Build a PVR

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Has anyone built their own PVR? I'm about to start piecing together my own. Here's what it will have:
Athlon 1.2GHz
MSI mobo
512 PC2100 RAM
120GB HD
Hauppauge PVR-150
Coolermaster case
GeForce2 video card (for the TV out only)

The best part is I only have to get the case and tuner card, everything else I'm piecing together from older PCs and getting from friends.

My questions for anyone who has done their own:
What software setup do you use?
What tuner card(s) do you use?
What case do you use if you have it in an entertainment center?
What video card, if any do you use or recommend?
I didn't think I would need anything that powerful since all it's doing is converting the video signal into the right format to display on the TV.

And generally what are your experiences with them?

I'm probably going to start off using Windows with GBPVR since that seems easy to setup and use. Maybe once I'm confident that all the hardware will play nice with each other, I'll try KnoppMyth. I'm not that confident with my Linux abilities and don't want to deal with all the stuff Linux puts you through, although I've heard KnoppMyth is very easy.

[Adam Shapiro]

Originally Posted by Ogre

The best part is I only have to get the case and tuner card, everything else I'm piecing together from older PCs and getting from friends.

Whatever you do, do not buy an Aver tuner. I have an AverTV Studio and it is terrible. It is very hard to get to actually receive the correct channels, and the software is horrific. Not to mention the documentation for all of it is written in broken English...

A friend of mine built one this past summer. It works really well. I'll see if I can find out what he uses.

[Mike]

I had plans to do this with an old Xbox. I forget the name of the software, but I'm almost positive it's just some linux derivative that you load onto a bigger hard drive and plug into the xbox. The controller ports are USB so just hack a remote control up to it and you'll be good. This should be cheap too seeing as the 360 is out, the normal prices should've dropped drastically.

I think it was Jake from 134 that told me about the project, he might've done it with his. I'd talk to him about it.

[Matt Royek]

I see what you are doing, and very soon I am about to start along the lines of the same thing, minus the fact that I need to raise up some money first Anyhow, AnandTech did an article on this very same subject, and it's a verrrry interesting read.

Building a Linux PVR Part I
Building a Linux PVR Part II

Honestly I went parts shopping on Newegg, found a couple good tuners, chips, etc. AnandTech said Hauppage, so I'm probably going along the same route.

[sciguy125]

Did anyone actually get around to building one? I'm in the process of collecting parts for mine. So far, I've got a pcHDTV tuner, a GeForce 4 MX440 video card, and I just snipped a 250GB hard drive on ebay. When everything comes in, I'll have all the parts I need to get a working setup. Then I'll start replacing all of the old parts (what I already had lying around) with new stuff.

I'm looking at using a Core Duo mobo. Traditional desktop mobos are cheaper, but they use a lot more power. If I go this route, I'll end up having to buy a new video card (no AGP on these boards) or use the integrated video (I have yet to find out if it'll work with HD).

[Jeff Rodriguez]

I did build mine. Here are the stats.
Athlon 1.2GHz
Biostar mobo
512 PC2100 RAM
120GB HD
Hauppauge PVR-500MCE
IN win case
GeForce FX550 video card
Knoppmyth

Knoppmyth is really easy to set up. The only thing you have to watch for is tuner compatibility. My PVR 500 took some tweaking to get it to play nice.
I spent about a month reading and refining my hardware before putting it all together and another week or two making it all work how I wanted.
I've had it all running for a month or so now and it works great.

[miketwalker]

I have to agree with Ogre, for software I'd highly recommend Knoppmyth, for a stand-alone unit if it supports what you're doing it will do an incredible job. If compatibility becomes an issue, I hate to say this, but the only thing I've seen that handles everything well is Windows Media Center Edition. I'd definitely try Knoppmyth or installing Linux manually and MythTV on top of that though before doing that should Knoppmyth prove troublesome.

For the tuner: Make sure you use a hardware-encoding tv tuner, it will save you tons of trouble and look much better as a reward. Most tv tuners are software-encoding (yes, these units are far cheaper but their instability is an issue, especially if you're only going to be running it on a 1.2ghz machine). The good tv tuners with hardware-encoding will do almost all the work onboard saving your processor so you'll have smooth menu transitions and recordings, plus with that setup you can add additional tuners should you wish to and the system should handle it.

For controls I'd definitely say go with a long-range RF or Bluetooth keyboard or Gyration mouse (has a gyro so you can use it in-air, it's pretty cool stuff) so that you don't have to deal with infrared issues.

For video out, unless your planning on using your unit as a game emulator (which MythTV does support) you can pretty much get away with anything that will output to your TV. The only time your video card should really matter like I said would be if you do anything graphics intensive. Good luck with it!

EDIT: I just realized this was an old thread and I was responding to Ogre's response to himself. Lol, oh well I'll leave it in case it helps anybody else. Sorry for not noticing it before. Glad to hear it's working.

[sciguy125]

Actually, I was going for HDTV compatability. There weren't many cards out there. I ended up getting the pcHDTV card because it was the most mature and was designed specifically for linux (there's even a disclaimer for the latest model that the windows and mac drivers aren't out yet). Needless to say, it uses software encoding, but it's not as bad as it seems.

Apparently, ATSC (the digital TV format used in the US) is already encoded - makes sense. So, viewing ATSC takes less processing power than NTSC (analog). Recording is also easier because the ATSC stream practially just gets written directly to the disk. I think I'm going to end up dropping the money for a higher end processor, so I'm hoping that NTSC won't give me any problems. It'll only be around for a few more years anyway.

The main goal of building a PVR myself is upgradability. If I ever need an upgrade, I just get some new cards rather than getting a whole new system. As for software, I can make it do what ever I want.

After I thought about it a little, I don't feel so bad about spending so much money on this project. I don't expect to have to make upgrades because the system is obselete, only because I want more functionality. I expect ATSC to be around for a long time and I don't expect the video resolutions to go up any higher than they are now (at least not for a long time). Increasing the resolution or changing ATSC is going to be alot of trouble, both for the industry and for the government. The only future upgrade plan I have at the moment is additional tuners.

[sciguy125]

Alright, so I finally finished building mine.

Asus N4L-VM DH mobo
Core Duo 2.0GHz
1GB PC5300 DDR2 RAM
GeForce 6200 based video card
pcHDTV HD5500 tuner
250GB SATA HD
Samsung DVD+RW DL
NMedia HTPC 400 case

It's running MythTV on FC5. I may change the video card at some point because the Nvidia 6000 series doesn't support the correct MPEG accelleration very well. Luckily, the processor has more than enough power to decode HDTV. Actually, I can watch HD while doing commercial flagging in the background and still have some processing power to spare. When I get around to running a network cable to the living room I'll find out if it can also serve a remote frontend whilst under heavy load (I'm thinking it can).

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Looks good, how loud is it with all those fans?

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by Ogre

Looks good, how loud is it with all those fans?

Surprisingly quiet. There's lots of fans, but all the case fans are big and slow. As for a CPU, it's a Core Duo, so it doesn't produce much heat. If you're watching something, you won't know that it's there unless you're looking (listening) for it. It's much quieter than my PS2.