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Category: Start / Articles and How To'sLinks to articles and How To pages that detail (or at least cover in part) how to make your own new fangled PVR/HTPC/etc Sort links by: Title ( + | - ) Date ( + | - ) Rating ( + | - ) Popularity ( + | - )
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ExtemeTech Build It: Extreme Personal Video Recorder 
The Living Room PC. That promised land of computing, where our entertainment centers get intelligent, and PCs get super-easy to use. Yeah, right. Although we're not quite there yet, we are getting ever closer to that day when every family member, not just the house's sysadmin (you, probably) can fire up the PC media appliance, access stored music, video, and photos, and record television off the air, cable or from webcasts. Soon we'll be able to see this device as just another component in the rack.
The good news is that you can build that appliance today...
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 3915
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ExtremeTech - Build it: Rolling Your Own Tivo
The Home Entertainment PC Revisited
Early in the year, we wrote about building your own home theater PC. At that time, we focused mainly on the hardware, plus the issues of integrating the pieces into a cohesive whole (part 1 and part 2). Recently, we reviewed the Shuttle SB51G and suggested that it might be the core of a compact HTPC.
You don't actually need a full-on home theater to take advantage of one of these systems – they can make a great addition to even a simple home audio and video setup in a dorm room, apartment or house.
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 1476
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ExtremeTech Building a Home Theater PC
The Home Theater PC (HTPC) is a different animal. It can have multiple goals, some of which are orthogonal to others. Here's what a good home theater PC can do:
* Be a repository for your CD collection
* Act as a digital scaler and de-interlacing platform for DVD playback
* Create a TIVO or Replay-TV type of unit that allows for time-shifted viewing of
your favorite TV shows
* Be an HDTV tuner, including time-shifting HDTV viewing
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 1458
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Yahoo News/Ziff Davis Build your own Tivo
Build Your Own Tivo
Tue Nov 25,10:20 AM ET
Jim Louderback - ExtremeTech
When I was younger, I used to love making Heathkits – electronics hobby sets -- with my Dad. We built all manner of useless electronic appliances, including a home intercom system, speakers and even a receiver. One that was useful – and probably the world's first digital alarm clock – still survives.
Maybe you're adventurous, too. Maybe you like building things. Maybe you just want flexibility. Those are all really good reasons to build your own TiVo-like device around a PC platform. Just don't expect to save money doing it.
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 701
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Wired Article: Building a TiVo, a Step at a Time
Building a TiVo, a Step at a Time
By Leander Kahney |
02:00 AM Jun. 04, 2003 PT
Forget TiVo and ReplayTV. If you want a really super-duper digital video recorder, you have to build your own.
All you need is knowledge of Linux, plenty of cash for hardware and, if anything goes wrong, hundreds of hours to troubleshoot the device.
Thanks to several open-source projects, you can build your own digital video recorder that will blow boxes from TiVo and ReplayTV right off the shelf.
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 1034
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Mini-itx (Via small factor PC's) 101
What is Mini-ITX?
Mini-ITX is a motherboard form factor created by VIA. Motherboards are available from VIA, and other manufacturers such as Lucky Star.
Mini-ITX motherboards have a processor soldered to the board and a rich supporting chipset providing networking, graphics and sound. This means that by adding just some memory, a hard drive and a power supply, you have a full computer. You might want to add a case, but this is optional ;)
Mini-ITX motherboards are very cheap. But they are powerful enough to play back full screen video through their monitor or TV output.
Mini-ITX motherboards are very small. The specification requires that the boards are 170mm x 170mm (6.75" x 6.75")
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 1181
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Oreilly: Roll Your Own Digital Video Recorder
Roll Your Own Digital Video Recorder
by Howard Wen
08/29/2002
TiVo users in Great Britain were treated to a "surprise" in May 2002. Their TiVo set-top boxes recorded an episode of a new BBC comedy -- without them having programmed their boxes to do so. Worse, the recording could not be deleted; it only automatically deleted itself after four days.
It's partly because of incidents like this that Klaus Schmidinger from southern Bavaria, Germany created Video Disk Recorder, or VDR. VDR serves as a user interface for those who want to build their own digital satellite-TV receiver and recorder box running under Linux. It is based mainly on the DVB-S digital satellite TV receiver card from....
Added on: 09-Jan-2004 | hits: 1397
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JoeUser DigitalNoiz's blog entry re: BYOPVR
ast year I got myself one of my favorite gifts ever, a ReplayTV. Yea I know, everyone thinks Tevo is better, but I have to mostly disagree. The ability to share files between units and finding programs like DVArchive that lets you transfer the files off so you can burn VCD's and DVD's from the videos with out any hardware hacking or having to pay for additional service what so ever just rocks. The network connection also doubled as a conduit to add your own pictures to appear when you pause live TV (tevo Makes you look at adds :-( ).
Added on: 10-Jan-2004 | hits: 1231
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O'REILLY: The State of Home-Brew PVRs on Linux
by Joe Stump
11/13/2003
We've heard rumblings in the community for quite some time about individuals creating homebrew PVRs using Linux. Out of these stories and legends, a few projects have actually developed some rather useful PVR applications. In this article, I'll describe my own experience building my PVR. I'll also outline the various projects that make up the current state of PVR technology on Linux.
### rampy note --> a good high level overview of what's going on as well as good, albeit brief comparisons of the major players/software/componenents out there right now.
Added on: 12-Jan-2004 | hits: 1596
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TechReport: VIA\'s EPIA-M10000 platform Review
A viable pint-sized home theater platform?
by Geoff Gasior — May 27, 2003
HOW FAST is fast enough? How much power does one need for basic office applications? What about high quality DivX and MP3 playback?
The question of \"how fast is fast enough\" has plagued me since VIA\'s tiny EPIA-M10000 platform arrived at my doorstep in what seemed like far too small a box to hold a motherboard and CPU. Just 17 cm square, the EPIA-M10000 is a midget (sorry, little person) among small form factor platforms. The fact that the board features a new revision of VIA\'s notoriously slow C3 processor almost makes it hard to take the EPIA-M10000 seriously, but I\'m trying to be open-minded.
With a new \"Nehemiah\" core C3 processor running at a cool 1GHz, a full-speed FPU, support for DDR SDRAM, and a hardware MPEG-2 decoder, the EPIA-M10000 at least has the potential to be fast enough for mainstream desktops and even home theater PCs. Read on as I explore the features and performance of VIA\'s newest Mini-ITX platform to find out just how much power this pint-size platform is packing.
Added on: 15-Jan-2004 | hits: 1227
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