WholeHome

LOTS of recent news relating to the copying of DVDs.

If you havn’t been watching, lets go through a brief history and some of the semantics:

Nearly as quickly as DVDs were released, there were countless software packages that would allow you to make a copy of your DVD for “archival purposes”. I remember seeing the shelves full of at least 30 different packages. The industry (specifically led by the MPAA - more on that in a minute) responded with a specific copy protection involving “CSS encryption” and even mroe importantly, they pioneered through the courts a bill that made breaking that encryption illegal. The laws have actually been a bit vague and subject to interpretation, but while making a personal backup copy is not explicitly illegal, breaking the precious CSS is.

MPAA - the motion picture association of america is an organization set up for the studios to “collaborate” - originally the primary use was for ratings (self regulation and governmental compliance) but over the last 10 years it has become an organization primarily focused with content protection. The major studios all contribute and the big expendature now is on lawyers. They made some HUGE advances in copy protection and more importantly in influencing legislation.

They are, in fact, the source of all the hype about copy protection. Are movies stolen? yes, absolutely they are. From pirated physical DVDs sold usually out of developing countries and New York Street corners to digital downloads via peer-to-peer networking, literally thousands of copies of media change hands regularly. I’ve been in countless Chinese malls with stores specializing in pirated movies, music, and software. But should it be the number one international issue? The last few WTO and international head of state visits particularly between the US and China/India/Indonesia have focused on “digital rights infringement”. It seems it has become the biggest topic, ousting even human rights, poverty, and cooperative medical issues. If there were ever a clearer picture of politicians in the pocket of an industry it woul dbe this one. When the large releases approach $100M of revenue on the opening weekend alone, it is hypocritical to whine about the thousand copies of a film that leaked out  and are causing irreprable harm to the industry - huh?

Should people copy and share movies? No, of course not, but this issue stands directly in the way of what people “really want” in a digital home… That is instant access to their entire movie collection. Without the ability to rip a movie and store it on a content server  for instantaneous access, we are all still stuck with running to another room, sorting through DVD/BluRay boxes, and putting it in a player. Crazy. What happened was that the studios realized (late because their normal position is to be behind a trend trying to slow it down) that people wanted instant access to their collection, they immediately decided they needed to find a way to make money EVERY time you pull up a movie to watch it. Buy a DVD and be willing to physically put it in a tray and you have unlimited access but want instant access? They want you to pay every time you push the play button - a new revenue model.

So companies like Kaleidescape and even RealDVD are being put out of business by a combination of progressive court rulings and payoffs to politicians. Your ability to store your collection inside your home and have instant access is definitely on the wane.

What do the studios really want? An air tight copy protection and digital delivery mechanism where all media is centrally stored and it costs YOU real money every time you pick up your remote control.

People understand DVD copy protection and the motivation but the other one slipping into mainstream driven by the MPAA is HDMI. That great cable that allows a single wire to take HD from your source to your nice new HDTV is most definitely a trojan horse. The lie has been spread over and over that it alone produces the best HD video - why? Because it carries a special brand of digital copy protection - it makes sure that both ends - source and TV - are certified and liensed before it puts out any video. And yes both vendors have to pay exhorbitant fees and buy specific licensed chips for use in their systems - huge moneymaker. Will HDMI carry better video? No - Component video is just as good and for whole home video better by leaps and bounds but pressure by the MPAA has forced most BluRay players to reject putting out 1080p video unless it is via an HDMI connection.

Forget about anything else that irritates you, taxes, healthcare, international relations, this has become the biggest example of outright corruption on the part of the government influenced by a company/industry around. Why is it not reported? Who do you think owns the media - see MPAA member list.

I’ll be posting relevant links to news stories - but the one that got me riled up was the conviction of a guy recently for filming a movie - he got a huge fine and 2 years in prison. It was for a movie that made almost $50M on opening weekend. Clearly be brought that studio to its knees. Yep - he was wrong, he did something bad and illegal, but he just got his entire life ruined - yeah and his family too by the big studio mob using the puppet of their bought off courts.

You have been following the new “Build-your-own-DVR” project(s) faithfully, I’m sure, but beyond all the subtle little things you are learning about how to put one of these cool toys together, I’d bet you are wondering where to get all the cool stuff…

Allow me to share some of my favorite online guides and software - I’d even go so far as to say that before taking on any project like this, you should definitely at least browse through all of these places. As always, the full eBook is freely available at http://www.bocsco.com/dvr

BOCS – THE standard for whole-home distribution of your new HTPC solution. (Yes, yes, a shameless plug, and first in the list, but really - it’s COOL)

PreWire Guide – Wanting to put in low voltage A/V wiring for audio/video distribution, understand matrix switchers, or just prepare for the future.

Hardware Guide: For hardware configurations – choosing which processor, motherboard, case, memory, and other accessories, there is no better online source than renethx’s thread on AVSforum. He regularly publishes details and recommendations for low, mid, and high performance systems both Intel and AMD based. That thread is also THE best place to post your chosen configuration for comment and get great hardware tips. Go to the thread, find a post by renethx, and in his signature will be a link to the latest hardware guide.

HDTV tuner and software reviews – Good research site. Hdtvtunerinfo.com

Afterdawn howto guides – hundreds of well done guides on just about any DVD, audio/video, and HTPC topic.

Link list (AVS) of just about anything you will ever need for an HTPC

Powerstrip – a utility to allow custom resolutions to compensate for overscan/underscan and correct strange behavior of video cards.

Karnis’ Custom Resolution Guide for PowerStrip - AVS Forum thread for powerstrip

Reclock – Critical utility that fixes most jitter, audio/video sync issues, and smooths playback of most video files. Excellent.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack – Good core codec pack for your PC

MPEG codec(s) – If your computer does not already have an MPEG2 codec, check the Cyberlink.com website. PowerDVD9 is the latest all-in-one MPEG codec pack – MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, and full BluRay support, but you can get just the MPEG2 codec for ~$20

XVID codec – Really, you need this – Xvid is da bomb…

Ffdshow – codec/filters for playback and decode of virtually any format.

Ffdshow FAQ - AVS Forum ffdshow FAQ thread

Remote Control – THE forum that focuses on jp1 enabled remotes (UEI based) – tools available to customize most remotes with custom codes, macros, and special setups.

Broadcast mapper – planning on putting up an antenna? This site lets you map your location and find out exactly what is available in your area.

Autologin – Running windows XP and want the computer to skip the login screen and boot right into yor DVR program? Here’s how

DVD Ripping – Lots of programs out there, my favorite is DVDFab

TightVNC – free remote control of any PC – from anywhere – in our out of the home.

GSpot - audio/video codec information appliance (show the codec used for a file)
HIP from ByRemote – “Driver” that accepts IR and can translate it to just about any program – VERY handy
TV-Cards.com - information on TV tuner cards & PVR software (6/12/04)
XBMC Media Center – excellent media center/front end (11/25/08)

Titan TV - the most definitive source for what is on TV

SchedulesDirect.com – Online TV schedule EPG source

And - my favorite software packages (See eBook for details):

Boxee - Absolutely THE BEST front end for online media - not a DVR - an Internet connected TV

GB-PVR - a FREE PC-DVR program - excellent stability and features

knoppmyth - for the daring - a linux based PC-DVR package - again - free

More? feel free to send me a note with others I’ve missed (I’m just trying to share the really core-critical ones)

David

As you know, I’m working on a “Build your own DVR” eBook, (www.bocsco.com/dvr) - and I’ve had multiple requests to include MythTV in the discussion. I think it is a bunch of guys who want to be able to say they have a Linux box at home like a friend of mine from my boxing class. So I decided to dive in and put a simple system together for him. I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve not been a big Linux dweeb although I have strong roots in Sun based Unix systems from my days at Texas Instruments. Similar commands, an online support system, and an excellent find of Knoppmyth (a nice combo debian linux distribution with myth-tv) gave me legs.

It really is a beautiful thing in that low memory(512MB), a video card with a hardware encoder, and a really crappy old PC Pentium III 2 (ish) GHz is plenty to get started. Download the free iso from HERE, sign up for schedules direct EPG HERE, burn the iso to a CD and boot from it. Be sure to have your computer all set up before you do - all the memory in you will be adding, the video card and TV tuner card, and any peripherals plugged in. Pretty much, you type knoppmyth at the prompt and the system installs linux and mythtv. There are a few setup options but this video covers most of the basics.

A few suggestions :

• Do not stray from the recommended hardware unless you are ready to dive into linux setup files and know how to run vi. (Don’t know what vi means? - reread this bullet). In fact, I highly recommend using the Hauppauge 350 card as setup becomes automatic
• Get a big hard drive - it will keep you from having to mount new drives and set up remote sharing
• Read the Linux Basics howto on the knoppmyth wiki site - a great primer for getting you around in the command prompt enviornment
• Write down the basic hidden commands - from the GUI, Alt-S reruns setup, Ctrl-Alt-1 gets you a new Xwindow to perform linux commands, ctrl-alt-7 gets you back to the gui.

Me, I had a defective Hauppauge 350 card and spent 3 hours trying to figure out why it was not even recognized by the system - ah, yes, the joys of defective hardware.

So - if youknow linux, this is a great option… If you don’t this will end up being a dead end of frustration for you.

Some tips concerning Hauppauge cards - specifically the internal PCI and PCI-e cards - call it a FAQ for the DIY’er

• Both the Windows Media Center cards and the non-Windows Media center cards will work in Media center, Hauppauge’s own WinTV application, and third party apps like GB-PVR. The main difference is in whether the cards have an IR in/out port or whether they rely on a supplementary system to handle IR
• Drivers are the same whether you use these cards on standard windows or the media center version.
• Make sure you have the “right” drivers - yes this sounds straightforward, but the Hauppauge website is confusing. The 150/250/350 cards are under support - Wintv-pvr NOT the legacy PCI card selection. Those older drivers “kind-of-work” and have really wasted a lot of folks time until they figured out they are not the right ones. A major way to tell is if your recording is taking up HUGE amounts of disk space the internal MPEG encoder is not running and either you have the wrong driver or something is set up wrong.
• Generally, Hauppauge requires you to have the original cd that came with your card even if you download the new driver package from their website - do not lose that cd or you will be ordering another one.
• The 150/250/350 cards will auto recognize under media center once the right drivers are installed - the external HD-PVR is not supported natively under windows media center as a recognized tuner (which makes sense since it is really just a stand alone HD-mpeg encoder) but with third party applications like dblink, you can fool media center into thinking just about anything is a tuner (even the network connected tuners for instance)…
• Except for media center, which handles guide information automatically, you will need to use a converter like mc2xml to grab data off a guide service, convert to a standard xml file, and upload to the PVR software of your choice. This pretty much applies regardless of what software you choose.
• For media center computers (and a number of third party apps) if you are building a custom setup - you will likely need an MPEG decoder. Strangely enough, that is one piece that is still a “must purchase” and a critical part of any system.

More to come

Got something really cool working this weekend that I wanted to share: I can now use my BOCS remote (you know, the one that already controls all your home A/V stuff and works all over your home) to control my lights, drapes, and adjust the temperature in my home.

I’ve always had everything hooked up with X10 controllers (www.x10.com) and activehome running on my home server (so I can control my devices on a schedule, run macros that activate when I get home, and control everything from my phone), but over the weekend, I was able to tie it all into my BOCS remote.

Why? Now I have a SINGLE remote that does everything - all over my home - AND since the range on the BOCS remotes is so much better than what I get on the standard X10 remotes I am in control regardless of where I am at home.  The system is much more reliable since the BOCS remotes know if an RF signal got through and keep trying until it does - so a button press ALWAYS turns my light on - no more hit and miss!!

OK, so I’m a little excited, but this is so easy. Just contact amperordirect.com to get a BOCS-to-X10 interface - all the instructions on how to implement this can be found at www.bocsco.com/x10

And - combined with the new macros available on the remote, you can hit a single button on the remote to fire up the tv, turn down the lights, close the drapes, and start a movie - your significant other will be secretly impressed even while she is rolling her eyes at you - I promise.

D

As you know, we decided to go open source on the firmware - and that is huge for the remotes as this is the only remote on the market with both full IR local (yawn) and TWO-WAY RF capabilites. The BOCS unit itself is a very capable basestation that has routable IR outputs and is all controlled by the 900MHz BOCS remote (repeaters also available) …

So - a customer has already taken us up on this and added full macro capabilites (yeah - just like a Harmony remote) - so now you can program sequences and even completely reprogram the function of the BOCS buttons. More info can be found on the AVSforum thread HERE.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1218246

Programming is very simple - you know you need a new weekend project!

Received new hard drive and memory - as you may have read in my previous post, the PC I chose to use already had a bunch of video cards, a full suite of video playback tools, and a PVR program already installed - along with a sophisticated remote control system. Long story short, that gave me a head-start and also highly complicated things so I decided to start from scratch. More specifically, I want to start from something closer to what you might find stashed in your closet rather than a tricked out video PC…

So, since we are going to work through a variety of operating systems and PVR programs together, I partitioned the new disk into 3  50GB partitions (for various operating systems), and one bog one to store media that they will all share. I downloaded all the drivers for my system from the ASUS website, and proceeded to install WinXP Media Center Edition on the first partition. The beauty here is that Media Center is basically just an application that runs on top of Windows, so to test other PVR programs, we can simply not start that application up. Note that getting a copy of media center is not simple as it is typically only installed as an OEM version by PC companies. So you either need to have a connection or order it online. Good news is that almost every version of Windows 7 comes with media center, but since that old PC in your closet probably has XP on it, we will start there.

A few general rules and things to consider for a media center (or PVR) PC

• You will be dedicating it for entertainment applications so strip it down
• Remove all software that is not critical to entertainment applications - both to save hard drive space and cycles
• Use msconfig (from the run menu) and disable everything that starts that is not critical - get rid of desktop and launch icons
• Consider a low overhead antivirus like AVG
• Make sure you have a good codec pack in place - Google XP essential codec for some good packages
• On top of that make sure you have xvid codecs installed
• Is your hardware adequate? 1GHz per encode or decode stream (less if you use a hardware encode option), an 1GB total memory is recommended
• Is it quiet enough? Fans and hard drives tend to be the loudest things - consider a quieter fan and/or hard drive
• Does it have bright blinky lights on the front that will be distracting when watching a movie?

So - there is an order to things:

1. Double Check BIOS settings to make sure nothing is set up for the PC’s “old life” - CD first boot, HDD Second, on board video activated, not overclocked etc.
2. Is your OS OK? If so, strip it down, if not install the new one now. Consider at least 100-150GB for the primary partition where the media center and or PVR resides for TV recording - some of them prefer to store recordings only on the same drive where the PVR program is running
3. If your on-board video card does not support the outputs you need, consider installing a second one now - make sure that is all up and running before proceeding
4. Install tuner cards and verify they work using the software that came with them
5. Install your PVR program of choice and get it functional - EPG is usually the hardest part, but make sure network connections, radio, proper recording all function
6. Verify video quality of live tv and recordings - different codecs have different performance with various tuner/video card combinations
7. Get Sound working - depending on your setup, spdif/optical is usually the best choice, but if you intend to use the computer for gaming as well, you might need analog 6 channel outputs to your amp (depending on your audio card and drivers and whether they translate everything to spdif or not)
8. Setup the second drive partition as a shared resource and consider installing other Network Attached Storage if your library grows.
9. Install whole-home distribution system like BOCS so every TV in the home can access your new creation

Yes - I’m working on covering all of this in detail in the Build-Your-Own-DVR writeup -

More to Come

I hope to publish the first section of PC-DVR overview this week, but I’m including a bit of a “day-by-day” journal as I think some of the things I run into will benefit others.

I started with an “old PC” I had in my garage - an AMD Athlon 2.2GHz with a NMT… Motherboard in a very nice “square” case that looks like it belongs under a TV. Strangely enough, this one had 3 video cards and 3 audio cards in it (long story but it was an initial demo unit for BOCS) running Windows XP.

First issue I ran into upon booting it up was that only one video card seemed to put anything out and it was not the primary so I could see a cool windows background but didnt have a taskbar, start menu, and when I right clicked and chose properties to bring up the video settings box, it seemed to appear on another display - stalemate - can’t see anything…  I rebooted into bios and noticed the onboard video was disabled - I enabled it and rebooted and then could at least see the primary monitor through the onboard VGA.  IF that hadn’t worked, the right answer would have been to remove all but one video card and start there.

OK - so now everything is working - I left 2 video cards (one onboard and one PCI-E) and 2 audio cards (one onboard and one PCI)… and added the Hauppauge tuner (PVR-350). Interestingly, the PC would not POST - It took three consecutive complete power removals for 30 seconds and then it posted fine.

Installed Hauppauge and GBPVR software and was immediately able to play movies (keyboard control)…

Oh, and don’t repeatedly stick your fingers in an 80mm fan - they have lots of momentum an dcan really slice.

DF

First, lets lay out the goal - Assuming you already have a PC of at least reasonable capability, what is the most cost effective way to convert it into a DVR? Not only is it a great project, you can ditch your cable company DVR or Tivo and save all those monthly fees. Recording shows should not cost you. While you are at it, creating a device that will play all your media files, display your pictures, and stream internet content is a huge bonus.

Good and lofty goals, but easily attainable. To start, though, we need to define some things and explain the different tuners and equipment out there. You will have to decide up front exactly what you want to record, how many independent outputs your system needs, and how you are going to serve it up to the entire home. Luckily, we have a BOCS system at our fingertips to distribute the signals home-wide and allow you to control your new creation even from across the home.

I’m doing a full writeup (with pictures and videos) but here, I’ll give a blow by blow as to the progress of the build and hopefully give some insight into typical problems encountered. So - this is the “diary of the build” - and the writeup will be published seperately - make sense?

DF

EDIT_ good news, the project has started - I’ve got a good portion of the equipment up and running and expect to publish the first section this week!!!

Its been quite an adventure so far, and now that we are up to about 100 pages, it is quite a document. I just finished and published the final core chapter on whole-home-video distribution. If you havn’t yet received a copy, feel free to grab one online at www.bocsco.com/prewire. Leterally hundreds of people have read and provided great suggestions and their own personal stories to go along with the text.

I’m going to take a slight diversion for a bit and do another series focused on building your own DVR - there are some great guides on the internet but I’ve not seen anything that covers the absolute basics for the beginner or shows you how to configure multiple outputs from a single PC.  I’ll do a formal writeup but also do a daily blog update on the progress.

Its going to get bust around here.