PVR for my old lad?

FrankGrimes

My family are thinking of getting some form of PVR for my aul lad for Christmas. Budget is an absolute max of €500 and ideally more in around the €300 mark. So that rules out Media Center or any form of HTPC (its his reaction to seeing Media Center in action that makes me wanna get him something similar).

There is a PC in dining room in the parents house, but this is a Dell Celeron 2.4ghz, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard disk so I don’t think it can be involved as a server, so I reckon we’re down to a standalone set-top box.

Main priorities are:

- it works in Ireland
-ability to record, and pause live tv (preferably dual tuners for recording one while watching another channel, but not a deal breaker)
-an electronic program guide to make recording p*ss easy (he often messes up recordings on his VHS and he was in awe when he saw the Media Center Guide)
-a foolproof UI
-actually that’s it really

What are the options? I’ve heard of Tivo and Sky+ but am not well up on the features and prices of either and do they work in Ireland. Are there any other products out there that might fit the bill?

I’m aware of recordable DVD players which can do timeslip but I don’t think they would have an electronic program guide and the ability to have a menu with large icons pop-up on-screen and then just find the program and click Record would be a big plus for him (though we may have to fall back on such systems).

So any suggestions to help brighten up and old man’s Christmas would be much appreciated – you should see his reaction when ‘the bloody video recorder’ messes up yet another video recording

pH

TIVO isn't really available in Ireland, and Sky+ is for Sky subscribers, though if he're willing to continue to pay monthly for Sky it would be an option (and within your budget)

Normally (in analog TV PVR terms) you only need dual tuners to record 2 things at once, though in Sky terms the Sky+ does indeed have dual tuners to allow you watch something whilst recording something else.

If you want an EPG then it really has to be Sky+ or possibly Windows MCE on a HTPC.

If you/him are willing to pay 35 - 65 per month to Sky on an ongoing basis then Sky+ is your man. (Except for C4 and ITV)

SouperComputer

There is a PC in dining room in the parents house, but this is a Dell Celeron 2.4ghz, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard disk so I don’t think it can be involved as a server

not quite aure what you mean by "server" here?

these are you choices:

1. Sky+
2. MCE
3. Media Portal
4. MythTV

Sky+ is dead handy to use and works quite well, although it costs extra per months AFAIK. Of course you dont have the same flexibilty and scaleability of using a computer-based setup.

You could look at his existing computer setup and upgrade according to use either options 1 or 3.

Throw in some more RAM and a bigger HD. The CPU is fine as the heavy duty work is done on the TV Card. You can then use MCE if you wanna pay for it, or install media portal which is free.

lastly you have MythTV, but it is really a replacement for 2 and 3 above as a dual boot could be messy for your dad.

FrankGrimes

Thanks lads,

What I meant by 'server' was I didn't think the machine would cope with serving up media content to a client machine such as a Media Center Extender or something like a Roku. Though from what you say it seems like MCE might be a runner (or MythTV which I've never used - any good?).

The problem is we need to leave the existing PC in the dining room as it is used by others for web browsing etc - so we'd need to use an extender for the living room so we're upping the price a fair bit.

Sky+ looks like the most viable option so I will look into the prices for that but have to say it sounds pricey for what you get.