In my first post here about building a DVR I went over the reasons why I’m building my own DVR instead of just getting a Tivo. I’ll wait here while you read that one.
But, I have to say, the new Tivo? Pretty sweet-looking. SATA connection so you can add in extra storage. [...]
There isn’t too much competition in the high capacity, quiet hard drive space. Right now (September/October 2005) the only drive that is pretty much universally recommended as a good quiet drive is the Samsung Spinpoint.
I had read some good things about a few other manufacturers (notably Hitachi and Seagate) but it seems that quiet [...]
Pretty much every post I read on PVR and HTPC discussion forums said the same thing: use a Hauppauge tuner card.
So I did.
For me, the processor speed for the PVR doesn’t need to be that high. Between the hardware MPEG2 encoders and the relatively low CPU loads of playing video, there just isn’t a need for a fast processor. And slower processors usually give off less heat, which means they can be kept at a [...]
I don’t know why, but it seems like this TV season suddenly has a rediculous number of things on that we want to watch, many of them at the same time.
So, the plan is to build a PVR and/or HTPC box (”HTPC” seems to usually mean that it does a lot more than just a [...]