Art's PVR Project

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Adventures in Building a Personal Video Recorder

I have always been interested in Linux but have not spent much time with it. In late 2007 a friend (Dan O'Brien) suggested that I build a Linux-based PVR (personal video recorder) out of an old PC. I started researching this possibility on the internet and discovered lots of people doing it! My excitement level increased and I embarked on this project. Well, after months I'm getting to the home stretch, except that I have made one giant compromise: To speed up this project, I held my nose and plunked down $177 (Office Depot with coupon) for Windows XP Home Full. Basically I just don't have the time to wrestle with all the drivers needed. Besides, $177 is small compared to the total cost of this project, which is going to exceed $800 by the time I'm done.

Warning: Stop reading here if computer stuff bores you...

3/21/2008

First I found a used PC on Craig's List, which had a motherboard and processor that I liked: Asus P5P800-VM with Intel Pentium D dual core processor running at 2.8 GHz. $150. The motherboard has 3 PCI and 1 AGP expansion slots.

Next I ordered a new case. My wife gave strict orders: No PC in the family room, which I understood to really mean, No ugly looking computer tower. I ordered the Silverstone LC-17B in black, which is horizontal, brushed aluminum, and looks like a high-end stereo receiver. When completed, it will go in the cabinet holding the rack of components we already have: Surround sound receiver, DVD player, FiOS box, VCR. This case is $130 via TigerDirect.

Maxtor 320 GB internal hard drive: $78
LG DVD R/W optical drive with Lightscribe: $40
Corsair 1 GB DDR 400 MHz RAM: $60
Cisco 802.11g wireless LAN PCI card: $40
PCTV HD PCI video capture and TV tuner card: $60
Dell 15-inch LCD VGA monitor (used): $120

I reused the 250W power supply from the used PC. Since I'm hearing the 5 internal fans slow down when the optical drive spins up, I may wind up upgrading to something beefier. Oh, with the horizontal layout of this case, one of the power supply cables would not reach its socket on the motherboard, so I bought an extension cord at a local computer repair shop for $4. He had several in stock, so this must be a common problem. He didn't have enough power pigtails to let me hook up all my fans, so I had to resort to wire splicing and the soldering iron!

I may or may not need the monitor in the long run. But for now, I need it to get the system running. Maybe it will be useful in the future to operate the applications via the 15-inch monitor without disturbing the programming visibility on the 46-inch TV screen. Or maybe I can use the picture-in-picture, or... Part of the fun is just in experimenting with what is possible.

(Yesterday I sold via Craig's List the original case, without the power supply and motherboard, but with the CD-RW drive, 20GB HDD, and floppy drive for $10.)

Total cost at this time: $850

The PCTV HD PCI card is amazing. As of right now, I can watch over-the-air TV (digital and analog) and record it. Just using rabbit ears at the moment. I am eager to test the video capture from other sources. Also, I'm still not sure if I need or want to add a video graphics card. I think I will eventually, as I would like to record (time shift) stuff to the hard drive and play it back from the hard drive. For that I will need a video card with DVI or HDMI or S-Video output, to feed the big TV. In the meantime, I should be able to burn the programs to DVD+RW and play them in the DVD player, which is already hooked to the TV via HDMI cable.

So, next steps in this journey:
Test the video capture capability.
Load the software that came with the optical drive so I can burn DVDs.
Experiment with different formats for saving captured video. (I think it will save in compressed DIVX / AVI, which my DVD player can play.)
Record a bunch of VHS tapes to DVD. (Reclaim storage space.)
Hook the output of the FiOS box to the PC. See if I can capture from movie channels.
Explore the free on-line TV guide that came with the TV tuner card. (Maybe also try the try-for-free guide during the trial period.)
Figure out how the timed recording works (for time shifting).
Buy an inexpensive video card and connect to TV. Try watching internet video on the 46-inch TV.

3/23/2008

Now I have moved the computer to the family room, and inserted it into the entertainment center with the other components. With the black case, it is almost invisible behind the glass door. Here is a photo of what the entertainment rack looks like:

Again, I am currently unsure if I will need the monitor long term, of if I can just use the HDTV. For now, this set up is very convenient. The PS2 mouse and keyboard are also temporary. Eventually I would like to get a wireless RF keyboard and mouse. I kind of visualize myself sitting on the couch and watching You-Tube videos off the web on the big screen. But that's just the start of the possibilities.

To test the capture capability, I quickly hooked the RF output from the Verizon FiOS box to the VCR's RF input. Then I connected the component video/audio output from the VCR to the input of the PVR capture card. This is not the best way to make these connections, as I am giving up picture quality, but I just wanted to see if it would work. And it works great!

I have had no problem at all capturing movies from Showtime and Starz using the software that came with the PCTV HD PCI card. The software allows for programming capture in several resolutions. The "Home Theater" setting is good enough for my purposes at this time. A 2-hour movie saves to a ~3GB AVI format file at this resolution. Once on my hard drive, I can play the file on my TV in three ways with this set up: 1) I can simply copy the file onto a DVD+RW and then play it in my DVD player, which plays DIVX (AVI) files, 2) I can copy the file to a USB flash drive and plug that flash drive into my DVD player (which has a USB port), or 3) I can use software that came with this hardware to transcode the captured file into formal DVD format and burn that to DVD+R or DVD+RW. Even just copying a 3GB file is time consuming, so I have concluded that I will need to add hardware so that I may connect the PVR directly to the HDTV.

Also, I noticed that the PCTV HD PCI card can also put live TV on hold, and then resume. This might be very handy. So far in life I've lived without this, but like anything else, once you've tried it you can't go back. (My wheel mouse is like that!)

So, the following parts are on order from Tiger Direct:

GeForce 5500 128MB AGP w/DVI/TV-OUT: $40 (will be less if I process the rebate)
Cables Unlimited 6' Digital A/V HDMI to DVI Cable: $25
Power Up 400 Watt Dual Fan Power Supply: $20

This hardware will allow me to feed high quality video from the PVR to an HDMI input on the HDTV. My plan is to use Input #4 on the Sharp HDTV, which allows for both HDMI for video and RCA connectors for the L/R audio. (See image to the right.)

So far I have $935 invested in this project. I see in Sunday's paper the RF multimedia keyboard and mouse from Microsoft are $30 on sale after rebate. I might pick that up this week, but no hurry. It looks like this project will come in under $1,000. It adds up!

The Asus motherboard in the PVR has 3 PCI and 1 AGP slots. Here is the inventory:
PCI-1 -- Wireless Network Card
PCI-2 -- PCTV HD PCI Card
PCI-3 -- empty
AGP -- GeForce 5500 Card (once it arrives and gets installed).

3/28/2008

My TigerDirect parts arrived yesterday. When I opened up the computer case to replace the power supply, I noticed that I had mis-read the label of my existing unit. It is a 350-watt supply and not the 250-watts I had thought. Therefore, I decided not to bother to install the new 400-watt supply. The graphics card went into the AGP slot easily, without any interferences with the card in the adjacent PCI slot. The GeForce 5500 does not require any power connections, so installation was a snap.

Before powering up, I connected the Dell monitor to the graphic card's VGA port. On power up, it worked just fine, and XP said it found new hardware. I popped the driver CD into the optical drive and ran the install wizards for the drivers and the included display handling applications. Reboot. Then power off. Next I connected my new DVI-to-HDMI cable between the DVI port on the graphics card and the HDMI port (input #4) on the HDTV. Then I connected the audio from the PC to the RCA jacks for the HDTV (input #4). When I powered everything up, boy did stuff start to happen! The video card nVidia software immediately recognized my Sharp HDTV as a wide screen TV, and suggested a choice of appropriate settings. I picked an obvious one and turned my attention to the sound, which was not working. This took some time to diagnose. It turned out there is a set-up option in the HDTV menu that allows for the selection of the RCA inputs for sound instead of directly from the HDMI cable. It took some time for me to find that switch because it was several menu layers deep and not labeled what I expected. However, like anything, once you figure it out, it seems obvious.

At this point I have two screens: the 15-inch VGA monitor and the 46-inch HDTV. The nVidia card allows for multiple modes of operation with two screens. Each can be set to its own resolution, aspect ratio, etc. I'm driving the HDTV with a 1080p signal. In my current set-up, the HDTV is acting as a kind of slave monitor. I control computer functions from the small monitor, and display the results on the big screen. The nVidia hardware/software is smart enough to know that when you launch video programming in a small menu-laden window on the PC, all you want to see on the HDTV is full screen video. I find that amazing! In other words, if I launch my web browser (using Mozilla's Firefox), and go to a web site that embeds Windows Media Player inside its page, and play a video, I see a You-Tube looking screen on the small monitor, and nothing but the full-screen video on the big monitor -- and it all just happens automatically whenever it detects video. However, it does not work with You-Tube. (At this point I do not know why.) However it works great with this web site showing movie trailers: Video Detective.

My next challenge will be to figure out a way to connect my FiOS box directly to my Pinnacle capture card, instead of looping through the VCR's RF input or the Pinnacle RF input. The FiOS box has an un-used S-video out port, but when I tried it there was video but no sound. Need to tinker...

4/12/2008

OK, over the past week or so I have been using the capture card to convert old VHS tapes to AVI files. And I have run into a glitch: Overheating. Despite all the fans, the front of the case is as hot as a McDonalds cup of coffee! Since it didn't overheat until I inserted the video display card, I took this first step: Using the nVidia Control Panel software, I turned off the large HD display. This brought the temperature way down! Stands to reason that it takes a lot of computing power to drive a 1080i display. Today I decided to improve airflow around the display card by putting the empty PCI slot next to the fan on the AGP video display card. I reassembled the PC and turned the HD display back on. We'll see in a couple of hours if temperature is under control. If not, I may have to buy one of those coolers that fits into a PCI slot and exhausts hot air out the back. Either that or upgrade to a more expensive and beefy display card that has massive cooling built in. Oh, the rebate center informed me my $20 rebate on the display card has been processed and I should receive a check in 8 weeks. That brings my final cost on this nVidia display card $20.

I took some photos to show how this all looks on the displays. The first photo shows a movie trailer (Animal House) being played in Windows Media Player. Note that the video card has the built-in smarts to only show on the HDTV the content and not the menu, icons, windows, etc. In this mode the nVidia Control Panel display settings are in "Dual Mode" which is different than "Clone Mode" or "Extend Mode" or a few other modes:

Here is the Video Detective web site referenced above, with a movie trailer playing. Again, note that only the content is shown on the big screen:

This is what is displayed when nothing is playing. My Windows Desktop "wall paper" (a photo of my daughter) is displayed on both monitors. Only the small monitor shows the desktop icons, windows, etc.

This photo shows an AVI movie being played with the popular VLC Media Player (freeware):

To be continued...