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Introduction What is a PVR / DVR ? DVR stands for Digital Video recorder. A DVR is a unit that can record television programmes using digital media (a hard disk or memory) rather than video tape. PVR stands for Personal Video Recorder. A PVR does the same job as a DVR but has more features such as being able to find programmes for you to record from the day's TV listings. I have a video, why would I need one of these ? Your PVR will not only record a programme when you set it up to record, but can also be programmed to find programmes that you like. You can give it the name of a series and it will record and store all the episodes. You can pick an actor, a director or even a key word like the name of a company or your favourite football team and it will record all the programmes that match your options. How about if you forget to set your recorder to 'tape' that important show ? Lots of these systems can be set by you going to a web page, sending an email or even using your mobile phone! These systems have been worked on by lots of people and expanded with add on modules over the years. As well as recording your TV shows you can now watch DVDs, play music (off CD or mp3 files), play games, check the weather, read your emails, check stock prices, and much much more. I don't think your dusty video will handle all that. What will I need ? There are lots of different systems which will allow you to record. At one end of the scale you have boxed commercial products like Tivo and SkyPlus. These units are ready to be plugged into your TV but will require a subscription and will only be upgraded when the manufacturer decides to make some changes. In the middle you have software which is 'closed source'. This means it is owned, sold and maintained by a company. You install this on your own pc, add a capture card and off you go. At the other end of the scale is 'open source' software. This software is being developed as you read this by thousands of people who are not paid at all for their work. The software will have bugs (some of the programmers refer to these as interesting features) but will have more features and options than any of the other devices. If you go down the software path, you will need to supply your own pc. The type and speed of the pc will depend on the type of software and the type of operating system it uses. If the operating system is Windows then you will need to aim at a pc that runs at over 1GHz and has a fair bit of memory. If you are using a Linux system then it does not need to be this fast (but it helps if it is). You will also need to have a video capture card. This will vary depending again on the software and on what you would like to capture. Why do people write software for free ? They have lots of different reasons. Quite a few people have joined these programming teams so that they could add on a feature or make a change that they were after. They realised that this new feature would be useful to lots of people and they then published it. Other people enjoy programming and use this new and exciting area of programming as a challenge. Remember that these people are working for free. If you are not happy with the features of someone's work then do not nag them with repeated requests. If you want to add something then pick up your coding pencil and write the change yourself. Most projects have mailing lists and forums where the developers discuss changes and updates. Join these before you ask anyone for changes (or for that matter, even if you are a user of the system so you can keep up with changes and add-ons). If you are interested in programming then have a look at our Books page for linux programming books Which system should I use ? How long is a piece of string ?  This depends on what you would like the system to do, and what you would like it to look like. The main two systems we cover here are both Linux systems. MythTV has a nice colourful menu to guide you round the options. It is easy to use and is a very good system. VDR works more on key presses (it has a pop up menu system that comes up over the TV programme rather than a main menu). It does have a more developed system of plugins so it has more features. Lets see what features these software packages have :
(1) Preliminary support for FTA DVB cards |
