I guess I should put something in this directory after referring to it in the last post. :-)

Digitally time-shifting TV programs has always been a fantasy of mine. Although I don't watch much TV, I've waited for years for the cost of storage and computing power to enable caching of audio/video data for later consumption or redistribution. After all, TV stations are transmitting streams of content right into our homes, and it seems a shame to just drop all that data on the floor, especially when we might like having some of it later. So it was only a matter of time before technology caught up and products starting appearing.

The TiVo and ReplayTV were the first performers in the arena. But, like any true tech geek, I didn't like the closed architecture of these devices. The little time I spend in front of the TV, combined with the low hackability of the devices, destroyed my interest in purchasing one.

PC-based solutions have also been around for a few years, but were generally Windows-based and closed. Then along came MythTV, an Open-Source, Linux-based, network-transparent, kick-ass PVR application. It uses one or more server systems with TV tuner cards that download TV schedules and allow client systems to view live TV or schedule programs to be recorded later. Live TV can be paused, rewound, or commercial-skipped. Recordings can be scheduled by time, channel, show name, or any combination of the three. The number of servers and clients is unlimited, and all client-server communication uses IP. MythTV has everything.

My current setup uses a back-end server (Athlon XP 2600+, Asus A7V8X-X motherboard, 256MB DDR400 memory, 40GB ATA133 hard drive) with a Hauppauge WinTV DBX (model 401) BT878-based tuner in the back room. The front-end system in the front room is an Athlon 1.2Ghz box with cheap components. MythTV records shows (and live TV(!)) in MPEG4 and stores it on the drive, then ships it across the network during viewing. And I must say, the video quality, stability, and user-interface design is top-notch. This is one of the finest pieces of open-source software anywhere.

Next is to set up one of these boxes at a friend's house and hook it up to digital cable—there are MythTV plugins that allow channel-changing on cable TV decoders. Then we can see if it will export recorded programs from his house and import them into my system. That will be the ultimate PVR utopia.