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I think most people who run a home-made PVR full time (mythtv or otherwise) watch it on a TV screen and not a monitor.

I've been running MythTV for over 3 years now, and to tell the truth, I'm really not sure what most people are using for display devices nowadays. Getting decent TV-out in Linux has never been easy for a noob, but Myth isn't exactly noob-friendly either.

As others have mentioned, MythTV setup guides abound, but most of them focus on one specific hardware configuration. For the record, I use an XBox frontend. Since the XBox only comes in a couple of configurations, there are XBox Linux/MythTV distributions that will pretty much work out of the box. For under $100, you get component video, digital audio out and a slick little remote. You still have to set up a back-end machine to record and serve the content, but you can still use that machine as a regular ol' desktop too, which is nice. It fits nicely in the A/V cabinet , hooks right up to your TV and stereo, and can serve up your MP3's through your real stereo too.

Here's my chance to blab about the PVR I built myself. It's not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs: Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB + 120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses: Windows Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP; FireBird; Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then, it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The next step would be to replace the whole setup with MythTV. I'd have the back end on my computer and the front end on the Xbox.

I stuck it in an old Celeron 500, and there is your backend. There is an awesome setup script to get Myth running on your xbox.

So after only $200 and a couple of hours of tinkering, I had a fully functional Myth setup

...or as a cheap frontend for your mythtv.

You don't need a hardware chip at all.

I have a 1.6 NTSC Xbox and I used the "Ultimate Dashboard Exploit", and now I use mine as a MythTV frontend. And, I can still play games, too (just no Xbox live). All that, and I never once opened up the case...

You just need to borrow/buy an Action Replay memcard, one of the vulnerable games, and hook it up to a Windows PC to get the "ltools" save game from the usual places.

Would it be feasibly possible to use an Xbox + Modchip as a TiVo?

Yes.

I finally put my mod chip to good use with GentooX and mythTV on my xbox. It acts as a great front end. And yes, there is an easier mythtv only xbox-linux distro here

As I'm sure we all know, upgradability is a big issue with computer hardware. My MythTV box is using a Cooler Master case (but in black), with this motherboard.

I've already added a DVB-T (HDTV in the US) card, which you can't do with this box (i.e. you will never get digital TV with this box).

My box is a bit bigger, but looks like a stereo component (brushed steel). I'm also planning on adding an extra analogue capture card (bringing my capture sources up to three). This will fill the PCI slots on the Micro-ATX board, so I'm damn glad I didn't buy a smaller box!

I've got a DVD-ROM drive, DVD burner and currently one 160GB hard disk. Planning on adding another much bigger hard drive (waiting, waiting, I want 1TB)

If you are thinking of building a PVR (it's a fun project), you really should think about expandability and upgradability.

Also check Jarod's PVR Hardware Database, and his excellent Install Guides page.

Also, don't forget MythTV is a very nice client/server architecture, so you can run your "backend" on some beefy ugly PC in a cupboard, and us anything (including an XBox) as a frontend.

--
"Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
-- Henry Mencken

My blog: http://yi.org/blog, Latest entry : Muscle powered microrobot's

MythTV-Xbox distro

I use mythtv, I have 1 backend server with a Hauppauge pvr-250 and a OLD win-tv card in it, it has 1GB of ram, 3x120GB harddisks, and an amd2500+. The two cards allow me to record two shows at once, lets two people on two different frontends watch two different channels, or picture in picture. This computer has more power than mythtv needs, you can use something with alot less power. Especally if you get a hardware tv capture card.

When I am recording off my old win-tv capture card and I am in gnome running mozilla, etc. I can tell a big difference in video quality as when I am not doing anything on the computer. So if you have a slow computer, you want to use X/mozilla/etc, or just want better video quallity get a hardware video capture card (happauge pvr 250/350). A pII 400mhz would do very very well with a pvr 250/350.

My main frontend is a Xbox with gentoo installed. If you have a Xbox and you are as disappointed as I was with the games the xbox is your best bet for a front end for a TV. It "fits" beside the tv, I mean who wants a tower computer beside the tv anyways? Also some guy made a xbox-linux/mythtv distro. I haven't tried it but it looks really neat.

My other front end is a laptop with 802.11g card in it. I must say mythtv does QUITE well wireless.