PVR (not sky+)

bbbbb

Thinking of buying a hard drive video recorder (PVR), but don't want to subscribe to sky+ (currently getting NTL cable, non digital). DVD recorder/hard drive combo's seem to be a good price, down to about €450 now, but I don't really need the DVD recorder. In the UK you can get them with freeview tuners for about STG 150.

Anyone know of anything suitable for the Irish market?

PowerHouseDan

Why dont ya setup a media pc?

bbbbb

for less than €450 ?

PowerHouseDan

Could ya not convert your current computer setup.

RicardoSmith

bbbbb wrote:

for less than €450 ?

Probably. All you need is a decent P3 big HD and a TV card that can record. You can use XP or Linux to run it. I think a P3/ 733 is usually considered the minimum spec once the TV card has some form of MPEG encoder/decoder in hardware on it. The card needs to have TV out aswell.

bbbbb

Current PC is 4yrs old, and a little noisy.

A new build would need:
- case (& quiet fan)
- CPU, mother board, memory
- graphics card (with remote control?)
- hard drive

Effectively it would need to be a mid/high spec pc minus keyboard & screen (LAN/USB etc. don't cost a whole lot). Can't see it fitting under €450, or at least not enough to justify the hassle.

PowerHouseDan

I reckon ya could, There always good offers going on boards, Komplett have some good prices all you would really need to buy sep its t pvr150 which costs me 78 incl Del off ebay...

secret_squirrel

Non-freeview pvr's seem very hard to find.

Best I could find was expanded Tivo's here very expensive tho. I'd go with the dvd-recorder+hd recorder.

Edster

Have a look at PVR Guide. It gives the details of various setups (in Linux or Windows) for doing this for free (excluding hardware you need to buy ).

Why is this better than sky or freevo or a PVR recorder box ?
You can look at your photos on the screen, you can play music, dvds, recorded tv programs, avi movie files, browse the internet, listen to the radio, check the news, check your emails.......

I have used one of these systems for years and they are stunning. My own one cost me about 100 pound to get the tv card (I was in the UK at the time) but since then it has been moved over to dublin and works fine.

Mixie

http://www.byopvr.com has more guides too if you're interested in building your own PVR system.

vibe666

i just broke a pc pvr for parts on here (check my sig), so you just missed it.

you might have beeded a better tv card with mpeg encoding onboard, but apart from that it would have done you grand, and for less than you'd pay for a stand alone pvr box.