Tag: DVR

Hauppauge and Silicondust Announce Alliance for HTPC CableCard Tuners

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Silicondust USA Inc., maker of the popular HDHomerun networked digital TV tuner, and Hauppauge Computer Works, known for a variety of hardware tuners, have announced an alliance to introduce a USB-connected digital cablecard tuner.

Silicondust will concurrently be introducing its HDHomerun Prime, a cablecard version of their networked digital tuner. “Silicondust’s experience with digital cable access systems combined with Hauppauge’s strong computer TV tuner sales will produce a successful launch of this innovative product.” said Ken Plotkin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hauppauge Computer Works.

The products should be available for sale by the end of the year. The competition, the PCI-Express based Ceton InfiniTV4 Cablecard Tuner, has suffered from parts shortages.

As previously mentioned, a recent change by Cable Labs has permitted these devices to be used in a limited fashion under Linux. As revealed by Jeremy Hammer, Vice President of Systems Integration for Ceton Corporation, during a recent podcast interview, developers are already working, with support from the hardware manufacturers, to integrate the necessary functionality into popular Linux DVR software MythTV. You can hear that interview on the HTPCentric Podcast, Episode 7(htpcentric.thedigitalmediazone.com).

The editor of this blog appeared in Episode 3 of the same podcast, discussing his MythTV setup. An update on that will be coming soon.

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MythTV on Design

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We’ve spent a lot of time, of late, talking about the excitement of the latest version of MythTV. But it is an exciting topic. Video under MythTV is especially important. On the DVR side of things, MythTV has significant attraction. But as a media center application for the playback of video files, the competing software packages change, to software like XBMC and Boxee.

In version 0.22, MythTV unveiled MythUI, which is a complete rewrite of the Myth user interface. New themes were released and several old ones modified. Last night, we did a series of screenshots to show off some of the theme magic available.

Terra(The New Default Theme)

Watch Recordings Screen Under Terra Theme
Watch Recordings Screen Under Terra Theme

Now, Terra shows off the options for a Watch Recordings menu displayed in a manner other than traditional list style, using a horizontal scrolling menu for each program on the DVR side.

But what about for watching videos? As we mentioned in our previous post, JAMU offers an automated method of getting metadata on video files based on their names. There was metadata support in MythTV before, but the inclusion of this new script and other frontend features greatly simplify it out of the ‘box’. A script already exists, but will likely be incorporated as part of version 0.23, that allows for recordings to be exported with metadata information to MythVideo.

A directory of TV show episodes with metadata under Terra Theme
A directory of TV show episodes with metadata under Terra Theme

If you enlarge the image, you will notice that JAMU has added the episode metadata, including description, to these episodes of St. Elsewhere. There is discussion of adding additional options for screenshots for MythVideo(the feature is there for Recordings). If you look at the above image, every episode is using a stock poster.

Graphite

Graphite is being shown off as another new theme for MythTV 0.22 which shows off several of the new features you can enjoy, namely posters and fanart in the Watch Recordings menus. If you note the picture below, you’ll see the ABC show Castle, has a poster, and each episode has an autogenerated screenshot.

Watch Recordings Menu under Graphite theme
Watch Recordings Menu under Graphite theme

The next two images show the background art available in this theme for shows. All of the art shown was imported by the JAMU script.

Daily Show Art Under Graphite Theme
Daily Show Art Under Graphite Theme
The Big Bang Theory Art under Graphite Theme
The Big Bang Theory Art under Graphite Theme

Here is the popup, with the extra art and metadata, for a movie we brought in, and a TV episode. It offers a lot of information, which can be used to sort videos by year, genre, season(if TV show), etc.

Single Video View in MythVideo
Single Video/Movie View in MythVideo
Single Video/TV Episode
Single Video/TV Episode

Here is an alternate display of a directory of movies under the Metallurgy theme, also a theme newly included into MythTV 0.22. As you can see, the automated process didn’t bring in posters for everything. This can be corrected manually, by entering in additional information to better identify the item.

MythVideo Gallery of Movies
MythVideo Gallery of Movies

All in all, MythTV offers an exciting new and themeable interface that brings it on par with XBMC and Boxee, products that are not in the same category as MythTV, but perform some of the same functions. MythTV still has a ways to go in some areas, however, but it has come a long way.

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The Future of Internet Video

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A server used for the My Home
Image via Wikipedia

We like Hulu. We think it is a great service, and like any services that offer good content at the wonderfully low-low price of free. However, Hulu is considering adding a premium product…where they could offer things they don’t offer now at a premium.

Some people, despite its free nature, don’t like Hulu. And it hasn’t exactly made a great deal of profit. Mark Cuban wrote today on the subject of Internet Video vs the Cable Company DVR. As the owner of HDNet, a television channel offered on cable, he may be biased though. But the fact that content providers, cable companies, and the other organizations involved just don’t get the possibilities is not one we can argue with.

Cuban makes the case for better cable hardware with better improved features and remote access so you can enjoy your programs on the go. Beyond that, there is also the network DVR, where the videos are stored on a cable company server, instead of in the house. The library of On-Demand programming offered by all carriers continues to increase.

Cuban makes the point that with the current limitations of Internet based video, cable may be the more popular option for the foreseeable future. At least, in that regard, we agree.  If you are paying for something, you should receive good quality service at a good price.

The HD-PVR and MythTV

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HDPVR
Image by Geek Tonic via Flickr

For years now, we have run a MythTV DVR. It is a Linux-based software package that turns a computer into a digital video-recorder, complete with scheduling of programs.

We started with a single cable box with an active firewire connection to change the channel and a PVR-250 card we got cheap. That encoded the composite output from the box to MPEG2.

Eventually, we got the hang of firewire, discovered a bunch of tricks to get it to cooperate without crashing, and we’re working almost entirely off of cable with firewire, using a digital tuner to add redundancy on broadcast stations.

Then one day, the cable company shut down every firewire connection. The channel changing still works, but not streaming directly from the box. So we ordered the HD-PVR 1212.

The HD-PVR turns high definition component video and analog or digital audio into H264-encoded files. Ultra-compressed, and requiring a good CPU to decode. It exploits the so-called “analog loophole“, allowing one to record HD video off of an HD source.

And MythTV will support it in Version 0.22. Some have backported the device support to 0.21, the current stable version. So, we upgraded our installation(after a backup) to the 0.22 ‘bleeding’ version. You use development versions at your own risk. Unless you are contributing to the process with information, complaints about things not working will be ignored, mostly.

The HD-PVR seemed very buggy under Version 0.22, capturing at all resolutions, 480i, 720p, 1080i, with AC3 audio. And all of the files were filled with corruption, making it hard to play them back. So, the other night, despite the notation that the ability of the HD-PVR to handle multiple resolutions at a time had been stabilized, we reverted to 720p and AAC analog audio. So far, it has made everything rock solid. We’re doing tests of this over this weekend, after which we’ll try bringing back AC3 audio and/or 1080i, to see how high a quality we can get with complete stability.

The HD-PVR is a decent device that is developing better Linux-based support.  It is unfortunately the best option for recording HD video from other sources, as any digital options are shut down by the content providers.

More on our efforts in this area when all tests are complete.

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