Questions: Building a dedicated personal video recorder (PVR)

[sorry_no_email]

Just read through this entire thread. Ken M. is very talented at
writing, and I am sure he will be as equally talented in putting
together his system. Having built my own DVR a while ago, I'll share
my experience. I worked off of this post from Keith Clark:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....c=2&q="Keith+Clark"+asus+pvr#0062be66aabfdfd3

or

http://tinyurl.com/hrgpj

First piece of advice, be careful when you order your parts. I ordered
the wrong motherboard, and it probably caused the problems I faced
later. The main issue I had was that the system would freeze
regularly, and I'd have to power cycle it. Never got it to work
correctly as a DVR, so I moved the Hauppauge board and BTV software to
another computer where it works perfectly. The computer I built is now
a general purpose box that works fine.

Another piece of advice, make sure the case you buy will fit into your
entertainment center. Mine didn't, oops. Also, I'd get a good video
card with TV out rather than rely on a motherboard that has it built
in. Plus, make sure your memory is compatible with your motherboard.
Just because they say it is, doesn't mean it actually is. Better to
use a combo that other use successfully.

On the Celeron vs. P4 debate, my belief is that the Celeron is
perfectly ok for what you want to do, but I know P4 believers will
scoff. Let them scoff and save yourself some money. Absolutely worst
case, you can swap it out later and use the Celeron on another box.

Finally, it might be easier to just buy a box with enough available PCI
slots to do what you want. Chances are that it will be quieter than a
custom built box, and you may save yourself LOTS of headaches.
Building my box took *AT LEAST* 100 hours of my time with all the
screwing around I did. Having a warranty and support is also nice.
Your choice, and good luck.

 

[Bob]

On the Celeron vs. P4 debate, my belief is that the Celeron is
perfectly ok for what you want to do, but I know P4 believers will
scoff. Let them scoff and save yourself some money. Absolutely worst
case, you can swap it out later and use the Celeron on another box.

Get the faster P4 memory - it's about the same price. Then you can
upgrade using the same RAM. Eg, get DDR400 SDRAM

Finally, it might be easier to just buy a box with enough available PCI
slots to do what you want. Chances are that it will be quieter than a
custom built box, and you may save yourself LOTS of headaches.
Building my box took *AT LEAST* 100 hours of my time with all the
screwing around I did. Having a warranty and support is also nice.
Your choice, and good luck.

Check out Directron.com. They are a custom builder and have some boxes
already put together.



--

"To achieve One World Government it is necessary to remove
from the minds of men their individualism their loyalty to
family traditions and national identification."
--Brock Chisholm, Director of UN WHO

 

[Ken Moiarty]

take a look at the 8 channel PC PVR that's already out in Japan:
http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/VGX-XV80S/index.html

I'm sure you can look at the specs, figure out what really hot things
they're doing with this system, and put one together to match.

Is there a link to a European character version of this document? I tried
machine translating it which was able to convert some of it into English.
But the majority of the Japanese characters remained unchanged.

Having said that, I was able to see enough English in the machine
translation to confirm that you are correct. The buyer can choose either a
4 tuner or an 8 tuner model.

So there you go, everybody in the group that thinks my desire for six tuners
is so 'out there'. Sure it may be 'out there' here on the NA continent
(which, consumer market wise, is internationally known for placing a low
priority on creative 'excellence' in product design anyway), but it ain't
out of this world.

Ken

 

[Ken Moiarty]

OK

But what if you don't want to use TVs per se?

What if you want to mount standard LCD flat panels thru
out the house?

I don't quite understand what you mean by "standard LCD flat" panel
monitors. First of all, a lot of TVs in the stores these days, both HDTVs
and standard TVs _are_ LCD flat panel. Now, are you saying you want to use
(higher resolution) LCD monitors _made for computer use_, as opposed to
(lower resolution) LCD monitors made specifically for TV-only use?

Either way, it won't make any difference if all you are ever going to send
to them is a TV grade video. Of course, a monitor made for computer use,
because of its inherent much higher-than-TV resolution, will readily display
HDTV video whereas a standard definition TV monitor of any variety would
not. But unless you're thinking in terms of using these monitors as
computer displays as well, I don't understand your rationale if you're
wanting more costly computer monitors just for TV video. Even if it were
for the sake of HD display, it makes more economical sense in such case to
buy HDTV monitors (and whether LCD flat panel or traditional CRT tube,
that's totally up to your personal preference and has no bearing on whether
you're going with TV versus computer monitors).

Or maybe use combo LCD tv/monitors?

If what you're actually saying is you want to use a monitor that will work
for both TV and computer video display, then it has to be one that is made
specifically for computer use. But the fact that you prefer LCD flat panel
over or traditional CRT displays doesn't make any difference to whether you
want them for TV and computer or just TV.


Ken

 

[Bill Kearney]

The test we relied on to benchmark this was DVD Shrink converting an

on-disk ISO to DVD format with about 50% compression. It took
essentially the same time.

Maybe that's because the process is calculation-intensive and
disk-intensive.

Two CPUs both cranking a lot of data to disk will certainly be limited by
that disc and it's interface speed. Put a 2.4 with a fast disk against a
3.2 with a slow disk (or bottlenecks in I/O) and it would come as no
surprise to see them coming up nearly equal. It's only as fast as the
slowest part of the process. Want better performance, then get a 10k RPM
drive and a faster I/O card for it.

 

[Jeff Rife]

Dave ([email protected]) wrote in alt.home-theater.misc:

Plus, even assuming that you are willing to fork out thousands in hardware
just to say that you built it yourself,

It cost me $1300 for all the parts for a box that is way overkill
compared to what he likely needs (Intel PCI-e motherboard, Pentium D 920,
2GB RAM, 4 250GB hard drives, HDTV capture card, Radeon X850XT).

you've got to consider the power
requirements for that beast. You will want something beefier than a typical
~500W power supply. You'd probably need dual power supplies (and a
expensive case to mount them in), or something much greater than 600W, which
will cost hundreds of dollars all by itself. You are looking at a
multi-CPU, multi-tuner, multi-disks spinning at once monster.

Wow, this is way off base.

A 480W supply quite nicely handles a Pentium D 920 and 5-6 hard drives.
As long as you don't need a 100W video card (which he won't, since gaming
isn't on his list), power requirements are modest. A good 300W supply
might handle his needs.

If you go with AMD, you can probably get by with even less power, but
not much below 300W anyway. And, a little overkill on a power supply is
a good thing, since the supply works less than it is rated for and thus
tends to run its fan more quietly.

Plus, don't forget the noise factor. Many hard-disk equipped DVD recorders
are silent, even when recording. If you build a computer for DVR use, it
will need to be liquid cooled, or placed in a room that is not used, and the
door to that room will need to be kept closed. Otherwise, the noise will
drive you bananas.

Good, quiet fans can keep the box quite cool with no problem. My Pentium
D 920 unit (4 hard drives) runs about 50°C inside the box with no
significant noise if the TV sound is actually on, and that has a Radeon
X850XT because I wanted to do games.