Re: making an OpenBSD TiVo

[Jacob Meuser <jakemsr_(_at_)_jakemsr_(_dot_)_com>]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 11:07:46PM -0400, Cory C. Albrecht wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I just got a friends old computer after they got a new one, and I 
> thought I'd make an OpenBSD version of a TiVo. A quick google didn't 
> turn up anything except for some stuff about cross-compiling on OpenBSD 
> for a real TiVo, nor even any messages archived on Neohapsis or monkeys 
> about it.
> 
> So, I was wondering if anybody here has tried this and could give me 
> some advice. Things like what TV/video-in cards to avoid or a brand 
> that works especially well with OpenBSD, software to (not) use, etc...

you should read bktr(4).

stay away from the WinTV GO card currently on the market, there was a
discussion about this on tech@; the conclusion is this card will not be
supported.

ffmpeg would be my first choice, but I can't get any decent output,
it looks really blocky, even with "high quality" turned on.  It does
record/encode in "real time" on my machine though.

xawtv can't record audio.  I capture with xawtv (RIFF AVI/noaudio/MPEG),
and get sound with sox.  multiplex it back together with mplex.  I
haven't tried automating this yet.

perhaps you can look in the freebsd-multimedia_(_at_)_freebsd_(_dot_)_org archives for
more ideas.  the bktr driver isn't too different across the BSDs.

-- 
<jakemsr_(_at_)_jakemsr_(_dot_)_com>