OStatic

The Capital Times ran a piece on home-brew, open source DVRs (digital video recorders, in the tradition of TiVO). Though TiVO's software is open source, any unsigned modified code is blocked from running on these devices. Home-brew DVRs act like TiVOs, with a few side benefits. The article mentions, incidentally, that this is not a project for the faint of heart.

My MythTV box has been humming in my living room just shy of a year. It's not a project for a new user, but it's a better application, and less complicated to install and maintain than you've been led to believe.

Over the past few years, the set-top box industry has been nothing short of a disaster. In addition to Digeo, makers of the Moxi DMR, cutting its workforce in half and ditching most of its products, TiVo - the world's most popular DVR company - lost almost $48 million last year, easily eclipsing the company's $34 million loss in 2006.