[geeks] Re: [rescue] (no subject)

[joshua d boyd]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 07:41:07PM -0400, Brian Hechinger wrote:
> > There are two problems with that plan.  First, there is the issue of
> > listings.  The second is the issue of quality.  The TiVo uses some
> > seriously nice hardware chips for doing it's video work.  Getting good
> > decoding hardware, isn't hard, but encoding hardware tends to be
> > expensive.
> 
> ok, we are WAY out of my realm here, but what about a SunBlade 100?  does
> one of them have enough power, or could have a nice enough PCI card put
> in it to work?

First, dedicated MPEG2 hardware will always be better.  Such cards do
exist in the PCI form factor, and could probably be convinced to work
(worst case, pick a card that has linux drivers and port them).  The LML33
might be just the card for the task (but it is a $300 card if I remeber
correctly).

What is the noise output from a SB100 (shouldn't have moved lists now that
we are finally back on topic...)?  Does it have fans (downside usually)?

> > the living room.  Bleh. Now, maybe an FDDI based video distribution system
> > would be cool.  Stream video from netapp to TiVo, and vice versa.
> 
> this was my backup plan.  those TiVo boxes with networking, can they use the
> network for storage (NFS or something)?  or is that just an effort to turn
> yet another box into a "regular" Linux machine?

Well, some people want just another regular linux box.  A lot of people
are exploring other options, but if it is ethernet over ISA, then you will
never get decent results playing video from NFS.  At this point I think
the main goal is backup/loading of video (download show from net, load to
TiVo, then watch in entertainment center, etc), and to see what else they
can tinker with.
 
> if so, is that a possability?  *my* thought was to build an imbedded device
> with IDE on one side and FastE or FDDI on the other end.  emulate an IDE
> drive and store everything on an NFS server.  now THAT would rule.

NFS masquerading as IDE?  Bleh.  Better to just make an ethernet that
connects to IDE, and hack the OS to understand things and play video over
NFS.  This assumes that there isn't a way to hack in PCI.  I rather
suspect that PCI is already there, but a quick look at a boot log will
confirm/deny that.
 
> 4TB TiVo anyone? :)

Err, if going such extremes, it really should be a SAN for multiple TiVos.
This implies networking the TiVos so that they can coordinate with each
other.  Other wise, you would have 4TB, but you would only be able to
watch/record 1 or 2 things at a time.  Again, this should either be an
IDE->FC card (treat IDE as bus, not FC pretending to be an IDE drive), or
a PCI slot.

OK, so about the PCI in a TiVo.  It might not be there after all. I was
thinking that it might be used to connect the devices on the mobo, but it
looks like I might be wrong.  Oddly enough, there is a PCI slot, but it is
only a PCI connector.  It runs a proprietary protocol.  I suspect that it
might be fast enough though.  The question would be how to connect a high
speed card to it.  They had to reverse engineer this bus and use a logic
chip to translate back and forth from ISA.

For more details see: http://samba.org/tridge/tivo-ethernet/

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
http://www.cs.millersville.edu/~jdboyd/