PVRs

[David Woo]

I would be VERY interested in it.  I have a Tivo, Replay 4504, and an
older Panasonic Showstopper (Replay).  The newer Replay 4504 is really
nice, but it was pricey - $304 after all the coupon,  and mail-in rebate
and then there was a $250 lifetime subscription for the guide = $304 +
$250 = $554.   The 4504  has the advantage of connecting to my DSL
connection and I have exchanged recorded programs with friends -
although it took more than 36 hours to transmit a one hour show recorded
at the highest quality (3.6GB!).  Since my SWBell DSL is limited to
128K on the "up", it was the slowest link in the chain.  But a 30 minute
show in high quality took about 10 hours or so.

I have also upgraded  my Panasonic showstopper to two 80 GB drives from
the original 40GB drive to increase the recording time to 160 hours
recording time (basic quality).  The newer 4504 has a companion GPL
program called DVArchive 1.1 - which is a Java program.  It enables you
to transfer (and archive) recorded programs on the 4504 to your local
PC's hard  drive.  And it makes your PC look like another 4504, so you
can stream the archived video from the PC back to the "real 4504" for
viewing on your TV.  You can also view the archived show on your local
PC by opening the mpg file that was transferred from the 4504 with Power
DVD or WINDVD, and I think Windows Media Player works, too.

SO YES - please give us some info on this!  I have a friend who has also
made his RedHat 7.3 server with a Happauge TV card in it into a realtime
streaming video server - if anyone is interested in doing that too - let
me know and I'll post the instructions.  I haven't done it yet, since
I'm still waiting for the Happauge cards to go on sale, but I view his
video stream from NYC using RealPlayer - and it's really almost perfect
video.  We also hooked up vnc to allow me remote changing of channels.
The only application I've found for this is that I can now watch cable
channels over the Internet in my office (since I don't have cable at my
office).  I was able to watch the US Open tennis tournament early rounds
on USA network.

David.

Gene Dascher wrote:

>I have a couple of questions for you:
>
>Can you play it back on your TV, or are you stuck watching it on the PC
>monitor?
>How good does it look (on TV or PC)?
>
>
>I am doing something similar with Smallville, but I am using my DVCamcorder
>as a pass through for a VCR to record the show. (I plan on getting a
>standalone analog to DV conversion box next year so my DVCam won't be tied
>up every Tuesday at 8!)  I edit out commercials and convert it to VCD format
>to watch on my DVD player.  The only problem with this is that the initial
>storage requirements are quite hefty.  1 hour of video weighs in at about
>13GB!  The final VCD format file weighs in at about 10MB/minute.
>
>Later,
>Gene
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: owner-kclug at marauder.illiana.net
>>[mailto:owner-kclug at marauder.illiana.net]On Behalf Of Jason Clinton
>>Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 8:52 AM
>>To: kclug at kclug.org
>>Subject: PVRs
>>
>>
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>Hash: SHA1
>>
>>Would anyone be interested in a lengthy post on how to turn your
>>huge hard drive
>>and a cheap $50 TV tuner card in to a Linux PVR (Personal Video
>>Recorder)? I've
>>now got my linux box set to vcron Firefly on Fox every week. At
>>the current
>>quality setting, I can store 1 hour of video in 120 MB in DivX
>>5.0 format at
>>378x288 16bit mono 64kbps MP3.
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (MingW32)
>>Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>>
>>iD8DBQE9mFcNtSqjk42zvwkRApfiAJ4vEr62rgoGl6t3KdTedv3RPcdOjACfXdsx
>>U7ARmYT7XiCc6Nn86ODXrZw=
>>=QlVf
>>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
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