build a PVR using Mac Mini and EyeTV

Well I wouldn’t say my solution is the ultimate PVR, but it works for me.

I’ve got EyeTV for DTT to record stuff off TV. Elgato’s Frontrow UI clone works nicely, although I miss the ability to autostart (instead of frontrow) it if EyeTV was in the foreground.

I have a 160GB USB2 hard drive to store my video, music and pictures.

I use a DVI-I cable to connect to my TV. I’m still using miniphones to RCA cable (Red and White) to pipe the audio to the HiFi, I tried using the digital out on the mac, but couldn’t get it to work (faulty cable?).

I rip my DVDs using handbrake, but to be honest I still use the stand alone DVD player a lot.

The main thing that I like about my PVR is that it does the job I needed it to do record TV programmes.

It works pretty well for TV, very good picture, and the Miglia TVMini is very good at picking up channels, a lot better than my proper Freeview box. The TV Guide information system in EyeTV isn’t fantastic, the grid view is a bit too cluttered and not as nice to look at as DigiGuide is (but that’s windows only). tvtv.co.uk has TV guide information which I’m using (you get a year free when you install EyeTV) and you can schedule recordings from the web.

Although I’m going to list a lot of annoyances below, it’s still a worthwhile project, and only took me an evening to get it all setup.

A couple of problems/annoyances I’ve found:

• There isn’t a Front Row interface to EyeTV (or any TV software)
• The IR receiver for the Miglia TVMini is on the stick, not through the Mac Mini’s dedicated IR port
• The TV Guide system is horrible to look at and small programs don’t get a description
• There’s no ‘tooltips’ on the TV guide grid view

yup, I actually did this ages ago, but forgot to mark it as completed. I managed it with an eyetv 200, and it works reasonably well, although I think I’d be better off if I added more ram to the mac mini, because it struggles just a little bit sometimes (mind you, I do insist on running the eyetv at the highest quality settings). I even played around with cytv a bit, which rocks.

the mac mini is now going on to the big computer home in the sky (ie. my father), so I’m eagerly awaiting another, perhaps more integrated solution directly from apple… ;-)

...and under the rocket’s red glow, something gave way in this aging behemoth of a monitor that’s been serving as a television.

It was the Fourth of July, and I thought it would be clever to let iTunes do its visualizer thing for my guests. But when I wasn’t looking, the screen darkened - for good, I’m afraid - and a high-pitched whine could be heard emanating from the back vents.

So, this was just the excuse I needed to get CyTV really working for me. After some initial success with that application, it had become apparent that my wireless throughput to the distant corners of the apartment was not sufficient to maintain a steady stream—at least not to my Apple Powerbook.

Iperf indicated that I was getting less than 5Mbits to the Powerbook, and about 14Mbits to my Fujitsu Lifebook—both cards and the router support 802.11G, it should be noted. Relocating to a less crowded channel (I live downtown and register around a dozen networks), I was able to get the Powerbook up to something like 12Mbits. Not great, but workable. Could probably do better if I turned off WEP.

I was still getting better throughput on the windows notebook. The trouble is, there’s no client for windows, and though CyTV is happy to serve up a live stream to clients of any platform, it makes no provision for selecting and serving saved recordings, let alone transcoding.

I’m happy to say that as of this morning, that’s solved. I made some mods to the CyTV webserver (written in python!) so that it will produce a VLC-friendly M3U list of all its recorded goods, along with simple web form interface to toggle transcoding options. I celebrated by watching Chirac give his Bastille interview to TV5- recorded 5 a.m. this morning - streamed from the mini at home to my desk at work. Vive la République! Vive l’Open Source!

I didn’t know it existed when I started assembling the components—but CyTV is turning out to be a major component in my homebrew PVR.

CyTV acts as a streaming server for EyeTV. Using CyTV, I can stream video to my laptop, using CyTV/VLC as a viewer. Result: I can now watch EyeTV from the bedroom on my laptop, as well as in the living room where the Mini/EyeTV unit are set up.

A box containing irTrans arrived from Germany yesterday (Thank you, Marcus Müller!) so I set about teaching irTrans/iRed the various codes to change the channels on the digital cable box. That accomplished, I am now working on a program which parses the XML files that EyeTV uses to store scheduling information. The program will notify iRed (via Applescript) to change the channel on the digital cable box just before EyeTV starts recording.

First business of the day is partitioning the hard drive and reinstalling—I’m not a fan of monolithic partitions. Once that’s out of the way, I will look into transferring the EyeTV from the PowerBook to the Mac Mini.

The pieces are beginning to fall into place. I received my EyeTV 200 unit yesterday, and the MacMini and iTrans are on the way. In the meantime, I connected the EyeTV to my PowerBook. Until iTrans arrives, I have to change the channels myself—digital cable.

Still, I was able to record french TV news from TV5 last night. It played at 1 a.m. local time, and I watched it when I woke up around 5 this morning. I’ve scheduled a couple of movies from IFC to be recorded today.

Googling “EyeToy 200” only turned up the 43Things page—is “EyeToy” an alias for “EyeTV”?

What are people doing to handle interfacing with digital cable? It seems like the irTrans gets better reviews than the ZephIR.