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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."

4 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. 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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  3. 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.