Analog System Specification

Here's the specification of the system.

General

Design goals	Watch TV programs broadcast in Japan on a large screen TV in family room in the U.S. Remotely and securely control everything over the Internet Use of and connectivity with open source resources.
Installation	December 2005
Availability	99.9% (actual, excluding scheduled down-times)
Base recording server installed in downtown Tokyo
CPU	AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+ (1.8GHz)
Memory	512MB (64MB used for VGA) DDR3200
Disks	100GB SATA/150 (system software and recorded TV programs) 750GB SATA/150 (local and remote backups)
TV capture cards	Hauppauge PVR350 with hardware MPEG2 encoding (2 ea.)
UPS	A dumb UPS (no communication with server) prevents the server from power-cycling at a short period of power outage
Hardware cost	~ $600US
OS	Linux 2.6 (Fedora Core 4)
Control and processing software	Various open source tools including ffmpeg Home-brew programs written in PHP, Perl, and Bash
Recording
Scheduling	iEPG with point-and-click on a commercial TV guide site using URL-wrapping technology
Regular programs	Day of week, Monday-Friday
TV stations	VHF and UHF analog (1-12ch, 46ch)
Simultaneous recording	Up to 2 programs with automatic arbitration of TV capture cards
Primary recording	MPEG2 720x480i 29.97fps NTSC 8Mb/s (3.9GB/h with audio)
Transcoding	MPEG4 640x480i 29.97fps NTSC 2Mb/s (966MB/h with audio)
Audio	Monaural, 128kbps after transcoding
Transcoding performance	About 220% of program time (software transcoding with ffmpeg)
Simultaneous transcoding	A significantly shorter program can cut in with a higher priority (the number of simultaneous transcoding processes cannot exceed the number of software-visible CPU cores plus one)
Recorded program transfer
File transfer	Rsync over SSH (possible to resume interrupted transfers, no file size limit, one program at a time, shortest program first)
Transfer speed	Up to 800KB/s (in average, a 1-hour program transfers in 25min., limited by local cable modem downstream speed)
Internet security	Packet filtering, SSL, server access deny/allow list
Play back
TV	Sony KDF-50WE655 50" LCD RPTV
Network Media Player	Buffalo "Link Theater" PC-P3LAN2/DVD
Resolution	640x480i on 720p screen
NMP server (hardware)	Intel Core i3 3GHz, 4GB memory, 3TB disk (RAID5), Linux 2.6 (Fedora Core 13)
NMP server (software)	Wizd (modified)
Program menu	Date, Time, Program title, Program subtitle, Station, File size
File management	Delete, Archive (web based)
Playback quality	No worse than good VHS

Proceed to Software Architecture.