Build a PVR

[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.