[mythtv-users] Sell mythtv "set-top" boxes

Kevin Hjelden mythtv at burntpopcorn.net
Thu May 15 13:21:10 EDT 2003


>I suspect the realities of providing support will confound an idea of this 
>sort.
>
>The first part is hardware. Do you stand behind it or not? Granted, bad 
>components are comparatively rare these days ... but in the past 2 years, 
>I've encountered a defective motherboard (bad IDE controller), 2 bad 
>AverTV cards, a bad Linksys NIC, and bad RAM. And that's in a setting 
>where I build about a half dozen machines per year. (All replaced under 
>warranty, BTW, except the Aver cards, since Aver won't accept warranty 
>claims based on Linux failures.)
>
>If you try to charge your customers $25 per hour to replace bad components 
>you supplied to them, I strongly suspect you won't be in business for very 
>long. And in a Myth setting, diagnosing hardware problems can be tricky 
>and time consuming, since Myth seems to fail in uninformative ways when 
>the problem is, as was in the case of the AverTV problems, at the level of 
>the bttv driver.
This is true. I buy on the order of 1-2 computers a year and have yet to 
get any failed hardware other than ones caused by my own misdoing.

>Second, as to cost, your calculation was:
>>Would it really cost this much wholesale? From newegg.com:
>>
>>Core (Intel):
>>$58 micro-ATX motherboard w/ onboard sound, video, lan (N82E16813141103)
>>$55 1.7Ghz celeron (N82E16819112169)
>>= $113
>>
>>Core (AMD):
>>$47 micro-ATX motherboard w/ onboard sound, video, lan (N82E16813138201)
>>$61 Athlon XP 1800+ retail (N82E16819103353)
>>= $108
>>
>>Components:
>>$18 RAM: 128mb DDR PC2100 (N82E16820150522)
>>$114 WD 120g hard drive (N82E16822144107)
>>$39 XFX GeForce2 MX400 w/ composite and svideo (N82E16814150019)
>>$45 ATI Radeon VE (N82E16815116304)
>>~$30 Case
>>~$20 IR blaster/receiver
>>=  $266
>>
>>Total: ~$400 (with shipping)
>
>OK. The only thing I quarrel with here is using 128 MB of RAM. 256 MB 
>provides better performance, in my exierience (more gbuffer room, mainly). 
>Oh, add in $15 for an sVideo-to-RCA adapter for the nVidia card. I can't 
>actually find the entry for the ATI Radeon VE, but the price is about 
>right for inexpensive vidcap cards.

Actually the nvidia card had a composite out too. I was surprised that I 
didn't see it when I first looked for a card, as I paid $20 at radio shack 
for mine since nowhere else around here had one.

>But ...
>
>>Why would you need to add another 15-20% to the cost? Isn't that what you're
>>charging $25/hour to set the thing up? Maybe if you want to run a 
>>business off
>>of this, but the impression I got was that it would be more like a 
>>service to make
>>a little bit of money, like the people that make the IR blasters and sell 
>>them.
>
>Well, how many $25 hours do you have in mind here? There is time spent 
>shopping for the parts, ordering and receiving them, building the box, 
>installing the OS and Myth, doing burn-in tests (I hope), possibly 
>bringing the machine on site and configuring it, and doing any post-sale 
>support (see warranty issues, above, if nothing else) you think necessary. 
>A business would need better documentation than we accept from people who 
>are working for free, too ... creating that is a fixed cost you need to 
>recover somehow.
>
>I'd guess that a small-scale operation would involve about 4 hours per 
>host, and that only if you were pretty hard-hearted about user support 
>(not impossible ... Fry's seems to thrive on a low price/lousy service 
>business model). And it assumes you buy, not build, the IR Blaster (How 
>long does it take to build one? I'd guess an hour, but I've never tried).
>
>Since 4 x $25 = $100, or 25% of your estimated parts cost, you seem to be 
>in the same price range as "add another 15-20% to the cost".

Well, I was implying that you wouldn't do both of adding 15-20% to the 
cost, and charge for labor. Of course, see below.

>>Even charging $500 for the above setup without any "support" to add features
>>and such, just pointing to this list, that's the same price as getting 
>>the $250
>>tivo with the $249 lifetime service. Not to mention that, but it also has 
>>2-3x more
>>recording time than the $250 tivo, and it's still a computer when you're 
>>done with
>>it (and a pretty decent one, I might add). You can't really turn a tivo 
>>into a
>>windows box if you don't like it, can you? Not to mention the other neat 
>>features
>>it has that tivo doesn't, like the auto-commercial skip, the ability to 
>>burn vcd's and
>>transfer the recordings to other computers, and the easy frontend/backend 
>>setup.
>
>If you are talking about selling to technically unsophisticated users, 
>then you shouldn't assume they'd be able to repurpose the system at a 
>future time ... especially one that lacks any removable storage (just how 
>do you install *any* version of  Windows on a system with no floppy and no 
>CD drive?). Anyway, a 1.7 GHz Celeron isn't state of the art *today* ... 
>two years from now, it won't be anything very attractive at all.
Or a keyboard/mouse :). And my mom is using a 333mhz machine today, so it 
certainly won't be a gaming machine, but it should be enough to check email 
and browse the web.

>You can't burn VCDs on a host that lacks a CD burner, as your 
>configuration does ... and the re-encoding hoops one has to jump through 
>seem a bit demanding for the target audience anyway. Myth setup isn't bad, 
>but is it really *easier* than TiVo? (I've never set up a TiVo, so I don't 
>really know, but I'm a skeptic on that one.)

Actually that last part was poorly worded. I meant to imply that it was 
easy to have separate boxes for backend/frontend. And, in my case I can 
burn them, simply convert them to vcd's in spare cycles and then transfer 
them to my machine with a burner over the network.

>>And if people don't have a router already, they can throw in a second NIC and
>>let it be a router for them too which shouldn't peg the CPU at all, 
>>although this
>>is still kind of nerdy to do :)
>
>If "they" are knowledgeable enough that can do this, then they are not 
>your target market. And the security issues this arrangement raises are 
>not trivial. These days, a standalone Linksys router costs less than a NIC 
>and an hour of install time ... I've been building and using Linux-based 
>routers for years, and I can't convert a host into a router in less than 
>an hour.
Well, it was just a benefit over tivo that I was listing. Not necessarily 
feasable though.

>Others have raised some of the right issues as regards remote support 
>(especially with any customer who lacks a 24/7, static-IP Internet 
>connection), upgrades, codec license fees, and accommodating changes in 
>the source for TV listings. None of it is unmanageable ... but managing 
>all of it takes time (and perhaps extra expense for your Internet 
>connection) ... more of those $25 hours that have to be covered somehow 
>(unless you really view this activity as either a hobby or philanthropy so 
>are willing to do a lot of unpaid work ... just to let other people watch 
>TV more easily).
Well, I guess my target audience was different than yours. I was mainly 
targeting the people that have some know-how, but don't know which kind of 
setup to get. Probably because I had a heck of a time shopping for all the 
components trying to get which one I finally decided on. Maybe an 
"official" shopping cart of items to get at newegg would be good enough for 
me. (yes, I saw the hardware section of the web site, but it wasn't 
"complete" enough).  Either that, or are too lazy or unknowledgeable of 
linux to do it. Before this, I've only used shells at my workplace and set 
up my linux router box, so I didn't really have any knowledge of X at all. 
However, if I didn't set it up, I wouldn't be able to debug problems and 
such, so it's a catch 22.

>Me, I wouldn't touch it unless I could figure out a way to make a decent 
>living at it. So far, I can't.
Understood.

Kevin



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