[geeks] TiVo Observations (new owner)

[Nathan Raymond]

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Joshua Boyd wrote:

> Heres one thought though.  MythTV and FreeVo can probably be fairly
> easily hacked to do HD-TV, but a TiVo or ReplayTV probably can't.

Yup.  There's even an HDTV card with explicit Linux support:

http://www.pchdtv.com/

Getting a PC to output an HDTV signal in Linux can be a little tricky 
sometimes:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/mythhd.php

> A lot of HD can be done easily enough with firewire MPEG2-TS streams.
> Of course, some of that stuff has copy protection that will get in the
> way.  For that, well, there is always a component HD analog -> HD-SDI
> converter, paired with a HD-SDI PCI card, for the dedicated home theater
> nut (I say nut because the combo will likely cost in the ball park of
> $4k), at least until someone figures out how to break the firewire copy
> protection system.  I wish I still had my articles discussing it, but,
> of course, it would be economically unfeasible to do so in this country
> (not that the gear is unfeasible, but the ensueing court battle would
> be ruinous, even if I had a hope of winning).  Thank's alot DMCA.  Make
> it impossible to time shift HD content, a practice that is legally
> protected for NTSC.

Impossible to time shift HD content?  MythTV with the pcHDTV card can do 
it.  Maybe you mean this:

http://wendy.seltzer.org/mythtv/

"Unfortunately, the HDTV transition brings restrictions to broadcast 
television -- the FCC-mandated broadcast flag will make it unlawful to 
sell fully capable tuner cards, ones that can't be told to stop 
high-quality digital outputs at the broadcaster's command. Fortunately, 
the rule doesn't take effect until July 2005, so buy your HD tuner card 
now, whil you still can (existing devices will continue to work). This 
machine, by contrast to what will be available commercially next year, has 
high-definition DVI, S/PDIF, unencumbered firewire, and Ethernet outputs 
and fully open-source user-modifiable software."

BTW, the attraction I see to MythTV goes beyond the timeshifting and HDTV 
ability (and why I may set up a box for myself someday) - it's the 
modules:

http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures

* Rip, categorize, play, and visualize MP3/Ogg/FLAC/CD Audio files. (FLAC, 
Vorbis, and MP3 encoding). Create complex playlists (and playlists 
containing playlists) through a simple UI.

* An emulator frontend. (MAME, NES, SNES, generic PC games)

* A generic video player module, with automatic metadata lookups

* A DVD player / ripper module. Make perfect backups, or transcode down 
to smaller file sizes.

* An RSS news feed reader module.

--
Nathan Raymond