Build Your Own Personal Video Recorder 101: (Part2)
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Build Your Own Personal Video Recorder 101: (Part2)
ABSTRACT: I want to build a PVR, uh how do I go about doing that again?
Author: rampy AT randomdrivel.com Link to Part 1 of the article
I want to build my own PVR what do I need? A little bit of money, some patience, a little PC building knowledge, and a dream!
A brief word about costs: Your costs are directly tied to how fancy you want to make your PVR and what functionality you *have* to have. Your homebrew PVR expectations could be very low/simple like: "I want to grab some of my favorite shows and either watch them on my PC monitor or burn them on to DVD or SVCD for prosperity". In such a scenario you can simply buy a tuner/capture (ranging from $50 - $200) and you can use your existing PC as your PVR. Baddaboom Baddabing, done... but if you have higher expectations for your project such as having a small form factor PC and a sexy case that fits right in with your other entertainment center electronic devices, you are going to pay a slight premium and ratchet the costs up. The main point here is that your PVR costs correlate to your desired functionality and vanity.
Skillsetwise you should probably be comfortable upgrading your PC as you are going to need to be able to insert a PCI tuner/capture card. It doesn't hurt to be able to build a PC from scratch (it's not that hard if you done it before). You should also have a reasonable working knowledge of the OS (Operating System -- but if you didn't know what an "OS" is, don not pass go, do NOT collect 200 dollars, and go to circuit city and buy a Tivo instead) you are basing your PVR on. You should also be able to understand basic home electronic signal chain concepts like "coax in" and "video out" and "s-video". If you've got a grasp of all those concepts lets move on, shall we?
One last prerequisite: You probably should enjoy tinkering. The homebrew tivo is still in it's infancy and it's not necessarily a plug and play experience (but it's getting close!). So if you do NOT like fiddling under the hood (so to speak) of your PC this might not be the best project for you.
Still with me? What hardware do I need?
That's an excellent question. As you may or may not realize encoding video (encoding is the process of converting the analog video signal to a digital one) is a fairly processor intensive task. Decoding the recorded video also requires some CPU muscle. If you want to record one show while watching a different pre-recorded program concurrently, obviously that would also require significant horsepower. Thanks to Moore's law and our fine friends at AMD, Intel, & VIA (in no particular order) almost any "modern" and properly configured PC can handle the load, for the most part.
