But, I have to say, the new Tivo? Pretty sweet-looking. SATA connection so you can add in extra storage. Will play back MPEG-4 video. CableCard and HDTV “ready” (does “ready” mean that it’s there and it works, or that the hardware is ready for the software to support it?). Record two things at once from a pair of the six different tuners in there… More details on the link, although there are still some unanswered questions.

I don’t think I’d switch from my custom-built DVR for several reasons, but this is a nice improvement over the old boxes. Some details still aren’t out there, but this gets rid of at least a few reasons for building your own. Would I do things differently if I hadn’t built mine yet? No, I like the openness and flexibility too much to give that up.

It’s a nice-looking case, though. The big thing about building my own is that I needed a taller case to fit in a regular motherboard to fit everything inside (2 capture cards, 1 wireless card, graphics card, etc.). The Tivo case (especially that new one) is nice and slim and pretty-looking.

I had read some good things about a few other manufacturers (notably Hitachi and Seagate) but it seems that quiet drives come and go. A company will make some quiet hard drives, and then their next batch will be much noisier and not really usable in a DVR/HTPC box.

I wound up going with a 250 GB Seagate Spinpoint SATA drive. SATA was an easy choice. Faster than IDE (although probably not noticeable for what I’m using it for). New large hard drives are starting to only be around in SATA. And the fact that the connecting cable is so much smaller than a PATA IDE cable means that it’s easier to get good air flow in the case, and keep everything running cool.

Notebook Hard Drives

One other possibility that’s worth serious consideration for a set-top box is a laptop 2.5″ hard drive. These are more expensive than full-size hard drives, and you can’t get any that hold a whole lot, but they’re incredibly quiet. If you set your MythTV or whatever PVR box up to store all the video files on a server on the network, then you don’t need a lot of space in the set-top box. Grab a small 2.5″ hard drive and use that for the operating system and applications, have all the video files on the network, and you have a really quiet hard drive.

They also run very cool, and draw far less power than a full-size drive. It’s good times all around. Well, except for price. And capacity. It’s 80% good times, 20% not-so-hot times.

For me, since my PVR box will be connected wirelessly, I didn’t want to try to rely on storing everything on the network. For the most demanding tasks, like recording two things off of the air at once while playing a third program back, you’re talking about roughly 20 mbit/sec of data (varying greatly depending on the chosen recording quality). Standard 802.11g wireless claims to give you something like 54mbps (56? I forget). That falls off very quickly as your reception goes down (and I don’t even know if you can ever really get that high). So relying on my wireless to handle that bandwidth didn’t really seem like it would work.

But if you can set up a wired 100mbit network for your PVR, definitely think about a laptop hard drive.

So I did.

Their numbering system is a little odd, and the PVR-150 is one of their newer cards (newer than the PVR-250 and PVR-350.) It’s also one of the cheapest, but has all the features I want. The Hauppauge PVR-350 adds in a hardware MPEG2 decoder, which supposedly gives great-looking output video with low CPU overhead. I decided I didn’t really need that.

I wound up buying one PVR-150, and one PVR-150MCE. The 150MCE is named for Microsoft’s Media Center Edition, but doesn’t require it. It just doesn’t include the IR blaster and remote control.

The Hauppauge remote control and IR receiver isn’t the most flexible thing around, but it does the job. And if you buy the retail PVR-150 box, it’s fairly inexpensive. Since I wanted two tuners but didn’t need two remotes, I got one PVR-150 and one PVR-150MCE.

The Hauppauges are all supported under Linux as well, using the IVTV driver, and seems to be the most popular choice for MythTV boxes as well. Since I hadn’t decided on an operating system or PVR software yet, the PVR-150s seemed like a safe choice.

Another option to two PVR-150s is a single PVR-500. The PVR-500 is essentially the same as the 150, but has two tuners built into the same card. It sounded like some people had some issues getting that working the way they wanted, and since I might have a potentially complicated setup, I didn’t want to mess with it. I’m considering having one tuner get the direct cable feed, and the other tuner go through the set-top box to be able to tune in HBO and the digital-only channels. From the posts I was reading, it wasn’t very clear if that was even possible in the PVR-500. It just seemed easier to get the two 150s.

Lots of posts in forums recommended AMD processors instead of Intel, because they tended to run cooler. I wound up getting an AMD Sempron 3000+ (1.8GHz). This is the slowest processor that uses AMD’s “Cool’n'Quiet” technology, which will let the processor run at a slower speed if there’s not much work for it to do. Most of the time this should let the processor run stepped-down, making it even easier to keep it cool.

The one I ordered is the 90nm version, which runs cooler than the older process.

For a motherboard I went with the Asus K8N. The key features that I wanted were:

• On-board digital audio output, preferably coax. I don’t want to add in a sound card, and I definitely want to use a digital connection between the computer and my receiver.
• Supports Cool’n'Quiet. No point getting a processor that does if the motherboard doesn’t.
• Can adjust the processor’s fan speed based on temperature. You need this for the “quiet” part of Cool’n'Quiet to work.
• Enough PCI slots. This motherboard has 5. I figure I need at least three (2 encoder/tuner cards and one wireless card), but would hate to not have extra slots available just in case.

I read mixed things about the stock AMD cooling fan; some people said it was quiet enough, others said it wasn’t. I decided to get the retail processor box that came with the AMD heatsink and cooling fan, and it’s definitely quiet enough for me so far. I haven’t yet put the motherboard in the case, so it’s just sitting on a box. In the case everything might get warmer, and the fan might have to run faster, and so it might become audible. Right now, though, it’s completely silent.

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 PVR, but it gets tricky and I don’t know if this would count yet) to do Tivo-ish things, and more. Getting a Tivo would be easier and probably cheaper, but doing it myself has some big advantages:

• I can burn recorded shows off to DVD or, if I re-encode to a smaller codec like xvid, CD. Tivos don’t let you copy the encoded files off of them. There are some hacks and workarounds, but last I checked they’re tough to do on all but the oldest versions.
• Nobody can put restrictions on what I record. Tivo has recently forced a new software update that lets them put restrictions on recorded shows, such as automatically erasing it after a certain number of days. No other PVR software does this, and even if it does get added there’s still open source PVR software like MythTV where anything like that can be stripped out if I want to.
• The box I build will be able to do all kinds of other things. Pop a wireless PCI card in there and it will be able to access music, video, and photos on my main computer over the network. Set shows to record over the web when I’m not at home. Add as many tuners as I think I want to record multiple shows at once. Do anything that a regular computer can do. Some people use boxes like these as scalers to get high-quality interpolated high res for their HDTV sets or projectors. That’s not going to do anything for me with my small non-high def TV, but it’s a biggie for some people.
• Commercial skip. Tivo doesn’t offer this, probably in an attempt to keep the broadcasters as happy as posisble (along the lines of the restrictions they just added.) Pretty much all other PVR software supports automatic commercial marking and/or skipping.

I think there were some other good reasons, actually, but I can’t remember them now. On the downside, it’ll probably wind up more expensive than a Tivo and will definitely be more work to set up. For many people just getting a Tivo is the smarter way to go.

I’m planning on posting about the building process. What components I chose and why (mostly done already), and then talk about the progress as I go along. Mistakes that you don’t want to make if you want to build one. Maybe I’ll have some weird obscure problems and figure out how to fix them, and then other people having the same problems can Google them and find me and all is well in the world again. You’re welcome.