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[Abcdefg]

Same can be done with a pc running Windows98 and a $50 capture card (includes remote).

[eddie willers]

Or get this from Dish Network for $50.

[Mike Darancette]

Bookmark this puppy. Pentium Pro may have new life.

[strela]

I've got a crude form of TiVO with my AVI TV card, using WinXP. It has rudimentary programming capabilities and doesn't kill commercials, but it makes the most beautiful copies of DVDs you've ever seen in your life.

Your information is interesting though - I've got an old (1.2G processor) box just sitting around doing nothing, and a 160G HD still in the box that I was going to slap into my main home system. Hmmm ...

[egarvue]

Ping for a major I'm-gonna-do-this-next-weekend!

[Spiff]

Or you could buy a good PVR program like SnapStream or ShowShifter, use them under Windows and still have a decent OS for your other requirements.

I use SnapStream to automatically record 30 hours per week of satellite broadcast curriculum (see Bob Jones University HomeSAT)for my homeschooled children. To keep the 80GB hard drive open for new classes, I archive older classes off to DVD+R. While the system is running or recording the computer is still usable for web browsing or for watching the recorded classes. My wireless network serves all of the recorded video to any computer in the house, even my wireless 802.11b-equipped Toshiba e740 PocketPC. And all of that runs on our old Dell Dimension 450mhz PIII system.

I'm buying a second TVTuner card for the other Dell Dimension near the satellite receiver so that we can record entertainment-type programs from DishTV in a Tivo-type manner.

We don't have to watch all of our TV shows on a computer screen either. One of our computers has a GeForce 2 MX card (I know, not the greatest) that has SVideo out. It uses something called TwinView to make the TV screen a second monitor. Drag the mouse to the left and it appears on the TV screen. A simple tweak of the preferences and any video played on the main monitor (even that played in a postage stamp-sized windows) is played full-screen on the TV screen in excellent quality and in stereo.

The only thing that cost a lot of money was the DVD burner. The TV tuner was less than $50 new, and I bought my second one for less that $20 on eBay. The software is about $70. And I didn't have to dedicate a computer to do it as it can perform other tasks and stuff.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[InfraRed]

Here's the feature list from the VDR website:

• Operation entirely via DVB card's On Screen Display and infrared control (LIRC/RCU) or keyboard
• Support for multiple DVB cards (up to four, at least one full featured card with video out required) and "conditional access" (CICAM)
• Channel groups
• EPG display by channel or by time ("What's on now/next")
• Timers: Programming via EPG or manually, priority/lifetime model, single-shot or repeating timers which use EPG subtitle info as recording's title additionally
• Recording storage on disk: Automatically splitting of recording into files (<2GB), support for multiple storage directories (may be spread over multiple disks), support for hierarchical storage
• Support for multiple audio tracks and Dolby Digital
• Instant recording
• Playback modes normal, pause, fast forward/backward (multi speed), jump to specific location, jump 60 seconds
• Support for editing recordings (with I-frame accuracy: ~1/2 second)
• Multiple language support
• Support for executing system commands and displaying output on screen
• Network support (SVDRP): Manage timers and recordings via telnet
• Automatic shutdown/wakeup (with certain mainboards)
• Support for automatically executing commands upon recording start/end and editing recordings
• Support for MP3/DVD/(S)VCD/DivX playback and DivX recording via patches

MythTV and Freevo may also be of interest. Freevo development looks like it has a way to go yet.

Here is the feature list from MythTV.org:

• Basic 'live-tv' functionality. Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind "live" TV.
• Compresses using rtjpeg (from Nuppelvideo) or mpeg4 (from libavcodec).
• Grabs program information using xmltv.
• Displays basic program information on channel change using a themeable semi-transparent on-screen display. The first two pictures are of the default OSD theme, the 3rd picture is of the un-themed OSD. This and this are an older OSD theme.
• Electronic Program Guide that lets you change channels and select programs to record. With the upcoming 0.8 release, you can use an alternate EPG layout.
• Scheduled recordings of TV programs, and playback and deletion of those programs, all through a unified GUI. That screen grab of the recording is either a static picture generated by grabbing a video frame 60 seconds into the recording, or an actual playback window of the recording.
• Browse and resolve recording conflicts.
• A fully themeable menu to tie it all together. (3 picture links)
• Picture in picture support, if you have two tuner cards.
• Support for multiple tuner cards and multiple simultaneous recordings.
• A nice web interface to let you select programs to record remotely.
• Basic video editing abilities. (Doesn't re-encode the files to actually edit out the deleted sections yet, that's next release.) (3 picture links)
• Rip, categorize, play, and visualize MP3/Ogg/FLAC/CD Audio files. (FLAC and Vorbis encoding only).
• An emulator frontend.
• An image viewer/slideshow application.
• A nice weather module.

I hope to have some sort of OSS based dvr running within the next month or so. Thanks for the info on VDR!