My recent article on using an old computer as a music jukebox can be extended very easily to make the computer a replacement for a Video Cassette Recorder (VCR). If you can plug in a PCI card then this should be simple. This type of setup is referred to as a Digital Video Recorder (DVR).

The computer based DVR can be vastly superior to your old VHS recorder in both functionality and picture quality.

I use a single tuner DVICO Fusion HDTV DVB-T Plus television card. There are many brands and models to choose from, including dual tuner models and hybrid analogue/digital models. The computer will need access to an aerial, but as it also needs to be near the TV this should not be a problem.

An important issue here is getting the picture out to a TV there is no point recording TV programs if you are unable to play them back on anything bigger than a computer monitor. You can convert the recorded program to MPEG 2 and then burn to a DVD disc for playback, but that process is time consuming, tedious and wastes blank discs.

Most video cards these days have a SVHS (4 pin) output or Composite (yellow) output. Modern LCD TVs have VGA input that enables them to function as computer monitors. There are so many combinations of chipset, software and cables that it would take a big article to try and explain every option. For ATI and Nvidia cards the trick is often as simple as going into the video properties and ticking TV out.

Remember that the Internet is your source of help; a quick search will often track down a HOWTO that directly relates to your setup.

If you use an older TV you can still set the output to 1024 x 768 and it will function correctly. The icons and text will be fuzzy, but the video playback will be better than normal analogue TV. In this scenario you will need a separate monitor for controlling the computer as you will be unable to set the recorder if you cannot read the text on the screen. If you are fortunate enough to have an LCD TV, just plug it in as the monitor. The TV manual will usually have instructions, first check the resolutions supported and the refresh rate should not be set higher than 60 Hz. The manual supplied with your video card will often have a section on using TV out. Have a go, if you can get a good picture then the rest is easy.

Modern TV cards use the DVB-T digital TV standard, and most support high definition TV as well. It is better to record Standard Definition Digital TV as recording can use enormous amounts of hard drive space. An hour of Standard Definition Digital TV can use two gigabytes of space. High Definition can go as high as ten gigabytes per hour. Now if you are using a powerful computer and the TV software supports it, you may be able to record directly to MPEG 4 or Windows Media, the computer converts the TV stream on the fly, and thus the recordings are much smaller. However, if your computer cannot keep up, you can end up with audio sync problems. A bit of experimenting is required to find your "Goldilocks" (just right) settings.

Windows FAT32 file system has a limit on file sizes of 4 GB. The software and drivers supplied by the TV card manufacturer should break up the recordings to sidestep this issue, but beware, you could end up with an unreadable recording. Windows users should use the NTFS file system to avoid this issue. Linux users have a 16 GB limit under the ext3 file system, so this should not be a problem.

We are not trying to build a Windows MCE system. The object of the exercise is simplicity. Linux has the mighty MythTV2 and Freevo', but again these require enormous amounts of time and effort to setup. If you want to build your own computer driven set top box and digital video recorder you will need a twin tuner card and a very good computer, lots of money and time.

For our project the software supplied with the card and a single tuner should be ample. If I want to watch TV, then I watch the TV — not the computer! I only use the computer as a recorder. TV cards come with remote controls and software to watch and record TV. They all have the ability to schedule recordings. Of course the computer has to be left on for the duration of the recording. Turn off the monitor when not in use, to save those greenhouse gases. The supplied software can usually be set to shut down the computer after recording.

I use Kubuntu Linux4 as my multimedia operating system. The drivers for the DVICO card are built in to the system. I added Kaffeine media player from the Ubuntu repositories. It is possible to also make the remote function under Linux, but I generally set the timer and go on to something else, so the remote is superfluous. Kaffeine finds Melbourne's Digital stations with a quick scan and has all the normal recording functionality. You will need to add some codecs to the base Kubuntu to allow the decoding of the DVB-T stream. A codec is software that encodes or decodes media. The simplest way to add the required codecs is through Automatix3. Use Ubuntu Edgy for the simplest detection and use of TV cards. There are some issues with the latest Ubuntu — Feisty, requiring manual tweaking of module loading.

Remember to delete programs after you have watched them, you can fill up a hard disc in no time. It is worth learning how to re-encode saved video as MPEG4 for anything you want to keep. MPEG4 files can be crunched to a quarter of the size of the original and still be a good quality.
 

About the Author
Greg Eden is a long time Melbourne PC User Group Member and mad DVR builder.

Reprinted from the July 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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