Home-Grown TiVo Stories?

PolyDwarf writes "I'm in the process of figuring out how I'm going to build a homegrown TiVo machine (i.e. a computer sitting next to or in my home electronics stack). My question for is "What's worked best for you?" Most solutions I've researched are great if you have regular cable. However, satellite systems and digital cable boxes seem to present a special challenge, in that the software on the PC needs to know about an IR connector that is then hooked up to the front of the digital cable/satellite box. Who has done a solution like what I'm researching? What cases/processors/memory/TV Card/IR transceiver/OS/software/etc worked out for you? Did the end result justify the pain and hassle?"

The obligatory (proactive) onion url...

[Nugget]

To stave off all the wankers sure to fire up with their superior "I don't watch TV!" pablum, here's the obligatory theonion.com article [theonion.com]. Grow up, folks. There's plenty of quality programming out there and PVR's (TiVo included) are a great tool to filter the good stuff out from the worthless programming. Avoiding television because you don't like Survivor is like staying off the Internet because AOL is here. It just means you're incapable of scrutiny.

Re:Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn the TV off, the noise goes way down.

Next up: "How can I build my own car?"

[markv242]

"I'm too cheap to purchase an awesome product from a company that needs consumers, so how can I build my own [insert product here]?"

This is -1 Redundant, but just buy a Tivo. The Tivo service alone is worth the subscription fee, and Tivo v2 users who have a Mac will absolutely love the new Media Pack, allowing for Rendezvous discovery of iTunes / iPhoto libraries.

Re:How about Alienware?

[Anonymous Coward]

$1700 for the basic model and $2900 for the high-end one?!?! Jesus christ! I could petrify Natalie Portman or even hire a hit man to take out *BSD for that much cash!

Re:Looking to build my own Media Center

[Osty]

I'm actually going to use PVR on a box I'm working on for my 2 year old daughter.

Poor kid. At 2 years old, I think she has more than enough to do without having to learn how to use a computer. That will come soon enough. I'd focus more on potty training, socializing with other kids, and learning basic fundamentals (colors, shapes, words, etc). And as far as entertainment goes, I'll bet she'd be happier with a $50 DVD player and a copy of The Little Mermaid than she would with some custom homebrew Linux-based PVR thing.

Priorities, man!

Re:Freevo and linux

[Brendor]

(for those of you who don't know how to use Google yet... ;)

What's Google?

Re:What Ever Happened???

[NanoGator]

"What happened to the days of using a VCR? Yes its not cool or geeky or even the best quality but it certainly suffices for tape delaying a show. Plus a good VCR costs like $60 nowadays with tapes to be had for under a buck. Cheap and a tried a true technology(plus no monthly fee!)."

Hi! New here? Just transferred from the "Doesn't Get It" department?

Re:What Ever Happened???

[ryanr]

I tried this route.

I had trouble with getting my VCR to play one show while recording another. I also had some difficulty getting it to stream video from my home network. I couldn't figure out how to set the IP address on the VCR. It doesn't seem to use DHCP either. I think the IP is hardcoded to 1.2.0.0 or something, but setting my gateway to 1.2.0.1 didn't help, it won't ARP for it.

The commercial skip feature works, but it's pretty slow. Resetting the file to the beginning also takes forever for some reason. The REW button works eventually, but I can't find the slider. At first I thought it was hung, but I just let it sit for 5 minutes, and it finally switched from the REW state to the STOP state.

There's some sort of bug, the media cartridges keep auto-ejecting if I try to record more than 3 hours. There's a low quality mode (mpeg1?) which works for 6 hours, but the quality is just about unusable. This problem is interfering with the monthly show scheduling.

I also can't seem to get it to load any games, browse the web, or play DVDs. I'm not sure how to even load code onto it. Does anyone have an VHS API reference?

Re:What Ever Happened???

[rusty0101]

I understand that there are these manufacturing byproducts of processing trees, called books. They seem to come in varying costs from a couple of dollars, through hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in rare incidents. I understand that the modern distributers like to get between $5 and $25 for a new one, and they don't ask you to pay that much again, should you decide to re-read the book.

Surely they are good enough for you, and you shouldn't be pushing these newfangled VCR's on people.

-Rusty

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Cramer]

But they're them stinkin' Canadian dollars :-)

Re:Buy a Tivo

[outsider007]

It's well worth it for me to have the best device invented since the car...

to me that's like saying 'the best game invented since russian roulette...'

when there's something on that I want to watch and I won't be home, I just program my vcr to record it. I call it me-vo.

Re:Wrong approach.

[thud2000]

Living human brain, eh? Hmmmmm... I'll need a case mod for that, I guess. Back to the lab!