OK, my first step was to set goals for the project. What did I want from this? At the end of the day, what "product" did I expect to have? My goals were as follows:

Design and build a DVR with the following attributes:

• Less expensive than a similarly-configured Tivo plus lifetime subscription fee
• Functionality matching (or better) than a Tivo
• When looking at the custom DVR from the front, top, or sides, be unable to differentiate it from a "normal" Pioneer DVD player
• Ability to wirelessly transfer shows to my primary home PC for burning to DVD (and viewing while on the road or in other home DVD players)
• Basic PC functions (surfing the web, email)
• An additional platform from which to operate a webcam and look-in on my "family" (cats) when away from home

For reference sake, my current home-theatre setup consists of a Pioneer VSX-D509S receiver and a DV-525 DVD player. That should give you an idea of the "look" I was going for.

I got on eBay and was surprised to find that not only were there a half-dozen auctions for non-functioning (cheap) Pioneer DVD players, but many of them looked like they would match what I currently owned! I would have gone with a DVD player exactly like the one I currently own, but if you look at the link I included you'll see that in my particular model, the DVD drive tray sits low in the case. Knowing that space was going to be a problem when building my rig, I decided to go with an "older" model, the DV-333, which has its DVD drive/slot mounted much higher. That would allow the DVD-ROM to extend back into the case and hopefully sit above the motherboard and RAM.

So I ordered this particular DVD player off eBay. $0.99 cents (I was the only bidder) plus $13.75 shipping. Darn those expensive shipping charges!

It took a few days for the box to arrive. Upon receipt, I promptly gutted the interior -- but in a fairly careful fashion so that I didn't destroy any components. I wasn't sure what pieces I would need to re-use when building my DVR so I was careful to keep EVERYTHING. And I'm glad I did, which I'll elaborate on later.

I was happy to see that once gutted, the box was quite "open". There weren't too many custom metal protrusions from the case that would inhibit efficient placement of PC parts. There were some metal "indentations" reducing the amount of vertical space that I would have to work with, but I thought they were acceptable and could be accommodated.

So know that I knew the basic interior dimensions that I had to work with, I started shopping for components. I knew that I would probably be most restricted in the vertical sense, especially when it came to expansion cards. I was either going to have to deal with risers or limit myself to exclusively half-height cards.

Motherboard and CPU

I live in Houston, and I'm fortunate to have a Fry's in town. They have ridiculously good deals on extremely low-end CPU/mobo combos. I waited for the right deal and eventually went for a $60 combo. It contained an OEM AMD XP 2200+ CPU and an ECS K7VTA3 v.6 mobo.

TV Tuner Card

I wanted hardware encoding. That would result in fewer (or no) dropped frames. At first I thought I was going to get a Hauppauge PVR-250 but it is a full-height card and would have required the purchase of a PCI riser as well. But during my research (thanks Build Your Own PVR.com) I found that ATi had a little-known OEM hardware encoder for WinXP MCE that just happened to be cheap (yes!) and half-height PCI (yes!). It is called the "eHome Wonder" and can be had for $73 at NewEgg (compared to $100+ for a DVR-250 plus PCI riser). I opted for the version with the FM tuner not because I really wanted radio functionality (I don't) but because NewEgg's descriptions led me to believe the TV hardware on the two were different. I don't know if that's the case or not, but I chose the safe-side in this case.