Anyone built a PVR?
 

I am thinking about building a PVR while home on break for Christmas. Does anyone here have any experience doing this? I have some Linux software that I have heard good things about (MythTV, www.mythtv.org), and may try that, but given my limited Linux experience, I am worried that I may run into problems that I wont know how to fix. Does anyone have any experience with this (or other?) Linux PVRs?

What about Windows PVRs? What is a good set of software to use? Is there any good free PVR software for Windows? I would probably run W2K for stability and because XP hogs resources.

Thanks for any info...

You should check out this months Maximum PC, they have a huge article about building entertainment boxes. They suggest hardware and software for the setups.

I built an htpc for my living room the following specs are.

Software:
OS: Windows Xp
Snapstream
PowerDVD 5.0
Various Codecs, Divx etc.

Hardware:
2.0ghz p4
1 gig ddr ram
250 gig hard drive.
ATi 9000 pro All in woder, With ATi Remote Wonder
Hercules Fortisiomo Sound Card
Other Usual Stuff

It seems to do the job quite nicely.

Free software you can try is My HTpc. do a google search for it. Has alot of features snapstream has.

Hi. I have done this, and it was one of the most fun installs I have done.

This link may get you going.

AVS Forum HTPC section. Absolutely superb reading especially if you are using a HDTV.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...?s=&forumid=26

I use Snapstream as my PVR also. It is actually very good.

My son uses Myth TV. He loves it.

Yeah, at the moment, it looks like thats what I will use. There are precompiled RPMs for Mandrake, so I can easily install it through urpmi (hopefully) without any problems. I hesitate to run Windows because the machine is a little less-than-beefy (its a p3 800), but at the same time, like I said, I have limited experience and dont want to get stuck with a problem way over my head. Hopefully the urpmi install will prevent that.

There are some great articles on this at ExtremeTech.com

Thanks for the links. Any links I can get also help greatly. Anyone know of anymore?

i use Myth TV, great, just great.

tokaok, could you give me more info? What distro are you running? How difficult was it to install? What kind of hardware? Are you running an IR remote too? How much Linux experience do you have, and do you think someone without a lot of experience could set it up? Did you use an RPM install, or did you do it manually? Thanks for the help...

In a word:

Freevo!

freevo is really not up there with myth quality wise. it its very well know mainly because its name sounds much like tivo.

my pvr runs gentoo(source instal no rpms), mainly because it assures me a very clean and minimum install with maximum tweakability for maximum performance.

i dont have ir set up as i just havent gotten around to it, but from what i hear it should not be too difficult.


i found it pretty straight foward if you do your reading, but you must be confortable in dealing with the system configuration files. even if you are a lil unconfortable, take it up as a learning experience, thos it might take you 5x times longer that setting up a pvr on windows, you get 100x the quality, reliability, and performance.

I set up MythTv. Not to hard. Hardest part was getting the audio to work, and my old ATI card. Finally bought a cheap TV tuner card.

I think I am going to try Freevo next. Myth saves (or used to) in a non-standard format. I want a easy way to play back on other devices.

i want to build a HTPC sometime soon.. i have the computer, i just need to get a tuner card, and a vid card with tv out..

I believe you can designate what format MythTV encodes into.

What distro did you install it onto? Did you use an RPM install? Do you have a remote installed?