

DIY TV: Any hackers care to make it happen? - ErrantX
http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2009/05/diy-television/

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keefe
Check out MythTV <http://www.mythtv.org/> an open source, linux based DVR -
this will do all of the low level nonsense for you. I suspect this does what
you want - you can record the things you like and play them back. Now, I don't
think you will have fancy channels etc so there will be some manual work, but
most of the functionality is there. There's a whole community that talks about
setting up HTPCs and once you have this open source stuff setup, you can then
extend it to do what you like.

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ErrantX
Actually I do use MythTV - and it is from it in part that the idea was born.
Doing it manually (as I have been doing a little) is just too time consuming
and complicated.

As you say it can be done in part by extending and rewriting existing DVR
software - but to do it _properly_ you need licenses with content providers
etc. to provide on-demand content with which to build your channels.

It's a good niche for a startup I reckon (rather than just clone Hulu)

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keefe
It's certainly an interesting idea that is related to the sea change in how
people interact with media that has been ongoing for the last half a decade or
so. As far as getting something for your own purposes, I think building
something on top of MythTV is probably fastest - avoids the annoying
reinventing the wheel stuff. I have shied (sp?) away from video work because
it is inherently computationally and bandwidth expensive - so most of my
personal work has focused on text based stuff, which is much cheaper to make
scalable (:

