Great Freevo article

zener_at_zentopia.com
Date: 01/29/05 

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 11:24:19 -0500

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2005/01/27/freevo.html

"Freevo, for me, stands for freedom and the power to do whatever I'd
like with a TV interface," says Rob Shortt, a 29-year-old system
administrator from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. Shortt is one of
the main developers of Freevo.

Freevo is a media platform that brings together various applications
for video recording and playback. Under its open format, the user can
fully customize Freevo to suit his media viewing needs. Its main
feature is its ability to schedule and record television broadcasts
(Figure 1).

Krister Lagerstrom originally conceived of the project. The first
release, in May 2002, consisted only of a blue screen and simple menu
bar. Since then, Freevo has evolved beyond just recording TV
broadcasts--it can play and manage other media like music, pictures,
and even games. "It's relatively complete, and has far surpassed our
original plans," says Aubin Paul, whose principal contribution to
Freevo has been designing its user interface. The 26-year-old is a
university student from Toronto, Ontario, Canada studying economics.

What is the difference between how Freevo works versus TiVo, similar
devices, or software products like Windows XP Media Edition? Though
its name sounds like a knock on TiVo, the Freevo developers emphasize
that their project is more than software that turns a Linux computer
into a digital video recorder (DVR). They refer to Freevo as a
"platform" as opposed to a mere application. "It's important to note
that almost everything in the system is a plugin, so you can
essentially build your media center the same way you build a physical
system," says Paul. "You can choose the applications, functionality,
and interfaces you like."

Because Freevo is on an open platform, users can create plugins that
do things TiVo and other PVRs cannot: for example, transcoding video,
burning media files to CD or DVD, ripping and copying CDs and DVDs,
viewing streams from the Internet, and file sharing. "I even have a
plugin to check my voicemail," says Shortt. "Our open platform is our
strength. It is also very easy to develop Freevo plugins."

For example, Freevo can serve as a media jukebox for music files and,
as shown in Figure 2, movies. It can also display digital photos and
other image files on a television set (Figure 3).

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