Hey, check out some cool linux-based software:
http://mythtv.org/

I was reading some threads online recently, IIRC on slashdot, and most
folks said that among so many of the linux PVR projects, they either
didn't work or were entirely vaporware (er, in planning stages).  MythTV
apparently *works*.  Granted, encoding is being done by the CPU, but
2GHz boxen can be had for >$400 now!  Add a $40 tuner card and you're
off and ready to play... I like that they integrated MAME, weather, mp3
listening and ripping, and photo albums, it looks nicely modular.  This
is definately a project to keep an eye on, if not try out.  It looks
like they're using RedHat 8 as the base system, so I'll appologize right
away: sorry, red-haters...  

NOW:  if only we could get better drivers for our hardware!! Arg!
The Brooktree tuners are capable doing mpeg2; that'd be SO nice...
and it would finally be feasible to put three cards in one box.  BTW,
the /. thread was a question about recording 16 streams  = )  There was
the usual beowulf banter, some good descriptions of the limitations of
raw video on the PCI bus, and also a cost-analysis comparing hiring a
person to operate 16 VCRs and lotsa blank tapes to a feasible linux
cluster to do the same... analog won by a good bit, but of course
doesn't offer the immediate random-access.  There was some mysterious
talk about recording the entire _broadcast_ _spectrum_, but AFAIK that
would require an *extremely* fast IO board, bus, and storage system,
right?

well good eve folks,

b

PS - Thanks for the insight, Joseph, I've been looking at all these
'puter-based PVRs, yet I know deep down that a consumer-model unit would
be a lot less headaches, and have just assumed that tivo was the way to
go, since it is linux-based.  I've also read about some cheap-arsed DVD
players that have upgradable BIOS to play other media codecs, and have
an IDE bus... will try to dig up some links on that for y'all.

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 17:01, Joseph Carter wrote:
> I kinda wish I had read the various TiVo forums before buying my series 2
> TiVo, since I may not have done so had I read about the measures employed
> to prevent hacking the box.  (Not that reading the AVS forum would have
> helped anyway, given that half the idiots there swear they read that you
> can hack a stand-alone series 2, and that's just not true..)
> 
> Before anyone considers buying one, here are the protections that I know
> of in place to prevent hacking:
...

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