ReplayTV or Build Your Own PVR?


Well, I recently had plans to purchase a friend's slightly-used ReplayTV, but they fell through at the last minute when his wife put a kibosh on the idea. Now, I find myself with the desire for a Personal Video Recorder, but no reasonable purchase options in sight. One of the features that I have to have is the ability to download program guides over a broadband connection, as I do not have a landline phone, so TiVo is out, for me. That leaves me with the choice of a ReplayTV (Preferably a 50xx series) or building my own. I'd like to have at least 160 hours of recording time on whatever I end up with, but to get that out of a Replay, it will cost me about $450, and that doesn't include a $13 monthly subscription or $299 "Lifetime" fee (only good for the lifetime of that particular unit). If I build my own, I could probably do it for just about the same money (minus subscription), but at the added cost of my time and energy to build and configure the machine. Also, I have no real idea of where to start such a project. There are a few sites out there dedicated to this topic, but none, yet, that I've found, that really give you a set of specific parts and instructions on how to put them together. I'm currently considering a Via mini-itx motherboard , Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250/350, and MythTV software running on either RedHat or Fedora. I'm also open to using a Micro ATX motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP processor. I just want to stay away from Intel, if I can. If anyone has any suggestions--motherboard, processor, encoder/tuner cards, cases, software, set-up, etc.--I'd be happy to hear them. Keep in mind, though, that I DO NOT want any Windows®-based solutions, so stick to Linux/Unix. Hope to hear from some of you soon. Thanks.

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Brooks Travis

Posted: Sat - December 11, 2004 at 06:43 PM          

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