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Building the Godzilla of PVRs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-you-can dept.

EvolvedHumanoid writes "In a blog post, Percy Bell of SnapStream Media details how he built 'Godzilla', an 11-tuner PVR machine with HDTV support using off-the-shelf components. At $4284.90, the end result sports 1TB storage for recorded content and has to be one of the coolest PVRs ever built."

7 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Mindless overkill... by FalconZero · · Score: 5, Insightful
    four Seagate 250GB SATA drives for storing our BTV recordings and two Seagate 160GB SATA drives for the OS and other applications.
    320GB for OS and Applications?!?!? - I know Windows is a bit bloated but why the hell would you want 320GB for Apps? Thats 68DVD's worth of application! And I only know of a handfull of apps that are DVD sized. And before anyone says "maybe they've got lots of (big) games" this thing is specifically (and clearly obvious from the hardware) a PVR.
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    1. Re:Mindless overkill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the 4 250gb's are striped, which is how they got 1 TB out of the whole array with 4 drives and not 12:

      We configured the four 250GB drives as RAID 0 (striping) and formatted them with NTFS and 64k blocks to increase the disk size and performance.

      Seems silly - if one drive goes, the whole array dies - and on a beast like this, heat is likely to SERIOUSLY degrade the life of those drives...

  2. The Software by dch24 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Who else thinks that Beyond TV 4 Server, at $69.99, is a really great price for software that can keep all those eleven tuners busy at once? !!

    Is this the result of open source driving the price of software down? If this were a Microsoft product, just the word "Server" on the package would cost you an additional $300 or more.

  3. Fan failure? by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's a whole lot of heating being generated. Exhaust fan failure=lots of dead harddrives?

    What about heat on the TV tuners? Or the video card?

    Methinks one would be much better serviced by a rack of systems, this thing would run WAY too hot.

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  4. It's a giant ad! by rsborg · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Ok, absurdity of 11 tuners aside, I noticed some serious warning signs that this project really didn't seem all that well thought out, and instead seems like a huge AD for beyondTV, Intel, and pretty much all the "high end" components you need for your media center type beast.

    "Heat is the biggest enemy when building a quiet HTPC system. "
    Uh... sure. Agreed.

    "You have to sometimes sacrifice a quiet HTPC so the machine can cool itself efficiently. "
    Hmm... so it supposed to be quiet, but not really.

    "We choose the Intel Pentium D 840 "Extreme Edition" Processor!"
    Ok, quiet is RIGHT OUT now, and what a way to add to your heat problem :-)

    "While trying to push the Godzilla PVR to its limit we experienced an overheating and fan noise issue. "
    LOL. Stopped reading right about there.

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  5. waste $ on h/w won't pay for content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't get this geeky thing where you'll spend godawful amounts of money on hardware (and create a huge electricity bill and cooling problem to boot) but take a hissy fit about paying for a DVD or a CD you want to enjoy. It reminds me of clients my law firm had who'd spend gobs of money for us to fight their personal tax assessments.

    At $15 each, you could buy 285 DVDs. I can guarantee that when you pay for entertainment you're a lot more choosy about what you watch. It reminds me of software pirates who spend so much time and energy collecting software (or porn fanatics, too, I guess) but never actually enjoy what they've collected.

  6. Re:That's The Problem by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As soon as you buy a PC with enough CPU or Video horsepower, you have already spent more than double what an off the shelf unit would cost.

    But what does that doubled cost get you? You get a machine that works the way you want, instead of one crippled for end users. If a component goes bad, you can replace it with off the shelf parts. You can manage your massive collection of tv shows with the standard unix tools. Plus, you can play arcade games while not watching tv. Also, do any commercial DVRs come with RAID5?

    So there are several ways in which home built DVRs are superior to off the shelf DVRs. Whether they're worth the extra cost is up to you.

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