pay a bit more up front, you spend
> less on operating costs and get a more flexible box.
>
>> When looking for cards, keep in mind how you want to
>> display the output to
>> your TV.  Some video cards have S-Video and
>> composite outputs on the card,
>> but they may be more difficult to get working under
>> Linux.
>>
>> In my MythTV PVR, I use two cards; the Hauppauge
>> WinTV PVR 250, and the
>> 350.  The 350 does hardware encoding/decoding, while
>> the 250 only does
>> hardware encoding.  The result is that I can use a
>> low-end machine as the
>> PVR.  If you use cards that do not decode in
>> hardware (like the 150, I
>> believe) then you need a faster CPU.  The
>> disadvantage is that the 250 and
>> 350 are fairly expensive.  But, you may find a cheap
>> one on eBay.
>
> The PVR-150 and the PVR-250 are for all but the most
> intense low-level hardware hackers the same. The only
> reason I would pick between a PVR-250 and PVR-150 is
> price (and as the PVR-150 was intended to be a lower
> cost replacement for the PVR-250, you should assume
> the PVR-150 will normally win that fight...).
>
> Now, I have a PVR-150 for my MythTV box, and I paid
> under $100 for it at one of the clone dealers near
> College & Spadina. Keep in mind that there is more
> than one version of the PVR-150 out there, mine (and
> part of the reason it was the price it was) did NOT
> come with a remote, so pay attention to what is/isn't
> included. Nothing wrong with needing to handle the
> remote via other means (or another card), just know
> that is what you are getting yourself in for.
>
> Beyond that, you do want hardware on a card to do as
> much work for you as possible. I am not as keen on the
> PVR-350 as I gather Paul is, as you can get a fanless
> nVidia 5200 series video card (that will do fine for
> MythTV) for around $50...
>
> Other stuff, if you want to do the HDTV stuff, the
> talk of the PVR series cards is irrelevant, you are
> going to need a HDTV tuner card(s) and while I know
> MythTV does support (some) HDTV cards, I don't have
> any direct experience here...
>
>> It's all in the FAQ at the sites Colin referenced.
>>
>> Another source of information is the presentation I
>> did a few months ago for
>> NewTLUG.  You can access it here:
>>
> http://www.mora.ca/node/3.<http://www.mora.ca/node/3>
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> pm
>>
>> --
>> Paul Mora
>> email: paulmora-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
> --
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