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Re: [LUG] building myself a PVR

 

Alex Charrett wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Jan 2007, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> 
>> So has anybody else built themselves one?
> 
> I've got MythTV running on a PC at home, although I never got around to 
> buildin it into an under the TV box.  Simon was talking about doing this a 
> while ago too - http://www.dcglug.org.uk/archive/2006/08/msg00084.html

I have a number of mythtv boxes, including a diskless pixie-boot VIA
M10000-based box that the kids use.  My son has a massive shock coming
when he finally discovers that television isn't normally "watch what you
want, on demand" :)

I'm not sure the M10000 has quite enough grunt for watching live TV
though.

>> Also what kind of money do you think I'd need to spend to assemble a
>> cheap system - given you can buy a new desktop system for about 300
>> quid, about the price of high-end PVR's you would still need to get
>> two decent linux-friendly Digital TV cards.
> 
> I think I was looking at around the 300 mark, but it was more when I was 
> looking at using mobile processors (cooler therefore less fans and noise) 
> etc.
> 
> The cards I've been using are Terratec Cinergy 1400s, which have worked 
> admirably with Linux (but I've not tried the remote control stuff yet).

I have a combination of Hauppauge and Compro DVB-T cards that seem to
work fine.  No idea how much it all cost, though -- apart from the TV
cards and the Silverstone cases, most of the bits I used were just left
over from upgrades or machines I'd stopped using.  You don't really need
anything too bleeding edge.  My analogue mythtv box is a non-
hyperthreading 2.8GHz P4 with a couple of Hauppauge PVR250 cards in and
that quite happily records two channels at once whilst watching a
third recording.

> MythTV can be a bit of a fiddle but once it's running I've been very hapy 
> with it.

I'm probably going to re-install my backend machine at some point
because the channel configuration is a complete mess and I want to make
some other changes.  The DVB-T channel configuration can be a bit
confusing to do.  The music plug-in is a bit of a mess, too.

Generally though, I'm really happy with it.  We've not recording
anything to video tape for about two years now, and always watch "live"
television though myth.

James

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