Hello there,

Could anyone give me advice on the bits and bobs I could use to turn a PC into a digital TV recorder. It would be much appreciated. I'm more than comfortable building standard PCs and have a suitable small 2nd machine with big fast hard disk and reasonable GeForce card that I could use if suitable.

I guess I need some kind of TV card?
What sort of cabling would I need (don't you get interference from RF with your PC equipment?)
Is there any possibility of having any kind of Electronic Program guide to set up recordings?
Many other silly questions!

Just curious as to the alternatives of lining Murdoch's pockets as I expect my Sky subscription will be getting lower and lower (and probably below the line for free Sky+ soon) so I don't want to pay the (reasonable) £200 for Sky+ and then have to start shelling £10 per month soon if I decide to drop Sky Sports/Movies.

Thanks in advance for any help or useful websites you could point me at...
Joolz

i use a geforce 4200 on my pvr and a program called showshifter
the 4200 has composite video in and out, so i don't use a seperate tv card.
On my other pvr capable machine i have a £30 capture/tuner card and a radeon 9700 pro (it's a games rig) capture quality is okay but better on 4200 machine, i tend to only have a small window open on this for tv whilst web browsing etc.

Si

Sky+ will be better quality is it won't be decoded, captured, re-encoded and decoded before you see it. Just decoded!!

Have a look at MythTV

The advantage of a "roll-your-own" or TiVo over Sky+ is the ability to re-encode material or burn it to DVD. You also get to keep PPV recordings as long as you want or watch them as many times as you like, as well as the freedom to change subscription levels without losing the ability to watch shows you recorded when you were a subscriber.

A non-Sky PVR is also free from any controls which may be added in the future, such as locking out ffwd function through adverts.

Sky isn't the greatest quality anyway so another encode isn't going to do too much damage.

Anyone using Windows XP Media centre as a PVR? http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/m...er/default.asp

Jay

I've tried it as i was quite interested but it doesn't appear to be released as any but oem.

Si

class_A,

I have a dvd recorder plugged into the back of my Tivo for archiving. It can be done!

I do agree that *anything* is going to be better than Sky+. I agree with most Tivo owners in that it is the best gadget I've bought. It's a shame that the only alternative at the moment is to get sky$ or build your own

http://www.nebula-electronics.com

A Digital Tv Card.. Iv got one and it great.. All the software with it very easy to use and you get a remote with it..

Next release of the software will have ability to stream TV/Radio across a LAN. DigiTV can act in server or client modes and will allow either individual programmes or complete transport streams to be sent either peer-to-peer or in Multicast.