Cable TV + Mac + Firewire == HD-PVR
With all the hype surrounding appleTV I’ve started to rethink the whole PVR vs. TV-media client tradeoff. I have a server at home, a bulky black box with 2×250GB hard disks that I use for storage and backups. I’ve recently considered turning it into a PVR or a TV-serving media server, but the lack of good HD options has stopped me from doing so. I have an HDTV, and I pay for HD cable. Naturally, I want an end-to-end HD solution. I could purchase and install a tuner in the server (which runs Ubuntu, by the way), such as the pcHDTV550 that’s guaranteed to run on linux — but it only takes analog inputs (coaxial and s-video) and only decodes ATSC, which is already exported via firewire by the cable tuner. When I thought about it, I noted that all I really want to do was capture the video stream.
After a little research, I found that any Firewire-equipped Mac can be made into an HD-PVR for unencrypted content at the expense of an appropriate firewire cable. Apple even provides the necessary capture software that you need, provided that you know where to look.