Home brew PVR's and Infotainment - Part I

I have been trying to experiment with homebrew PVR systems for a while now. I would love to share my experiences on the topic but that is a discussion for another day.

I have a dual-boot box running Gentoo and Windows XP Pro as my main machine. Lately, I have been spending a lot of time running Windows since I have been playing this new game that I bought recently. Now, I am a big proponent of Linux and other Open Source software but sadly enough I have to agree that in DirectX, Microsoft does have a better gaming platform/engine than OpenGL on Linux. Now since that is the case, I needed a PVR software that would run on Windows so that I could record my TV shows while playing the game and would not have to reboot into Linux everytime I was done playing and then reboot into Windows whenever I decided to play. Unfortunately, I built this PC almost two years ago and Windows Media Center was not available at the time so I had to hunt for a PVR software that would work for me.

A quick google answered my search with SnapStream's BeyondTV and Frey's SageTV. I downloaded trials for both. Both worked well with my Tuner cards. I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 and a cheap K-World Tuner based on the BT848 chipset and worked "out of the box". However, what stopped me from purchasing either of the two softwares was the price associated with it. On Linux, MythTV and Freevo are free (i.e. if your time has no value). I liked SageTV's interface a little better than BeyondTV's but Sage lacked one major feature which was scheduling over the web. Some of you may think it's not a big deal but believe me, once you start using it you will never go back to anything without a web based interface. Hence enter GB-PVR!!

I came across a link to GB-PVR while surfing the SageTV forums. A quick glance at the product revealed that it contained all the features I needed out of a PVR application, the most important being a web interface. I quickly downloaded it and installed it and it worked reasonably well. Switching channels was a little slow, which is not great for someone as impatient as I am. That has been fixed in newer versions of the software though. I downloaded a few plug-in's and I was all set. Although the application is not open source it is distributed free by the author. I am okay with that. It is very rare that I feel the need or the urge to hack any code outside of work since I do that all day for a living.

GB-PVR works great for me except for one thing. Once in a couple of months, it just stops working. The Program guide goes blank or is missing program info in parts, the remote starts acting flaky, changing channels yields crazy results like taking you back to the main menu etc. Re-starting the app or even the PC does not make a difference. Updating the program guide does not ork either. Everytime this happens, I notice that there is a newer version of the software available. Having spent some time on the forums and looking at the quality of the product and the way it has developed, I do realise that the author is an extremely competent software programmer and would have "easter eggs" in his software to break the app everytime an update is available a'la some major software corporations around the world. My computer is my slave, it does what I tell it to do, it has no free will. Then why is it that my PVR software breaks? I wish I knew but I don't. For most of the time it is up and functions as advertised. I can say less for some of the software that I have bought or my employer pays to use.

I have found GB-PVR to be quite a good piece of software. It is well written and plug-in centric which is good! I can make it as barebones as possible or beef it up with various plug-ins such as a DVD ripper, a weather plug-in, a web interface plug-in, a movie theater listing plug-in, an RSS reader plug-in etc. A complete list of plug-in's can be found here. The folks at Frey technologies were nice enough to open source some of their code which is used to skip commercials so when I view my recordings, I can just skip the commercials with a click of a button on my remote. Which is great since I end up watching a 1 hr show in 45 minutes or less.

Another feature of GB-PVR I like is that it records in a standard mpeg2 file formatas opposed to a proprietary format that some media centers/PVR's use. It enables me to use a regular movie making software to burn DVD's/VCD's of my favourite TV shows and archive them for eternity. Or just let them be on my hard disk, storage seems to be getting cheaper by the day anyways.

One feature that GB-PVR lacks is a client to stream content to other PC's. One can do it manually with a bit of a kludgey setup but I would rather prefer a client with an easy to use interface.

There are just some features which are a cool to have but I never use. I do prefer reading my RSS feeds and comics online but these features go on to show the changing face of "home infotainment". The term "Home Entertainment" is passe'.

I see a complete Home infotainment system comprising of one or more PC's networked over a really high bandwidith wireless network connected to an array of of disks containg media files that can be streamed to any corner of your home (Linksys already sells an audio file streaming device and Microsoft have a X-Box Media center extender which connects to your Windows media center PC) . If you have a couple of really big screen TV's with hig enough resolution, you could surf the web and watch TV at the same time. Television watching could be made interactive. You could, at a click of a remote, access a wealth of information related to the current program you are currently watching, send an instant message to a buddy, vote on a game show, record a game from two different viewing angles, order pizza and play your favourite video game.

Now, if the FCC/government can figure its way out to keep big corporations at bay and let innovation be its priority, you could see the face of "Home infotainment" changing pretty soon.

Please keep an eye out on Part II of this article when I decide to mod my X-box to run as a MythTV client in the coming months.