Been chatting with my friend Dan about my upcoming purchase of a Hauppauge DEC 3000-S USB Satellite decoder. We were uncertain about the lack of an hardware encoder for recording until we realised that Digital Video Broadcasts (DVBs) are encoded in MPEG II in the first place.
I got to thinking about what it is that I want in a PVR beyond what is currently available and the major one is being able to view one channel while another is being recorded. This is something that is available with the current analogue technology VCR and television as they each have their own hardware to decode the signal and either display or record it.
Ideally I would like a modular PVR being able to plug in additional receiving/decoding units, so that I can view/record across as many channels as I have decoding units.
Of course there are practical design problems, it would be possible to overwhelm both the CPU and the filing system with the amount of data being written. Within those practical limitations I would love to be able to record 3 or 4 channels at a time.
I suppose the next thing I need to do is look at what can be cobbled together now with available technologies. The easiest thing to prove the concept will be to use two USB compatible decoders. Next will be to sort out drivers and software capable of dealing with two separate streams. I think that I'll probably have to start with MythTV and carry on from there. I know that the Hauppauge software won't cope.
Anyone reading this with ideas, I would appreciate your feedback.
2 comments:
PVR's - yum - gotta look into this myself. My head has been turned by the potential of an eyetv or two and the new Apple MacMini - suitably up-specced with a larger hard drive - small form factor, easy to use OS - seems a potential winner: http://www.elgato.com/ and
http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/
Of course this still does not compare too favourably on price/effort when going head to head with the simple solution of typing "Tivo" into http://www.ebay.co.uk :-)
Yes, but as a true geek, it's much more fun to roll your own.
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