Good Friends and Good Times

You know everything is alright in the world when you can call up a few friends you haven't talked to in months, meet up for a beer and have a great time. Beer, Wings, Laughs... fantastic!

My favorite watering hole is called BW3... well.. it used to be called BW3. Now its called Buffalo Wild Wings. I've been going with these guys for more years than I care to say. Though over the last few years its been pretty seldom (maybe twice a year). Tonight was a great night!

Only in Minnesota

You gotta love Minnesota weather. Yesterday it was over 70 degrees and extremely humid. This was followed by a couple of inches of rain over night. Within 24 hours, we've got 35 degrees (with only 40 for a high) and snow flurries. It was in the 80s over the weekend and is likely to be in the mid-70s early next week. Yesterday I drove to work with the A/C on and drove home with the heat on. The weather in Minnesota is rarely boring. :-)

I saw this quote the other day

"See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay..." Federic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

Good food for thought....

GB-PVR is Awesome!!!

I'm up and running with GB-PVR and its working very nicely. I installed SageTV and it might have better "TV Guide Searching" capability than GB-PVR, but... I couldn't get my remote to work with it (Hauppauge) yet so I stopped messing around with it. I will try it again, but...

I found a huge "Impress the Wife" feature. It may have won her over to funding a new PC dedicated to being a PVR. I downloaded the Weather plugin (Very nice features, but it seems buggy and when it errors out it takes away all keyboard input from GB-PVR until I restart the GUI). But, the key thing was I downloaded the "My Pictures" plugin. It will do a random slideshow of all the pictures in your picture library (a set of folders you've told GB-PVR about). I combined that with the "Music Library" feature and had a nice slideshow of our pictures with Moby playing through the TV's surround sound audio. It was VERY slick. That plus all the obvious other features might have just won the day for the homebuilt PVR!

1st Phase of PVR DONE!!!!

I installed my Hauppauge PVR-150 last night. I was all excited. I'd waited all day to do it. Wife was going out for the night so as soon the kids were in bed I cracked open the case! The card itself was as simple as any other PCI card to install. I'm attempting to run it on our "family PC" for now. I want to make sure it works, see if I like it and if my family will like it, then build a PC specifically for it.

So... I connected the cable to the tuner card and put the covers back on and hit the power switch and.... NOTHING. It was dead!

I guess powering it down for the first time in weeks and adding another PCI card to the mix was enough to push the (cheap) power supply over the edge. So... when my wife got home I had to explain to her why she wouldn't be able to use the PC. :-(

Today I swung past CompUSA (that place drives me nuts, but that's another topic for another day) and picked up a new power supply. Once I installed that... I was in business!!!

I installed the software that came with the Hauppauge and then installed GB-PVR. GB-PVR worked VERY well. The remote that came with the Hauppauge worked well with it two (once I fugured out that I had to plug in the IR reciever)

The UI seems a little sluggish... not sure if that's my hardware (Duron 1.2GHz) or GB-PVR's fault. The CPU meter doesn't seem to be pegged at all, but I don't think its always very accurate. Still despite being a little sluggish... it is VERY usable and within minutes I had my TV Guide loaded and was recording shows and pausing "Live TV." About the only thing missing now is audio cables needed for playback on the TV. The sound (for now) comes from the PC's speakers.

I recorded a show for my wife and then she watched it, instantly skipping over commercials (not using the "commercial skip" plugin, but just jumping in 60 sec intervals).

I'll probably try BeyondTV and SageTV at somepoint, but... I'm so impressed with GB-PVR right now I think it'll probably be what I stay with.

First Step Taken toward my own PVR!

I've taken the first (and most important) step in building my own PVR. CompUSA was running a sale the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150 for $60.00. So... I picked one up. Haven't had a chance to install it yet and I'll write more after I do. I've decided to pass on the idea of setting up a MythTV/Linux based box - from what I've read it looks like I'd need to be more comfortable with Linux than I am (or have TONS of time). I'm going to go the Windows route with GB-PVR (maybe try Beyond-TV or Sage too). First step is to see how it all works just on the PC. Then I'll move to running it through the TV. Baby steps...

Thinking of Building my PVR

I've been thinking about building my own PVR (personal video recorder). I don't have Tivo, but I've seen how it works and I think it would be fantastic to have. I'm reluctant to buy a Tivo for several reasons: A) The monthly fee you have to pay, B) Their control over how you skip commercials C) Their data collection of what you watch.

So combine those three issues with my natural tendency to tinker with all things technical and I've a sincere interest in building my own PVR.

I'm interested in MythTV (a Linux based PVR). Building one of those looks really nice. With the KnoppMyth (Knoppix + MythTV) it looks like its fairly straight forward. But, this IS Linux we're talking about and I'm a little concerned that it might take more time than I've got. I'm not much of a Linux user yet Plus, using Linux there's NO chance in using any of the software that would come bundled with the TV Capture card itself (though... truth be told.. its probably not that good anyway).

The other option would be to buld a Windows based PVR. (not a "Media Center" PC though.. that again looks like too many limitations to me) [Sidebar - one of the problems with commercial media tools is that they seem to not be build with 100% of the user's needs in mind, but instead seem to cater to the interests of the media companies. Its understandable, but its NOT what I want.] BeyondTV (with Beyond Media) looks very interesting, but its kinda pricey.

GB-PVR looks very promising as well. Its priced right (Free) and includes most of the functionality of MythTV (they look very similiar).

My thinking is to give KnoppMyth a try, then GB-PVR and fall back with BeyondTV if I have too.

First things first, I have to convince my wife that we "need" a PVR... :-)

I'll post details about my PVR experience when (er.. maybe if) I start...

I'm back

Well... after three months off I'm back to blogging with Blogger. I've decided to make this blog not about developement. I'll still be posting technical topics (hey.... I am a geek after all), but I'll also be posting other topics of interest.

You can find my professional/development related blogs at: http://www.jroller.com/page/GearDaddie