PVR Experiment with MythTV

MythTV

I’ve been a PVR user for quite some time now. While many people use the Tivo, I started out with the ReplayTV side. My first PVR was the Panasonic Showstopper, a rebranded ReplayTV unit. In fact, I still have and use this quite obsolete PVR today.

But it is obsolete, and the paltry 10 hours of record time at high quality is starting to get to me. I’d like to be able to burn recorded shows to DVD, a process that would require removing the hard disk, hooking it up to a desktop computer, and then returning it.

So, I started out looking for a new unit. I considered four choices: a new ReplayTV, new Tivo, or a homebrew MythTV or Freevo unit.

The ReplayTV options were nice, but would cost $750 for a 160-hour unit with lifetime service (and I don’t want to pay $13/mo for service either!). And while ReplayTVs can now be accessed over a network, still I don’t have much control over the capture format of content.

Tivo’s 140-hour unit would be $650 with lifetime service, but I’d have to also purchase an add-on network module to be able to download content for DVD burning. Again, expensive.

So I looked at MythTV and Freevo. While Freevo appeared to have the easier setup, MythTV clearly was the more mature and featureful product. Some of its features that greatly appealed to me were:

  • Ability to record in MPEG2 DVD format with hardware MPEG2 capture card
  • Versatile client/server setup, permitting TV to be watched, recorded, and played back from various computers on the network (also permitting scattering of video capture cards around the network)
  • Many record options, including nice conflict management/resolution screens
  • User-friendly, intuitive interface
  • No monthly costs
  • Modules to play and rip DVDs, play games on TV via a NES/SNES/whatever emulator, view current weather conditions, etc.
  • Customizable record formats
  • Others too…

So, I’ve ordered the MythTV hardware… more on that next time. I’ll be posting my MythTV experiences here.

Virginia Law Accidentally Gives People Weekends off

Society

Check out CNN.com – Working for the weekend? – Jul 1, 2004. I’ve just got to ask — what’s so bad about letting people have either Saturday or Sunday off, and 24 consecutive hours off in a week? I think we need to all step back and ask whether the 24/7 lifestyle is really a good thing overall. I think it’s not. And living in a small town where most places are closed on Sunday (and a fair number on Saturday too), I can say that it is easily managable and works just fine.

FDR\’s unfinished revolution

Politics, Society

Salon has an article titled FDR’s unfinished revolution detailing FDR’s proposal for a second bill of rights that, more or less, never happened. There’s also some speculation on what would happen should Bush be re-elected: striking down the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, right to privacy, Roe vs. Wade, affirmative action, etc. Salon also has an excerpt of the book that prompted that article.

An AdSense Experiment

Online Life, The ChangeLog

Dan was telling me a month or two ago that he’s using Google AdSense on his blog. Now that I’m actually doing this regularly, I figured I’d try it out, and while I’m at it, on a few parts of my other sites.

I’m highly curious what sort of ads it will dish up. There isn’t exactly a massive market for products related to developing Russian languages patches for FreeCiv, for instance. Initial results are not all that positive, but we’ll see. It may be a very short-lived experiment :-)

This is presently deployed here on The ChangeLog, on the directory indices on the HTML-to-Gopher gateway on quux.org, and the message pages of the list archives on lists.complete.org.

On the monetary side, running all this costs me about $600 per year. While I would be quite surprised if AdSense brings in that much, maybe it would at least bring in enough to pay for some more disk space for the Gopher server…

I’ll keep you updated.

Dubyaspeak

Humor, Politics

Found a cool site today: DubyaSpeak.Com. Lost of quotes from the guy that a few million people voted for. I especially like the Dubya Quiz, where you’re presented with several questions. Each question has two options, representing quotes from George W. Bush and Dan Quayle. You have to pick the one from Dubya. It’s tought than you may think — I only got 50% right my first try.

I found it linked to from a site that provides fortune files of Dubyaspeak for your enjoyment.