Are there PVRs that link to free TV listings and have no monthly fees?

December 10, 2003 4:30 PM

If I don't want to pay a monthly fee for a PVR service or build one from scratch are there any pre-built PVRs that link to free services for TV listings.
posted by davidwg to Technology (14 answers total)

The Telly looks pretty nice. It's a bit on the pricey side, but it's damn nice.
posted by willnot at 4:34 PM on December 10, 2003

Buy a lifetime subscription to Tivo for 299 bucks. It's cheaper than building it yourself, and less of a hassle of using some no-name PVR. And if you get DirecTV, you can get a DirecTivo for 99 bucks.
posted by SweetJesus at 4:42 PM on December 10, 2003

And, since this thread will probably attract people who are into this kind of stuff, does anybody have any recommendations for building a home media server that can provide access to 100s of ripped DVDs?

I figure that for the 200+ DVDs I currently have, I'm looking at needing at least 2 terabytes of storage. I know I could get the storage requirements smaller with Divx; or something like that, but I'm afraid I would lose features and menuing and the like.

I know about Kaleidescape, but that seems really costly, plus I don't think you can strip out all of the studios' anti-consumer you must watch these previews BS with something like that.

I'd love to be able to strip out all of that stuff and have clean lovely DVD images stored on hard drive(s) and available at a moments notices. Anybody have any thoughts on how to do that as cheaply as possible?
posted by willnot at 4:48 PM on December 10, 2003

Buy a small form factor PC (or use an old PC), then go to snapstream.com and buy their software + video capture card + remote control bundle (I think it's under two hundred bucks). There are no fees ever after you get the software and hardware setup and it records TV nicely.
posted by mathowie at 5:00 PM on December 10, 2003

I'm looking at needing at least 2 terabytes of storage

Then you're also going to be needing a big check book.

An uncle of mine knows most of the people who wrote the software code for Tivo, and one of them managed to hook his Tivo up to a terabyte of RAID storage. Of course, once he did that, it took 20 minutes to scan the hard drives to build a program list.

If you're really serious about doing that, get a MythTV box together. It's going to cost you thousands and thousands of dollars for equipment, the software code isn't really ready for prime-time use yet, and it will be a tremendous bitch to configure and manage, but it's your best bet.
posted by SweetJesus at 5:00 PM on December 10, 2003

I could have sworn that within the last few days I read that the TiVo lifetime subscription thingy disallows getting anything more than a three day schedule. I thought I read it on a Gizmodo link but I can't find it. Can anyone confirm this?
posted by anathema at 5:09 PM on December 10, 2003

Buy a small form factor PC (or use an old PC), then go to snapstream.com and buy their software + video capture card + remote control bundle (I think it's under two hundred bucks). There are no fees ever after you get the software and hardware setup and it records TV nicely.

With that thing running on XP, the big question is "is it stable?". I've got an XP box that reboots itself three to four times a week. I'd probably get frustrated pretty quickly my PRV missed shows because of the stability of the operating system.
posted by SweetJesus at 5:09 PM on December 10, 2003

I've got an XP box that reboots itself three to four times a week

eek. I've never had stability problems with either win2k or xp on my machines I've built. Sounds like you have some major probs either with hardware. My xp box has been rock solid, staying up for months without a reboot.
posted by mathowie at 5:15 PM on December 10, 2003

anathema - I believe you're thinking about the free Tivo Basic service that comes with their PVR/DVD hyprids [Details].

I read about it on a blog that had comments which lets out Gizmodo. I thought Matt's PVRBlot, but I'm far from sure.
posted by willnot at 5:19 PM on December 10, 2003

davidwg : a similar question it was asked on slashdot. Maybe you'll find something helpful over there.

Personally, I have on my computer a Hauppauge PVR-250 card and use TitanTV which works well with the scheduler - that's my Tivo.
posted by MzB at 6:42 PM on December 10, 2003

There's also the Freevo project, and a few others -- I think if you search on "open source pvr" you'll get some hits. Search on "XMLTV" while you're at it--this is a project to scrape web-based TV listings and generate XML that the Tivo knockoffs can use.
posted by adamrice at 7:33 AM on December 11, 2003

I second the original question; I'd like to take the PVR home to Europe where there is no PVR service of any kind and I don't want it to be tied to a US-centric service. I am perfectly fine with doing my own screen-scraping and producing XMLTV files, I'd just like a hackable/configurable machine that can deal with that --just not that good/patient with hardware.

The Telly is close, but frankly it's ugly. From the /. thread it looks like it's using a CoolMaster HTPC case, which although is pretty sleek-looking, still needs internal fans. I hate fans. Now, if there was a similar project based on something like this I'd give them my $1000 in a minute... Anybody know of anything like that?
posted by costas at 8:50 AM on December 11, 2003

Matt had an interesting entry about this on his PVR blog. The KnoppMyth looks like a quick and easy one to test out.. I've also had some OK luck with myHTPC which runs on windows.
posted by TNLNYC at 12:18 PM on December 11, 2003

My Time Warner system (and many others) offer a cable box with PVR functionality for only another 5 or 10 bucks a month. Totally worth it. Not as slick as Tivo, but no add'l hardware cost and a pretty cheap recurring one.
posted by anildash at 12:26 AM on December 12, 2003