TiVo died....now what?

[jabster]

Hi.

So my TiVo died last night, and I'm debating buying a new one (~$200) or building a slightly more expensive Myth box.

I already have an OpenElec machine next to the TV, but it doesn't seem like there's an easy way to set that to be the front end for MythTV, so I am planning on building a combined front/backend machine for now.

I am looking at this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883220628
Asus VivoPC, Celeron 1007U, 4G RAM.
I will wipe the thing and install Arch Linux with MythTV.

Is that thing even remotely capable of recording two shows and playing back a recorded show at the same time?

Content will be HD OTA, using a HD HomeRun Plus tuner.

Or, can someone recommend something? While I've seen hardware requirements, I have not seen much specifically for a combined front/rearend box.

Based on this "A Pentium Celeron 600 MHz with a Hauppauge PVR-150 can record and playback MPEG-2 material simultaneously" I think that box will be ok.

Thanks,
John

[stuartm]

That particular quote, about the Celeron 600Mhz, I believe predates the arrival of High Definition. That's not to say that MPEG2 encoded HD requires a lot of CPU, it doesn't, certainly not compared to H.264 encoded HD used for broadcast outside North America or with Blu-ray discs. I can't really comment on the suitably of the CPU you've selected as I'm out of touch with these things but you might want to consider a system which supports GPU decoding of video as this both reduces the CPU requires and additionally improves the quality of the video and the On-Screen Display. Nvidia GPUs are the best bet for this support on linux (VDPAU), but both Intel (VAAPI) and AMD have support in some of their hardware. The MythTV wiki should tell you more.

[p8zmyth]

lol, yeah i would say Asus VivoPC, Celeron 1007U, 4G RAM
is maybe a bit dated (as in old).
If you are going to install mythtv you might want to go for a newer system
at least you won't regret the extra power depending on your finances.
Mythtv does more that just record and play back television as well.

[diyhouse]

John,.. Just to give you another point of view,.. check out my comments on this thread

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=369

A MythTV box,.. FE/BE,.. will give you a great solution,.. and a good bit of personnel satisfaction,.. as well as something better than a TiVo,.. ( which is saying something IMHO).

Don't expect all the bells a whistles from day 1,.. it takes a little time to get into things and configure them to your own personnel taste, but the basic core functionality works out the box,.. in my experience when installed from mythBuntu,.. you can install other flavours,.. but they take a little extra care 'n' config.

Happy building/configing

[johalareewi]

My Tivo (original UK series 1) is dying.
I have built a Mythbuntu/MythTV backend system (SD freeview only) using some spare bits I had lying around.
It sits in the home office (it is too noisy for the lounge).
The MythTV backend is setup for UPNP and my Panasonic Smart TV can play recordings directly from the backend.

I can SSH/VNC to the backend server and fire up mythtv frontend to schedule recordings etc. (this is not 100% ideal though).

[diyhouse]

To reduce noise signature,.. look at the Noctua range of heatsinks I used one in my system,.. and the processor barely gets warm,...

The fans tick over in near silence,.. yes if you put your ear next to the case of the PC you can hear the fan,.. but with the TV sound playing a nominal volume,.. even quite passages,.. it does NOT have to compete with the CPU fan,...

BTW my FE/BE system lives under the TV in the front room,... I plan one day to move the BE,.. out of sight to the loft,.. but that's another day..

check out,.. to get and idea:-
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/12/ ... KQ-LiusUXs

they do a range to suit different processors,.. I use mine on an I5,.. as I said,.. and it barely get above 35degrees C.

Also checkout mythWeb interface,.. I use it all the time to schedule and check what going on with the BE.... it's so simple!.....

[johalareewi]

Update:
New frontend setup running nicely on Pi2 with Openelec + Kodi and the mythtv.pvr plugin.
It is super quiet
Using an MCE USB remote but can also use the TV remote via Panasonic Viera link and the Kodi CEC adaptor.

Can also use mythweb to download recordings to a USB3 stick for offline playback when out and about.

My Tivo is now officially retired.

[kdrescher]

Late to the party, but in case it's helpful to someone.

I'm running a VivoPC VM40B, current versions are faster.

Small, quiet, and you can plug a huge internal hard drive.

I use it as a backend, though it's got the FE installed and that works just fine.

Tuner is HDHR. The box handles two recording streams + one stream to my FE* + transcode simultaneously.

*One caveat, I'm recording OTA, channels are a mix of 720p and 1080. My TV is older and 720p, so I transcode everything down to 720p.

The box does not appear to be particularly taxed by these. I've considered just moving it to the LR using as combined BE/FE and getting rid of the dedicated FE.

[jkeiper]

kdrescher, I have a question for you.

I just received a VivoPC VM40B as part of an eBay mixup (sent this instead of a chromebox), and I want to get it working via 1080p HDMI. The OSD flows much better on the VM40B than on my RPi2 (using OpenELEC 5.95.3 on both) but VAAPI causes flickering (possibly the Intel 29/59 bug). Running the VM40B on a VGA monitor, I have no problems, but I have to disable hardware decoding on HDMI, and then I get buffering issues / high CPU load.

How did you achieve acceptable live TV with the VM40B? I use HDHR as well, MPEG2 content, routed through a MythTV backend server on a dual band gigabit router.