Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 12:52:13 -0500 From: Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: Stan Brown <stanb@panix.com>, Free BSD Multimedia List <freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: What hardware/software do In need to build a TVIO like PVR? Message-ID: <3C03D2CD.9CAB0495@mitre.org> References: <200111231616.fANGGf702502@panix1.panix.com> <15358.61988.946059.212773@guru.mired.org>
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Mike Meyer wrote: > > Stan Brown <stanb@panix.com> types: > > I would like to build a TVIO like Personal Video Recorder based upon a > > FreeBSD box. > > 1. Is this possible? > > Maybe, depending on how much of the functionality you're trying to > get. > > > 2. If so what hardware (other than the basic computer) do I need? WinTV > > card? Special video card for TV out? > > Cards that use the Brooktree harware work. See the bktr man page to > get a list of cards that use that. It even supports some of the > remotes.If you want output to go to a TV, you'll need a video card > that outputs to the TV. I don't know of one of those that's supported > by FreeBSD. The ATI cards can be used if you install Windows and > configure them for video out. They'll stay in that mode when you boot > FreeBSD and run X. My Matrox G200 Mystique will automatically turn on the TV-out if it is plugged in at boot time. You will have to have X running to use it though. I think G400 users can use the Matrox Powerdesk for Linux to get TV-out as well, however I have never tested that. > Adding more drives (on separate controllers if you're using IDE) will > help if the recording software you use can interleave frames between > files. > > A sound card that pcm supports for recording is also required. > > 3. What kernel options do I need? > > See the manual pages for the hardware you're using. > > > 4. What userland software do I need? > > I use fxtv. That lets you watch and record the TV. I'm not sure about > a player for raw video, but that's what would work best if you've got > the disk space. fxtv can automatically convert to a variety of > formats, so you can use any player that supports that format. > > There are two things missing. One is the software to provide a > reasonable UI for the VCR you've created. That would include something > to record and store a show, as well as something to list recorded > shows and play them back. > > The biggie is the scheduling magic that Tivo provides. Given an > internet connection and an account on something like zap2it, you could > do that. > > If that software exists, I haven't found it yet. Note that Tivo has apparently released their source code as well: http://freshmeat.net/projects/tivosoftwaresourcecode/ but good luck getting it working with FreeBSD. For encoding you might want to look into FFmpeg, available in the ports, which is an mpeg encoder designed to be _fast_. Overall though, Tivo's aren't terribly expensive and they do a really good job of this already. You can just buy a cheap (20 hour) version and hack in a big HD for <$500US. It's hard to beat that with PC hardware unless you have a lot of spare equiptment just available. As far as the guide is concerned, there are a lot of projects on Freshmeat that provide guides. I think some of them use publically available information. -- \ |_ _|__ __|_ \ __| Jason Andresen jandrese@mitre.org |\/ | | | / _| Network and Distributed Systems Engineer _| _|___| _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-multimedia" in the body of the message
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