Tux on the Telly: An Open DVR Product

By: Brian Proffitt
Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:10:00 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4933/1/

Better Than Just Getting the Remote Control

In a world where hardware vendors erect very stringent walls to protect their precious products from being modified, customized, or otherwise hacked, it is a bit refreshing to hear about a company that wants people to be able to do all of those things to its product.

And the pleasure factor goes way up when you take into account the fact that the product is really, really cool.

Digital video recorders are the big new toy for 2003, at least in US homes. These nifty gadgets fit a nice niche for people who are too busy to actually watch TV when they want to and are also unable to (a) actually program their VCRs or (b) they want to tape far more television than a measly six-hour videotape can hold. The question of whether they might be watching too much television seems beside the point.

Love them or not, DVRs are actually opening up a much larger arena: computer-controlled entertainment centers that can do a lot more than just record shows to a hard drive. This is the territory that Interact-TV's Telly MC1000 is trying to move into--territory that the company hopes to chart with the help of open source development.

Behind the Marketing

Interact-TV is the Westminster, Colorado company that makes the Telly, which can be initially classified as a DVR. But this set-top box has a lot more features than the stock TiVo or ReplayTV units you get from the local electronics store. For instance, the Telly comes equipped with a CDRW/DVD combo drive, a VIA C3 933-Mhz processor, and an operating system that is a direct decendant of Red Hat Linux.

This, along with the ports on the Telly--four USB, one 10/100 Base-T ethernet, one serial, and one parallel, among others--make this sound like a home PC more than a set-top system. But this is the line that the Telly's makers are deliverately straddling with the product, as it also falls into the same category of media PCs that carry Windows XP Media Edition.

Ken Fuhrman, the CEO of Interact-TV, gives the device the market-speak name "home entertainment server," which sounds like a lot of overpromise and potential for underdelivery. Digging more into the guts of this system, though, one finds that the Telly could wear this moniker without a wince of irony.

Because what makes Telly really stand out from its nearest competitors is the concept that Interact-TV wants its customers to be able to upgrade and tweak the system whenever they want. Don't like the stock 80 GB hard drive? Open the system up and pop in a larger drive. No more sneaking around to buy upgrade drives out on eBay and then busting the product warranty.

Want to swap out the CDRW/DVD combo drive for a DVD-R drive? Feel free (though wait a bit until Interact-TV adds the support drivers for such devices in the future).

Oh, and how about those software updates? Just use that Ethernet jack and connect to the Interact-TV servers using the built-in Web interface. In fact, you can use any machine's Web browser to connect to the device and program it remotely.

Network connectivity plays a big part of the Telly's sell--the device uses Samba to connect to Windows-based networks and standard netowrk protocols to connect to everything else. So, what you record can be easily pulled to other machines on the network, or perhaps ripped music uploaded to the device for playback in your home entertainment area.

If there is a down-side to this machine, it could be the current price tag: the device lists for $899 in the US. For roughly 60 hours of recording, this is a bit steep compared to similar products--though the Telly does not include any sort of subscription to access the online programming guide. That is free to Telly users. The fact that the device is essentially open is also a major plus in its favor, given the hassles of dealing with closed systems like TiVo and ReplayTV.

Opening the Box

How open? Besides the hardware swap examples mentioned earlier, the software for this system is pretty open, too, according to Fuhrman. The whole platform was designed with upgradability in mind, he explained, and almost all of the software inside the Telly will be open on at least some level.

"We designed the software for the future decreases in price and the increase in component availablilty," Fuhrman said. With those upgrades will come a stronger need to alter the software to support those devices.

For instance, the Telly needs immediate work to support the "continued addition of SDL interface components," Fuhrman indicated, as well as new support for the upcoming DVD recording features, and the never-ending work on software codecs. To help facilitate this work, Interact-TV hopes to work closely with the open-source community to develop the tools the device needs in the future--tools that will be contributed back to the community.

To that end, Fuhrman explained, "we are starting to formalize our interaction with the open source software communuity.

"We're going to make it easier for developers to access the box," he said, "We're also going to have access to the Interact-TV developers' site."

Some of the software the Telly uses will necessarily be closed, since some device drivers will have licenses that don't allow open access. But, Fuhrman said, "at some level, at least at the APIs, we'll have open programming."

Interact-TV hopes to make a smooth transition to the world of open-source programming, having recruited DejaGNU and Cygnus programmer Rob Savoye to help paln the company's entrance to open source.

Savoye is using his 15 years of free sopftware experience to set up Interact-TV's development "the same way I would any other Open Source project," he wrote in an online interview. "The first part of this was using the right tools, so other developers would find working on the Telly software a normal process," Savoye explained. "In addition to that, we'll be setting up a site on either SourceForge or Savannah. Savannah is the FSF's clone of SourceForge, and it's where I have several existing GNU projects hosted. The infrastructure of these hosts for a project is very useful for developing a community of developers around a project."

Savoye hopes to help spread the word about the Telly project at Linux and open source conferences, and plans to educate Interact-TV about maintaining positive relations with the open source community.

The tools Savoye introduced to the company's developers were important for a good start.

"ITV has used Automake and Autoconf for starters, so that other folks working on this code base in the future will find it a familiar environment for development," Savoye said. "ITV also uses CVS, Kdevelop, and many other Open Source tools. Plus everyone runs Linux of course." Getting Interact-TV over the open source hurdle was not a difficult process, either.

"In ITV's case, the decision was mostly easy, as they have intended to use Linux and Open Source from the beginning. Back when I worked at Cygnus, the biggest problem was convincing customers that using GPL'd software would't create future legal problems. That seems to be a moot point these days," Savoye stated.

"In the case of Open Sourcing one's own software, the biggest obstacle is convincing people of the business case of releasing the source code. Luckily over the years I've seen many cases where donated code to a project by non-employees has been the critical piece at the right time," he added. "Plus as a small startup, there is a limit to how many developers ITV can hire, so utilizing the resources of other developers in exchange for really cool Audio/Video jukebox software seems like a good trade. Personally, I prefer a Telly to a Replay or a Tivo set-top box, and their software isn't Open Source, either."

The open nature of the Telly device, its stock features, and the upgradability of the unit could make a lot of people agree with Savoye's assessment of the product.

Users who might be interested in seeing the device for themselves can see a demo at the Interact-TV booth, co-located in the VIA Technologies booth at next week's LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco.