Topic: Personnal Video Recorder For Xbox! (Read 533 times)

splash911 · « **on:** July 16, 2004, 09:29:00 PM »

Project : Personnal Video Recorder (PVR)

First, sorry for my poor english.

What is it? It is a box which makes it possible to record television live. You can PAUSE, move back a few minutes, jump commercial breaks and especially, record live TV. It is already sold on high-end systems. Rather than a video tape recorder, the data is recorded on the hard disk (buffer memory).

Goals : Integrated a software solution into XBMC and in Xbox to allow these functionalities of interactive television. From the material point of view, two solutions are considered at present, see below.

Required Functionnalities + Importance degree :
PAUSE (CRITICAL)
Fast rewind (5 secs-1 min)          (CRITICAL)
Jumb back (up to 30 min) (HIGH)
Skip commercials break (LOW)
Record Live TV (CRITICAL)
Encode video data to Xvid or Divx (MEDIUM)
Audio encoding to mp3 (MEDIUM)
Integrated to XBMC as iTV                 (HIGH)
PC free            (MEDIUM, high difficulty)
Remote Channel Selection                (HIGH)
Nice apperance       (MEDIUM)

What are the current solutions ?

1- The XBOX is connected on the LAN. The coaxial entry of television is connected on an apparatus which will seek the frequency band of the necessary station (selected remotely), digitizes it and transmits it out on UDP package on the LAN. The XBOX, via XBMC, will be able to activate and close this numerisator, to choose the station to be listened, to read the stream and to display it. XBMC and its new module iTV, to be conceived thereafter, will manage all the functionalities to be established.

2- To replace the numerisator by a software on a PC (on the same LAN as Xbox) which will take the acquisition of the video chart and to send it over the LAN stream.

What is the schedule ?
For the moment, the startup of the project depends on its popularity. I will wait until the end August to recruit people and to possibly be able to test project 2 (simple). Once this stage reached, if the request for a numerisator is large, I will try to seek if this product exists, how much it costs, and how to integrate this solution into our project.

Briefly :
Jully- August: - Startup of the project
       - Training of the team
       - design Beginning of the software and analyzes feasibility of the various options
       - Test of option 2

September   - Seek and design the numerisator for the solution #1
      - Improvement of the software, addition of functionality
      - Recording optimization (encoding of quality and effective)

October-December ? - Dependently of the difficulty of buying, of assembling, or of designing the numerisator, evaluation of advance.
          - Xbox Software (via XBMC) and PC (releases)

Due date : 31 december 2004 or before!

Actual Team

Xlash (Splash911 on X-S) - Network & Hardware & Electronic & Telecommunications
Shadownet - Software & Data acquisition

This project raises great challenges which we will not be able to take up alone. If you are interested by this project, a part, or that you know what already exists, we await your collaboration for finally supplementing the center of entertainment which Xbox occupies in a family room! We don't have any Xbox software development yet, but we will need any help as offered.

Official forum is in french on XBOXSTYLE.com. An active subject will be on Gueux.NET, and on Xbox-scene.com

Thanks to the Xbox Scene, and sorry for my poor english!

This post has been edited by splash911: Jul 17 2004, 04:30 AM <

bx2a5z · « **Reply #1 on:** July 16, 2004, 10:16:00 PM »

That certainly sounds like an interesting (and difficult) idea. I'd help you out if I had the talents you guys have, but obviously I don't.

(Oh, and BTW, no need to apologize for your English. It's more understandable than a lot of native English speakers around here!

) <

splash911 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 16, 2004, 10:46:00 PM »

The difference is surely because I'm trying harder!

Thanks for your support, we will wait to get enough developper (as needed) and to see if the project is interesting enough for you guys.

C ya <

UnLckyN · « **Reply #3 on:** July 16, 2004, 10:46:00 PM »

Good luck Ive been hopeing someone would make a pvr

drRAVALOT · « **Reply #4 on:** July 17, 2004, 07:42:00 AM »

wait a sec.....so u mean this is going 2 be a program....... that i can put on my box so i can save tv shows and crapp..... my friend has a tevo thing and it can use xbmc to watch tv shows....then i just save them on my hd ...then ftp and burn them on a dvd so i can watch them on any dvd player....it would be sweet if u can just get a program on xbox 2 save all that shit...because yea......i dont wanna buy a tevo <

splash911 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 17, 2004, 08:16:00 AM »

It won't be just a TiVo. If the project kicks off well and enough people and developpers are interested, it could be a stand alone project, PC free. You would have to plug the TV cable (coaxial RF modulated) into a "digitalisor" which would transform it into stream packet on a LAN. <

Lukenatme · « **Reply #6 on:** July 17, 2004, 09:42:00 AM »

Best of luck. <

RcbUK · « **Reply #7 on:** July 17, 2004, 12:28:00 PM »

Good luck, sounds very good

drRAVALOT · « **Reply #8 on:** July 17, 2004, 10:26:00 PM »

DUDE THIS IDEA = one of the best.... ! lets get crackin! but because i suck at this shit....lol ...b

i love going on xbox scene on my xbox lol w00t!thanks 2 linksboks! <

wolf202 · « **Reply #9 on:** July 17, 2004, 10:41:00 PM »

record live tv

best of luckbe the first in line to test and dl this thingy

lol

splash911 · « **Reply #10 on:** July 18, 2004, 01:25:00 PM »

NEWS.

Gamester17 from XBMC will put me in contact with Friendtech. They will surely be of great help to engineer a stand-alone little box which let you replace your VCR by your new XBOX ;-)

Here's his answer on XBMC forum :

splash911 · « **Reply #11 on:** July 18, 2004, 01:00:00 PM »

gronne · « **Reply #12 on:** July 19, 2004, 07:58:00 PM »

This sounds very interesting. I know they spoke about similar stuffs more than a year ago, but, if I remember correctly, they didn't think it would be possible because the xbox wouldn't be able to process that much information real-time. I don't know if that would apply to your project, since you seem to have thought about most parts, but I'd advice you to check that up, so you don't do hard work if it's not possible. But I believe and hope you guys will pull it through because I've been stunned about what the xbox can achieve before. <

splash911 · « **Reply #13 on:** July 19, 2004, 08:50:00 PM »

I didn't here about that, but I must disagree. I own a P3 450 mhz, and I can stream live TV pretty well. The only thing may be the amount of ram limiting the options of buffering (number of channel, rewind, and recording(simultaneous encoding). We will be sure to try with a PC streaming the data before going into hardware engineering!

Thanks for your intersest, stay tuned <

geniusalz · « **Reply #14 on:** July 19, 2004, 11:22:00 PM »

Can one of those USB AV capture devices be used instead of a 'numerisator'?

I don't exactly know how one works, but it can be bought for less than $100. If that is cheaper than what the 'numerisator' will cost, then obviously it is the better choice.

It might require more processing on the xbox's part, so might not work.

But anyway, here's one I found:

Author Topic: Personnal Video Recorder For Xbox! (Read 533 times)