I contend that it doesn't HAVE to be. Remember when you buy a Tivo or ReplayTV, etc... you buy the unit AND you need their subscription service. Even on the smaller Hard Drive sized entry level units that can add up to 500 ducats easy! I think if I didn't care about the look of unit (i.e. beige CPU case) hidden from view I could definitely do it cheaper AND better.

But It becomes more difficult if you want to make it look "cute" and have it fit in with your entertainment system decor. With careful shopping I could make a PVR for just under 600 dollars (by my calculations with careful shopping). I of course omit the cost of your time building, configuring, and tweaking your home built PVR because to me that's half the fun!

The subscription fees are what really turn me off about TiVo and other commercial PVR's. *shrug*

Yes, there are free or quasi-free ways of getting that all important television guide data into your PC/PVR.

• TitanTv is a popular Free of cost listin service


• XMLTv is a Free software package that coverts/rips guide data from zaptoit to XML your PC/PVR can understand


• zap2it now offers free (as in beer) listings for personal use labs.zap2it.com
  

Thanks for the question.... I'm gonna move it to the forum so others can weigh in on it to. It's in a topic called ReplayTV vs Tivo

The WinTV PVR-250 is a TV tuner with hardware encoding (creates MPEG2 files with no extra CPU cyles).

The WinTV PVR-350 is a TV tuner with hardware encoding, hardware decoding (along with TV-out) and an FM Tuner.

NOTE: There is some confusion as to whether the pvr250's hardware MPEG2 decoder can assist on playback of MPEG2 files from your harddisk or DVD. We are working on getting a definitive answer. Currently it seems that the MPEG2 decoder on the PVR350 is useful primarily for decoding the signal for "live TV" but that doesn't make much sense, so we continue to investigate)

-=Here is the minimum suggested setup for a PVR=-
* A 500mhz CPU or more (If you don't get a tuner card with hardware encoding/decoding you will need more mhz)
* 128mb of RAM or more
* 30gigs of HD or more (the more gigs the more saved shows)
* Sound card (nothing fancy required)
* CD-ROM drive (you need to install that OS)
* Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 (w/ hardware encoding/decoding)

All of the above should be Linux friendly if you want to install MythTV. Otherwise SageTV/Snapstream/Showshifter will probably work fine.

-valiamarkais

The basic PVR funcionality is to record a show starting at one time and completing at another. This can be accomplished in many ways, one of which is a VCR another is a PVR (Tivo, ReplayTV, or BYOPVR). Most of the tuner cards you buy today come with software that does, at a minumum, the basic PVR functionality.

For example:
The PVR-X50 comes with a application (WinTV Scheduler). This uses the TitanTV page for TV listings, and uses Windows Scheduled Tasks to start the recording. You can also manually add or delete a scheduled recording using the WinTV Scheduler.

As for other (non basic) features of a PVR, there are commercial apps, like SageTV or Snapstream, and the open source apps, MythTV and Freevo and the free to use (not open source) myHTPC.

First, determine what tuner card you have and what system you have (CPU, RAM, sound card), because each PVR software has a different set of requirements and supported hardware. You will have to look at each software product's web site to determine if your hardware is supported by the product.

If you are on Windows and want a commercial product you might try SageTV, BeyondTV, ChrisTV, or Showshifter.
If want a free or open source solution you might try myHTPC, GB-PVR, OpenHTPC, or Media Center Portal.

If your on Linux you can try MythTV, or Freevo.

Since the world of software changes so quickly, take a glance at the Links / Directory for a complete list of software links we have collected.

A computer can handle multiple tuners, I have heard reports that you can use 3 or more PVR-250s in a single computer. SageTV and MythTV have been known to handle multiple tuners, but be careful mixing different PVR-250s there are some driver incompatablities. You should not skimp on the CPU/RAM, it would be safest (in this kind of setup) to get the current CPU with a heafty amount of RAM.

MythTV (or any other standard PVR software) is not reported to work with an Apple Macintosh (though some folks have gotten the MythTV frontend to work). Haupauge has a usb device called MyTV, for the Macintosh, but the web site says it only works for G3/G4 Macs.

Also of interest is the Mac version of the Plextor ConvertX PVR MacPX-TV402U (read our review of the PC Version of the ConvertX HERE) which comes with the El Gato EyeTV Mac PVR software.

Hauppage has a HDTV tuner card called the WinTV-HD. There is also another tuner card from pcHDTV that is a Linux only HDTV tuner card, called HD-2000 HDTV (which uses the BTTV drivers). MythTV works with the pcHDTV tuner card, but is not known to work with the WinTV-HD. I am unable to find any other 3rd party software that will record HDTV.

That's a great question... Well, first finish reading the FAQs, they may not all make sense now, but later on you might remember that you read something somewhere about something...

Then take a look at our own PVR 101 artciles - Part 1 and Part 2.

If you are ready to read about good hardware to use in a PVR/HTPC, take a look at HTPCNew's article on building the $1000 HTPC.

As always, read and ask questions in the forum