TiVo? Hah!

[Dan H]

Real geeks use Media Center.

I've got 600GB of recording storage, four tuners, and I can play games.

Here's the setup I just got done putting together. It's been up and running for about two months now, but the finishing touches didn't get finished until tonight.

Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice core) @ 2.4 GHz, w/ Zalman 9000 heatsink
DFI RS482 motherboard
2GB Corsair Value PC3200
Silverstone LC-10 case w/ SST-360 Silent Power Supply
Gigabyte GeForce 6600 256MB PCIe 16x, passively cooled
Dual Hauppauge PVR-500 MCE dual-tuner capture cards
Windows Media Center 2005
NEC ND-2510A DVD-RW
20GB Seagate Barracuda ATA (OS drive)
Dual 300GB Seagate Barracuda SATA in RAID0 (TV storage)
120GB Western Digital Caviar ATA (Apps and DivX storage)
Harmony 680 Media Center Remote
BTC 9019URF Wireless Keyboard / Mouse combo

Anybody else like to "roll their own"?

 

[Ryanwb]

What application do you use as your "TIVO". I have seen a few for Linux but I can't find drivers for my Haupagge (sp?) card

 

[Dan H]

Windows Media Center Edition 2005.

 

[Ryanwb]

Windows Media Center Edition 2005.

How does it interface into your cable system to know how to download the shows you want?

 

[Dan H]

It downloads a program kind and uses that to interface. Kind of like DirecTV.

You tell it your cable provider . . .

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Here's some pics of what it looks like.

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Note these are from a review, not screenshots from my system. Thankfully my wife hasn't suggested recording soaps.

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And here's the guide.

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You set it to record however you like. Mine, for instance, records all new episodes of Lost. If I had HD tuners alongside the analog I could specify it to record particular shows in HD. You can also have it record every particular instance of a show, on any channel. For example, I only recently got into CSI so I have my system record every episode of CSI on every channel, so long as the episode doesn't currently exist on the hard drive. So needless to say I get 4-5 episodes of CSI a day sometimes.

The guide is also searchable.

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Including category search.

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Plus, with a few clicks of my remote I can burn a show to DVD.

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[Ryanwb]

That's cool! I'm gonna try it even though I'm not a windows fan

 

[AzCards21]

Damn that's cool. What did the whole setup cost if you don't mind me asking.

 

[Dan H]

Probably around 1200, maybe more. Some of the stuff was used (the DVD drive was in my main PC until I put a dual-layer burner in there, for example) and I sold some excess computer equipment to fund it, so I didn't keep as good track of it as I maybe should have.

 

[devilalum]

I have a Dell 8400 with WinME 2005 and a Haupage card. Works great. The guide downloads automatically. Have a remote. Gotta have the remote.

I have a DVD burner but I don't use this with TV just DVDXCOPY.