Wow! This just in from Matt Haughey PVR Blog about satellite television service VOOM‘s new HD DVR with networking that will allow home users to view content from any monitor in their house via a thin client.

The Satellite Guys have a demo video online from the recent CEDIA EXPO, which they describe as perhaps the “most powerful DVR ever”.

Ok, I’ll hold off on that description because you can do much of this now with MythTV, but the VOOM DVR is certainly woth a look once it comes out officially.

Today, there was a /. post about a new MythTV plug-in called Torrentocracy that extends the included MythNews RSS Aggregator to support RSS Enclosures and Bit Torrent.

Torrentocracy is not the first to mesh RSS Enclosures, Bit Torrent and PVRs.

In fact, NewsGator released NewsGator Media Center Edition back in April and two weeks ago, Ray Slakinski’s Nucleus application, which can be used in a similar way on just about any environment.

I’ll definitely give Torrentocracy a test on my STeVo. However, what I’ve been thinking about is the next iteration of these tools…

An Australian company is selling pre-built MythTV-based PVRs for 1,799 AUD (~$1,345.50 USD) (via Boing Boing)

Although the price is roughly twice what it cost me to build my own MythTV box, I think this is a good trend.

There’s some excellent threads regarding this box on /. and the Myth-Users mailing list.

I’ve got to try WinMyth on my Laptop. It’s simply a .Net-based Windows front end for MythTV.

And now with spring approaching, we can watch our Stevo outside!

However, I suppose I could simply re-boot with KnoppMyth, but since I run XP as my primary OS on my laptop, I’m hoping it will be simpler with WinMyth.

Note: WinMyth requires the dsMyth, which contains the DirectShow filters that enables playback of MythTV .nuv files on windows. (Also very cool!)

I was just looking for an RSS feed for the mythtv-users mailing list and I stumbled across David Jeske post regarding an “experimental archive browse/search software” that he co-developed with Brandon Long.

In addition to search and threaded views of posts, their tool also includes RSS feeds in many flavors … although the feeds only include summaries and there’s no Atom feed yet, but suffice it to say, I like this trend.

I learned via PVRBlog about Andrew Grumet’s proposal to the TiVo and DIY PVR communities regarding sharing your recordings among friends via RSS — in essence, Andrew’s idea is an application of social networking, but perhaps you’re best served by reading through Andrew’s proposal.

Here are a few choice quotes:

“Today my TiVo is networked and programmable. Do-it-yourself PVRs are on the rise, and we know that the open source ones like MythTV are programmable. Perhaps some of the commercial ones are too. So maybe it’s time for us to flex some programmer muscle and code up our PVRs to leverage the power of the Net. We ought to at least be able to add the ability to share our great taste with friends. But probably a lot more.”

This time by IBM luminary Sam Ruby. The post details the start of his experience building a dedicated MythTV box based on Debian, but the wisdom will eventually…

“… be automated, published, and shared.”

“But, first I have to get it working repeatably…”

We expect nothing less from you Sam ;-)

It sounds like Tom Walsh over at Newsforge and I share many of the same first experiences and conclusions in regard to building and using a Home Theater PC (HTPC) based on MythTV.

Tom Walsh writes: “Would I say that anyone could put together their own PVR? No! It takes a level of competency and comfort with Linux to attempt such an undertaking. You need a good deal of patience with often time-confusing documentation. But if you persist, ask questions of those in IRC, and purchase high-end hardware, I am confident that you too will be satisfied with your results.”

Last week I finally completed building my Home Theater PC (HTPC) — aka PVR (personal video recorder), DVR (digital video recorder), homebrew-TiVo or what my wife Catherine lovingly calls STeVo ;-)

On my Wiki I put together some of my initial observations and install notes for those of you interested in building one these boxes yourself [more here]

Since the hardware is now on order, I suppose I have committed myself to building what Catherine has branded “STeVo“, which is my feeble attempt at a constructing a homebrew PVR (personal video recorder).

Wish me luck!