I have wanted a Tivo for quite some time. But inhibiting my purchase was my general disdain for subscription fees and I didn't want to sign-up for yet another monthly bill on top of (what I deem to be) my seemingly unending list of monthly fees I already deal with (cell phone, cable, DSL, etc, etc).

A secondary concern that was preventing me from buying a Tivo was that I'm a bit picky about my home theatre setup and wasn't terribly enthusiastic about the idea of a totally dissimilar box sullying my current aesthetically homogenous Pioneer Receiver/DVD setup.

I'd heard that a Tivo is essentially just a low-end PC with custom software, so I got to thinking maybe I could build one myself. Further to that, I had read online that people have built PCs into everything; coffee tables, beer kegs, and even Star Destroyers. So I thought, "why not build a custom Tivo into an old (gutted) Pioneer DVD player"?

By using software like SageTV or Beyond TV I could avoid the monthly subscription fees, so all the costs incurred would be up-front. "Not a bad idea!", I thought.

This was about 3 or 4 months ago. This weekend, I have finally completed my journey, having spent more time and money than I planned, but I still feel satisfied that I was successful in my goals and I'm not saddled with another subscription fee.

It looks just like a regular DVD player in my home theatre setup! (I had to move the "real" DVD player to the cabinet below.)

Following is the detailed account of my journey from case-modding neophyte to case-modder extraordinaire! (Well, maybe "extraordinaire" is exaggerating a bit. More than a bit. OK, a lot.)

First a few clarifications:

1. To me "TiVo" = "DVR". "TiVo" includes "UltimateTV, ReplayTV, etc". I realize they are not synonymous by the strictest definition, but go with me here.

2. I know you can buy a lifetime subscription to Tivo. In my case, it probably would have been cheaper than what I ended up doing, but I didn't plan on spending as much as I did (at first) and I didn't like the lifetime subscription being unit-specific instead of person-specific. Go with me here, as well. I'll talk about this more at the end.

3. 3 to 4 months seems like a long time for something like this (and it is) but keep in mind I was ordering things off the internet and I generally only did work on weekends so the combination of the two really stretched things out.

4. I'm cheap. VERY cheap. In this project, being cheap might have actually cost me more money than required because in the interest of saving money, I made some purchases that were a bit misguided and ended-up costing myself more in the end.