My First Week with STeVo (aka Home Theater PC [HTPC])
Last week I finally completed building my
STeVo. You ask, "What is
STeVo?" Well,
STeVo is the name
my lovely wife Catherine has given to my
homebrew TiVo project -- aka
PVR (personal video recorder), DVR (digital video recorder) or Home Theater PC (HTPC).
Overall the system is working quite well. However, I still need to do some minor tweaks. Yet I wanted to express a few of my initial observations and install notes for those of you interested in building one these boxes yourself.
Initial hardware build
After the parts arrived (I ordered most via Amazon and its partners); I thought the actual assembly of the system was going to be the most daunting phase of the build. For the most part this was because it was also going to be my first complete PC build. I have in the past assembled various hardware components, but never an end-to-end construction.
However, my anxiety was quickly put to rest because it seems that today's standards-based PC components are exceedingly easy to assemble -- the process reminded me of those "snap-together" plastic model kits I had as a kid.
All told, it took me roughly two hours to assemble the hardware. The process probably could have been much quicker, but I was double-checking my work and re-reading the manuals all along the way to insure I was still on the right track.
Once assembled, the real test was whether the system would boot.
I plugged in the power supply, hit the power button, and watched for any pre-boot errors ... everything looked and sounded good!
I then dropped
KnoppMyth into the CD-ROM drive, which is an amazing MythTV
? auto-boot install CD-ROM that's based on the
Knoppix Bootable Debian Linux ISO distribution. The beauty of KnoppMyth
? is that it's specifically designed to install all the software and many of the driver requirements for
MythTV
To a large degree, the KnoppMyth
? auto-install script found and configured much of the MythTV
? software for my specific hardware setup.
There were however, some difficult moments.
In general, it's very important to read through as many of the manuals, HOWTO's, FAQ, README's and
forum postings related to MythTV
? and KnoppMyth
? as you can find.
I should mention that the great people who have donated their time to KnoppMyth
? and MythTV
? have done an admirable job documenting the vast array of components and modules that make of the MythTV
? suite -- and all of this during exceedingly rapid development periods. Amazing!
The downside is that the documentation is scattered, which means you'll need to search for it, but in most cases, you'll find an answer to your problems via the Forums, Mailing Lists or Google.
The first problem I encountered was that my TV listings were not getting populated into the database. This of course prevented me from recording anything. There was a quick fix posted to the KnoppMyth
? forums for
XML TV, which I'm sure will get added to the next release.
After successfully applying the
XML TV fix I found that I could only tune-in channels 5 and 6. In addition, I was not getting any sound.
Ugh!
I remembered seeing a post about the
sound problem in the forums. After a few reboots, and driver updates, I was able to get the sound working.
However, I was still stuck with only channels 5 and 6, which proved to be a bit trickier to fix.
I played around with the mythtv-setup and finally found a solution by setting the cable provider channel frequency settings from us-cable to us-cable-hrc. I really don't know why this worked. I suppose it has to do with Comcast Cable's channel frequencies, but I was just happy that it worked!
The next problem was that the PVR-250's gray remote wasn't working. Fixing this required
updating ivtv drivers.
Finally, after a quick reboot, I was watching TV via MythTV
?, changing channels via the remote, scheduling and recording programs like a TV geek.
STeVo Lives!
MythTV? Usage
Even though MythTV
? is still considered "beta" software, the interface is actually quite polished. However, I wasn't crazy about the default theme that comes with MythTV
?. So I upgraded the default team to the clean looking
Visor Theme, which worked well on our aging analog TV.
The TV interface is simple enough -- especially if you're familiar with Digital Cable or DirectTV
?. I haven't been able to figure out how to jump from the program guide to live TV, but I think I just haven't found the right key on the remote.
Pausing live TV is a great feature. However, I'm trying to only watch recorded programs so that we have the added benefit of using the commercial skip feature as well, which, if like me you're looking to "optimize you're TV viewing", will cut roughly 15 minutes out of each hour of TV you watch!
MythMusic? Usage
MythMusic
? is also great since the audio on the sTeVo box is running through our stereo. In addition, since Samba is included with KnoppMyth
? install, I was able to mount our Windows file share and play our music collection via the MythMusic
? interface.
The weakness of MythMusic
? however, is that the interface is a bit clunky -- especially if you have a rather large music collection. I found that scrolling through the library and selecting track folders via the remote was rather laborious. I suppose I could organize the files into sub-categories by genre to cut down on the scrolling a bit, but I'm thinking of importing our pre-existing playlists into the MythMusic
? database instead.
MythWeb?
MythWeb
? is the web-based interface to the MythTV
? program guide. For me, it is my preferred method of setting up shows to record and for searching through listings. Truly a nice add-on to the MythTV
? experience! I cant' wait to see this grow with perhaps Music streaming et al.
MythGame?
I made a few feeble attempts to get MythGames
? working using a few MAME ROM's I had on an older system, but I haven't been able to get working just yet. I would certainly like to get this module working, because in addition to XMAME, the module will play, NES, SNES and Linux-based PC games, but it hasn't been a top priority. Perhaps I'll wait to the next release before I tackle this in more detail.
MythWeather?
Since this winter we've had some bitterly cold weather in the NYC area, I've found that I often check the MythWeather
? module for updates sporadically during the day. I wish however that there was a way to jump directly to the module via the remote, which paused your current function (e.g. Recorded Program to Weather or MythMusic
? to Weather).
MythNews?
MythNews
? is a simple RSS aggregator for the MythTV
? interface. It's a nice little add-on, but not really that useful in its current state. For example, it doesn't include links or rather there is not way to link off a feed item. I suppose there might be some integration with MythBrower
?, but I haven't tried that yet.
In regard to the other MythTV
? modules like, MythGallery
?, MythVideo
? and MythDVD
?, I haven't really testing them in any capacity to comment. I am however eager to connect MythGallery
? to our considerable large digital picture collection.
Initial Conclusion
We've been using the "sTeVo" for a little over a week and generally speaking I think Catherine and I are watching less TV and listening to more music. This was certainly a goal. Yet, it is hard to kick the live TV habit and focus on "time-shifting" your personalized prime-time entertainment. There's definitely a little more pre-planning and upfront time commitment, but as time progresses our library of options will also expand and I'm sure we'll be in a situation with more "personalized" entertainment that we have time watch. This will especially be the case in about a month ;-)
In addition, I can definitely see a behavioral trend starting to happen. For example, Catherine mentioned to me that she was looking for the "skip" button while watching a program on our convention TV setup. Hey, it's a start ;-)
A negative however is that building your own Home Theater PC (HTPC) certainly isn't as easy as simply purchasing a
TiVo. Even the upfront cost of rolling-your-own is more and that's excluding all of the time I spent building and configuration the sTeVo.
However, in comparison to
TiVo, I have estimated that I will make good on my sTeVo investment in less than two years. This is based on $299 for the
TiVo hardware, plus $99 for the Home Media Option and $12.95/month service fee.
Of course since my Home Theater PC (aka sTeVo) is all based on commodity hardware and great open source software, I feel that my options going forward are simply less limiting than with Tivo.
For example, I can easily archive videos to DVD and/or SVCD by using the included burning software. In addition, if I ever wanted to start recording HDTV, all I need is an additional tuner card that's capable of decoding a HDTV signal (perhaps an additional hard drive too).
Most importantly the OS is based on the very friendly Debian Linux Distribution, which gives me the option to use the system for an almost limitless array of other tasks and services (depending on available CPU cycles ;-)
Am I trying to justify my purchase and time investment? Yeah, sure, but not that much.