You can build your own tivo-style unit, it's pretty trivial really, and can use an analogue TV tuner card, a terrestrial digital TV card (DVB-T) or satellite digital card.
For example, I have an Asus 7100 deluxe combo which has a PAL tuner in it. Asus have a simple "vcr" app where you can schedule a program to be recorded. It will also capture from my webcam, due to the way it uses standard driver APIs, so would probably work with better video capture adaptors, apart from the channel selection. It's a bit buggy, but that's graphics card bundled software for you!
The big win by using a tivo box is that the hardware is standard, on a PC it seems ever bit of video hardware needs slightly different drivers to make it work.
The thing that makes tivo easy and useful when a diy solution is hard work and a pain to use, is the program selection and programming. In the Uk you could use www.digiguide.co.uk which can control an external program to record what you want, and it's a lot cheaper than the Tivo subscription.
Personally, I'd probably just take the hit and buy a tivo, it's just a whole lot less pain, just like I have a real DVD player in the living room rather than a PC... and my wife can understand how to operate it (just)!
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You can build your own tivo-style unit, it's pretty trivial really, and can use an analogue TV tuner card, a terrestrial digital TV card (DVB-T) or satellite digital card.
For example, I have an Asus 7100 deluxe combo which has a PAL tuner in it. Asus have a simple "vcr" app where you can schedule a program to be recorded. It will also capture from my webcam, due to the way it uses standard driver APIs, so would probably work with better video capture adaptors, apart from the channel selection. It's a bit buggy, but that's graphics card bundled software for you!
The big win by using a tivo box is that the hardware is standard, on a PC it seems ever bit of video hardware needs slightly different drivers to make it work.
The thing that makes tivo easy and useful when a diy solution is hard work and a pain to use, is the program selection and programming. In the Uk you could use www.digiguide.co.uk which can control an external program to record what you want, and it's a lot cheaper than the Tivo subscription.
Personally, I'd probably just take the hit and buy a tivo, it's just a whole lot less pain, just like I have a real DVD player in the living room rather than a PC... and my wife can understand how to operate it (just)!
Nobody ever got fired for buy^Hsting IBM