PVR anyone?

[zigzag03]

I want to ditch my satellite and convert to cable. i live in sunny florida, and every summer afternoon when the thunderstorms come, the signal drops and this often results in losing the last 20 laps of the nascar race... unexceptable!

i want to build my own pvr, and there are several articles in recent mags on the subject, but i wanted to see what the forum junkies have to say on the subject.

i have the following:

abit kg-7raid
athalon 1700 xp
512m ddr pc 2400
2 speetstar 40g in raid 0 ata 100
1 wd 120g ata 100
assorted optical drives

i would add:

desktop case, to blend with the a/v setup
ati a-i-w 9600 pro

does anyone think anything here is not enough? vid card? processor? i know the aiw 9600 is hard to come by at this point, but it is very affordable compared to the 97 and 98, and reviews indicate it might pull it off. does anyone know if the remote wonder 2 is capable of being learned by other multifunction remotes?

your comments will be welcomed gratefully, msr

 

[HFC]

Lots of storage space, depending on the quality that is acceptable to you, unless you plan on watching and deleting the programs regularly.

 

[Slammy1]

This is a hardware nerd forum. You should check out the AV nerd forums:
AVS Forums

Is all you want to do with it PVR? For good quality, my 9700 uses about a gigabyte every 30 minutes, so you can figure your space requirements from that. I'm not all that impressed with the TIVO functionality of the AIW (very buggy), but recordings are good quality. The general consensus with the HTPC crowd is you're better off with separate tuner and video card, but I think unless you're serious the AIW will work fine.

 

[Robor]

I picked up a Sonic Blue RePlay 5040 unit for $149 after rebate (+ plus activation). IMO that's a lot easier than going thru the trouble of making a PC based DVR. Also nice to drop a 160GB Maxtor in to replace the original 40GB drive for 60 hours of high quality storage. 😉 😀 😛