Update from 2024: This page is extremely old. MythTV and most of this technology may still technically work, but recording live broadcasts is very difficult today. In the age of streaming, PVR technology is largely irrelevant.

My PVR Today

I’ve been interested in PVRs (personal video recorders) since I was young, back when my parents’ first VCR kept eating my Transformers recordings. I built my first PVR almost eight years ago using an old TV tuner, some early Linux drivers, and a cron job to record TV shows.

Since then I’ve built several PVR systems using MythTV, which was my platform of choice for nearly five years. Most of that experience was on Fedora Core with Hauppauge PVR capture cards.

I’ve since switched to the Rogers Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 PVR. It’s a prebuilt unit and the interface is pretty rough, but it works well with the Rogers digital cable guide.

I’m also using a jailbroken AppleTV for most of my podcast and digital media viewing. It handles 720p (which is my TV’s max) and with XBMC (Xbox Media Center) installed, it’s a solid little media platform.

MythTV

Scientific Atlanta’s Explorer 8000

TiVo

Others

AppleTV