[SGVLUG] Especially for Mike

[Claude Felizardo]

On 3/6/06, Michael Proctor-Smith <mproctor13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/6/06, Dustin Laurence <dustin at dogbert.laurences.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 04:11:43PM -0800, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> > > On 3/6/06, Dustin Laurence <dustin at dogbert.laurences.net> wrote:
> >
> > > > Somehow this cartoon made me think of Mike, our resident MythTV expert:
> > > >
> > > > http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/nodwick/ffn/ffn085.htm
> > >
> > > Dustin I out grew my two Tivo setup long ago but I am the guy that my
> > > friends come to when they want to upgrade there Tivos. The fact that
> > > there is a kernel hack out there to allow greater then 134GB disks did
> > > kind of make me thing about a 1TB tivo or maybe a 2TB tivo with that
> > > crazy four disk hack. But the 50Mhz process makes indexing that big a
> > > database way to slow I hear.

The newer TiVo's have a different CPU architecture and I'm pretty sure
are running faster.  My original Series 1 with a 50 MHz PPC was
noticeably slower after I replaced the original 30 GB with an 80 GB. 
Don't recall what's in the series 2 units but they are faster.

The problem with adding larger disks is that the TiVo database is like
512 MB so every user-interface operation hits the hard disk which is
usually bogged down streaming video.  It's even slower if it had
recently downloaded the latest TV program guide data and was indexing
up to 12+ days of data searching for season passes, wish lists, etc. 
The 3rd party fix is a write-through cache that intercepts all access
to the database.  More info here:  http://9thtee.com/tivocachecard.htm


> > You realize it was the idea of "largest repository of mpeg-encoded data
> > in the Western hemisphere" in his living room line that made me think of
> > your TV-watching addiction, not a technical feasibility study. :-)
> >
> > Dustin, who doesn't have any other TV-addicted friends to send it to

I guess you missed my hacking TiVo presentation I gave at SGVLUG a few
years ago.  Since then we've added two of the newer models and was up
to 300 GB (including OS and swap) until we gave the hacked one to my
mother-in-law so we are down to just two non hacked Series 2 models
with 80 and 140 GB respectively.

My mother-in-law doesn't have internet access much less a working
computer so she's not able to use most of the hacks but she can use
the TiVo with only a half hour's worth of instruction.  It just works
for her.  I only had to go back to hook up her DVD player.

With 2 kids and a wife to contend with, I prefer the flexibility of
networked TiVo's.   The kids have pretty much taken over the older one
while my wife and I use the newer one with the larger disk.   We can
watch two previously recorded shows at the same time while recording
two other shows and possibly one or more video transfers taking place
between the units or with other computers in the house.  All w/o
voiding any warranties, no hacking required.  it just works.

Rather than trying to schedule down time for a TiVo box and risk
turning it into a boat anchor, I use Galleon which is available on
sourceforge and uses Tivo's Home Media Engine.  Written in Java, it
can run on either Windoze or Linux which I obviously prefer.  it uses
the TV/TiVo has a multi-media front end.  I can view photos and listen
to mp3s stored on server, check the weather or traffic reports, read
RSS news feeds, listen to streaming radio, podcasts, itunes, etc.  I
can transfer not just TV recordings but mpegs I created myself or
downloaded from the net.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/galleon
http://galleon.tv/content/view/94/53/

> It made be think that I need more harddrives as right now I only have
> 246GB of available storage for MythTV.

Looks like I've got the following on the file server:

16G     /export/shared/music
9.4G    /export/shared/pictures
48G     /export/shared/TiVo

That's 16 GB of mostly MP3; 9 GB of photos of the kids, vacations,
etc.; and 48 GB of video that were either recorded by one of the three
TiVo's, stuff downloaded from the internet or converted quicktime
movies that the digital camera takes.

Hmm, that's on a 200 GB partition which is 50% full so I guess I've
got nearly 400 GB for TiVo not including external drives.  Actually,
the storage on the file server is not directly available to TiVo w/o
me manually moving files but Galleon does let you set up rules to copy
files automatically.

claude