Thursday, April 14, 2005
MYTHTV: I've had a couple of requests for the specs on my MythTV box after my last post. I wanted to write about it at some point anyway so thanks for the reminder, loyal readers!
Like a lot of geeks who build their own computers, I have a ton of parts laying around. For this project though, I wanted to be able to record HDTV eventually which takes a fair bit of horsepower so the only things I was able to scavenge were the network card and soundcard. I bought almost everything from Newegg.com, the only online store I shop at anymore. I ended up getting a bunch of mailin rebates so my total cost landed somewhere around $600.
If you're not doing High Def you can get away with a lot less powerful hardware. The Hauppage card does most of the heavy lifting for TV watching and recording in it's hardware so your CPU only has to do a few other tasks like marking commercials so you can skip them automatically. Support for the new Hauppage 150 card is coming along very quickly in MythTV so you can save some money there also. The picture on the 150 isn't as sharp though so that's a consideration.
Gigabyte AMD motherboard with 5 PCI slots.
AMD XP 2700+
512meg RAM
300 gig Seagate harddrive
Hauppage WinTV 250 MPEG2 TV encoder card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 case (with fancy analog sound needle!)
Netgear 10/100 ethernet card
Soundblaster Live! Value soundcard
IR Blaster for cable box control from http://www.irblaster.info
I also needed various cables, most of which I had laying around except for the DVI cable to hook into my HDTV. I got that at a local store PC Magic, for $20 rather than the crazy $80-$100 that the bigger CompUSA/Circuit City stores want for the same wire. You can get them online for $20 or so too, don't pay more.
The only remaining part I need is the PCHDTV card from pchdtv.com. They make an over-the-air HD reciever card specifically for Linux. It's $180 which is why I've held off so far.
I'm super happy with MythTV but I wouldn't be so happy if I hadn't found Jarod Wilson's guide at http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/. He's a Myth developer and his guide is incredibly helpful. For a first-time MythTV user, I would say you'd be crazy not to follow his guide or try the KnoppMyth project. I haven't used it but apparently it works like a champ.
The other thing I would add to your box once you get it going is the Bittorrent program Azureus with the RSS plugin. I'll leave the reasons why you'd want that as an exercise for the reader and our friend google. :)
Good luck and feel free to email if you have questions.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
TIVO: I loved my Tivo, loved it. Like all Tivo it users it seems, I was a huge evangelist for their company and product. If you're observant, you'll notice that I said 'loved', as in past tense. I cancelled my Tivo subscription today, and will exclusively use my beautiful MythTV box from now on.
I never upgraded to the Series 2 box because even though the feature-set was cool, I knew right off the bat they wouldn't be able to do the things they needed to for me to be interested. They're in so tight with the media industry that they have to disable or not include the best features for their customers, like me being able to download video off the net and watch it on my Tivo. Or send a show to a friend who missed it. These are perfectly valid and legal but the media people don't like it so they won't do it. This is exactly the wrong way to look at things.
Instead of partnering with the media companies and bending over for them, Tivo should have partnered with their users. They should have trusted their users enough, having built up an insane amount of goodwill over the years, that they would have helped the company out even if the media industries tried to sue. Tivo has more than enough "non-infringing uses" for this type of thing that it's not even clear the media companies would be able to go to court. But even if they did go to court, they should have trusted their users. A bunch of nerds raised $4 million dollars to "save" Star Trek: Enterprise, for pete's sake, like people wouldn't have donated to Tivo to help them tell the media industry off in court? People who don't even have Tivos would have donated to any legal fight to define user's rights to do what they wish their media. What Tivo, and most other electronics companies, forget is that there are more of us than there are of them. The increase in revenue from providing these very useful, cool, and easy-to-describe services surely would have not only prevented their precarious financial state, they would have provided a financial reason for the company to support the new initiatives. Some people have a hard time seeing the benefit of a Tivo over a VCR but being able to send shows over the net or download videos is something that everyone would "get". But no, they're just now getting around to their extremely limited TivoToGo service and programming API so it's too late. I can do all the things I want with my MythTV box and not have to feel like I'm personally bending over for the media companies by supporting a company that has abandoned me for them.
I saw a great tshirt on BoingBoing today: "YOUR FAILED BUSINESS MODEL IS NOT MY PROBLEM". Damn right. Until the media industry wakes up and provides me a way to pay for the shows I want to watch and download them, I'm going to continue to download them and not pay. I will not be held hostage to their outmoded business model. It's too bad Tivo never recognized the power of their userbase. I hope they do someday. I'd love to help them kick the asses of the media companies.