Projects: PVR: Overview
Being the gadget freak that I am, I've been thinking about building my own PVR (Personal Video Recorder), a la Tivo. There's lots of resources on the web that tell you how to build one, and free software to make it all work. Here are the proposed components and their esitmated costs:
Hardware:
| Antec Minuet Micro ATX Case... | 64.00 |
| MicroATX motherboard w/ AMD Sempron... | 130.00 |
| ATI TV Wonder Tuner Card... | 50.00 |
| ATI Half-height graphics card (to fit the slimline case)... | 80.00 |
| 80 GB HDD... | 60.00 |
| IRman infrared receiver... | 35.00 |
| Total... | $419.00 |
Software (all free):
Now, the total cost may be a bit more than a new Tivo, but you also have to consider the lack of monthly charges and the ability to skip commercials, and no ads. To me I think that's worth it.
Any suggestions or past experiences are welcome.
posted by Unknown @ 1:58 PM
2 Comments:
The amount of video you can store depends on the encoding you use - the MythTV site has more details. I believe the scheme will the smallest disk footprint uses about 700 MB/hour, so an 80 GB HDD (with, let's say, 10 GB devoted to software) will hold about 100 hours, if my calculations are correct.
What I think I'm going to do is to build the system piece-by-piece, adding on to my existing PC at first. Then I'll eventually get the nice case and its own CPU etc to make it a standalone box.
Oh, and yes, commercial skipping is a feature of MythTV, and a burner can be added, though I'm not sure if MythTV supports it natively. However, you have to ask yourself: how often do you take your taped shows and watch them somewhere else? For me, that's hardly ever.
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