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Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute?

Posted by timothy on from the this-is-my-anything-box dept.

thepuma writes "Since I'm cheap, and don't want to pay monthly fees to Tivo, I am researching building my own low-budget Personal Video Recorder and player. Free software options include Freevo and MythTV. Hardware options are the main cost factor. How would you go about building the perfect low-budget PVR?" We've looked at similar questions before, but the guts of such a system (both hardware and software) have been improving -- MythTV, for instance, now supports Hauppauge's PVR-350 card. How would you build a system like this now?

2 of 743 comments (clear)

  1. Budget by Teckla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If budget is important, consider estimating electricity costs in a do-it-yourself solution. You might be surprised how much money worth of electricity a PC can use in just a year.

    As an example, I've seen people "save money" by reusing old PC's as firewalls instead of buying a cheap $50 unit that does the same job. They're spending more money in electricity than it would have cost to buy the dedicated unit.

    -Teckla

  2. This is how I built my "Tivo" by Bishop639 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I built a MythTV box and went the Mini-ITX route for $500. I paid more for the small size, considering I could have gotten more CPU power, etc. for less money.

    For case, I used the Morex Cubid 2699R. It's about the size of a 12" pizza box (much smaller than the VCR that it replaced!), and uses a 50W external power supply, which *significantly* cuts down on noise. My hard drive is the biggest contibutor to noise with this setup. I got my case for about $80 US.

    I keep it in my TV cabinet without an attached mouse, keyboard, or monitor. Just connected to TV and my LAN, and controlled via remote control.

    You can see pics and a review of its older cousin at:
    http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/2688R/

    As for the rest, I got:

    Motherboard:
    VIA EPIA M10000 ($150-$160 US) - Has onboard ethernet, 5.1 audio, video,
    and one PCI slot. Processor is already on it. Processesor has
    exceptionally low power requirements (compared to high-end AMD/Intel).
    Memory:
    Crucial 512mb DDR (if you do decide on the 2699R case, make sure the RAM
    height is below 34mm or it won't fit - the Crucial fit just fine)
    Tuner:
    Hauppauge PVR-350 (less than $200 via pricewatch.com)
    Its included remote works really well under LIRC

    DVD:
    Some generic slimline DVD player for $55.
    If you get the 2699R case, you need a slimline which means more $$
    Note that as of current date, MythDVD and MythVideo don't work
    with the PVR-350, so you won't be able to watch DVD's (yet).

    Hard drive:
    I used an old IBM drive laying around, I plan on upgrading to a Seagate Barracuda which is rated at 20dB while idling.

    Now the pros and cons of my setup:

    Pros:
    Very small, very quiet
    PVR-350 with the Epia M10000 uses only 3% (!!!) CPU utilization during
    playback and record
    Front of case has firewire/usb connections if I need later on
    Even without MythDVD or MythVideo support, it's already better than a
    commercial Tivo because (1) I can record at higher bitrate and resolution,
    and (2) I have direct access to the recorded videos, so that (3) I can
    archive to DivX or DVD...

    Cons:
    No DVD or avi/quicktime/etc. file playback since I've using a PVR-350 (hopefully soon though!)
    I couldn't use the already built 0.11 .deb packages since I was using the
    PVR-350. I ended up compiling both IVTV and MythTV CVS instead.
    Since there's no attached keyboard/mouse/monitor, I need to ssh from
    a different computer on the network, but I actually prefer it this way

    Hope that helps