User: knosp

Re:My Homebrew PVR

On: Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute?

Yes, you can definitely fast forward through all the commercials.

My Homebrew PVR

On: Building A Low-Budget TiVo Substitute?

http://www.knosp.com/projects/pvr/index.html

Although, we love our Tivo, it does have a number of shortcomings/annoyances:

Lifetime Subscription is tied to the device and cannot be transferred when newer, better hardware comes out.
Home Media Option ($100) is per-device
Difficult (with hacking) to extract video for playing on portable devices
No ad-skipping. As much as advertisers don't like to hear it, the fact is that people don't care to watch ads.
I considered hacking my Tivo, but didn't want to break what was already working; thus I decided to build my own.
My setup:
Motherboard/CPU: VIA EPIA M - $150
Memory: Crucial PC2100 DDR 256 MB RAM - $40
Hard Drive: Maxtor 80 GB Hard Drive (already had)
Video Card: Integrated VIA Unichrome AGP graphics with MPEG-2 decoder and TV-out
TV-tuner card: Hauppage WinTV PVR 250 $125
Wireless Keyboard (already had)
Case/Power Supply: Cubix 2699R $80
TOTAL COST: $395

In comparison, a new 80 hour Tivo Series2 ($300) with Home Media Option ($100) and Lifetime Subscription ($300) would cost a total of $700.

My NES PC

On: NES PC

http://www.knosp.com/projects/nespc/index.html