Gen over at PVRBlog pointed me to an excellent Slashdot thread that’s talking about building a homebrew digital video recorder on a budget, which is very timely for me.

In fact, I just updated my wiki with a rough spec for my own PVR. Now I need to refine and price out the equipment because I think I’m already over budget.

Matt Haughey’s PVRBlog gives some more insight about Comcast’s new PVR box:

“Comcast was testing the PVR waters, but it looks like the rollout will soon be going full-force.”

Brandon has assembled a comprehensive Linux Home Theater PC HOWTO, which is definitely worth a read if you’re planning on building your own Homebrew TiVo-like device.

Joe Stump over on the O’Reilly DevCenter puts together a well-rounded overview of The State of Home-Brew Personal Video Recorders on Linux (Think: Open Source TiVo). The article also includes a good threaded discussion as well. Well worth a read.

Incidentally, I’ve decided to investigate putting together my own PVR. I was inspired mainly by a recent InfoWorld article on the savings you can expect by build your own systems.

I’ve set my budget to be about $400 and so far I’m leaning toward using MythTV and ideally the KnoppMyth Bootable CD MythTV Install to make things easy, which is based on the amazing Knoppix Live CD Debian Distro.

I’ve even started a Wiki Space to collect my notes and research. I’ll probably document my progress there as well.

Matt Haughey of PVRBlog has an extensive review of SnapStream Personal Video Station 3.0:

“Would I trade a TiVo for a small PC running Snapstream? After playing with it for a few weeks, I’d have to say it is certainly possible. A home theater PC can do more than a TiVo (play videos, any audio format, photos, show the web on your TV, etc), and this package certainly covers the TV recording features that TiVo pioneered.”

“If my reviews carried ratings, SnapStream’s software would get nearly a 100% score for the low cost, loads of features, and easy video sharing, with the non-PC platform sharing being my only criticism.”

Good stuff!

Dyne:bolic is another bootable Linux distro that’s focused on “Media” application. However what makes this one special, in addition to the multimedia applications, is that it will boot on a PC or an XBox (yes, XBox!).

It’s not quite an Open Source version of the Tivo software on a bootable CD, but it’s getting there. (link via /.)

Catherine sent me a link to this report about TiVo in the NY Times, which I’m sure is making waves with privacy advocates…

“TiVo, the maker of digital video recorders, plans today to begin selling information about the viewing patterns of its customers to advertisers and programmers. The company says the reports offer far more precise data than traditional rating methods.

Because TiVo’s are essentially computer hard drives connected to a central server, the company can monitor viewers’ second-by-second behavior. It can tell how many viewers in a certain ZIP code clicked away at what moment in a commercial, for instance, or when a particular character appeared on a show.

However…

” The information will be gathered in aggregate and filtered through a third party, Mr. Yudkovitz said, so that the habits of individual users will remain anonymous.“

And…

” Less than a million households currently own a TiVo, so the data may have limited value for immediate decision-making. But the reports, which Tivo plans to publish quarterly, may give the industry a sense of the changes it is facing…”

Like the fact that…

” …54 percent of the total audience was skipping commercials….”

Which will …

“… dramatically alter the way advertisers deliver their message and programmers determine their programming.”

And I hope will reduce media spam, but that could be too much to hope for ;-)

I think it’s safe to assume that Brad Choate really-really likes his TiVo. However, he has made some interesting points about TiVo’s future uses:

“I also expect that we’ll be using the TV for video e-mail and home-to-home video conferencing. That’s a killer application waiting to happen. Something that would drive a market to broadband faster than Superman puts on his tights.”

“Project Dreamix will turn the Microsoft Xbox into the ultimate home entertainment center” (via SlashDot)

“[TiVo] was surprised by the popularity of 802.11b wireless-based home networks and decided that the best way for TiVo subscribers to access and share digital content was to simply piggyback on wireless networks”