Building my own Tivo

I want to build my own Tivo-like PC. For ease of use by the wife & kids, it’ll probably be built around Win XP or Win 98. It’s a pretty sure bet I’ll use the ATI All-in-Wonder 9000 Pro card as it comes with the remote control & software for all the video record/playback. The price of around $160 is about as much as I want to spend, too.

I’ve got a reusable Pentium 733 & Mobo w/ 256 MB of RAM available. How much CPU/RAM do I need for this kind of system? What’s my GB/hour of encoded TV, ie: how big of a hard drive do I need?

Anything I’m missing here?

I keep noodling around with the idea of setting up a MythTV box, which is Linux-based (so ATI cards are nonstarters) but looks interesting. You might look around on that site to see what kind of hardware their users are using.

I hate to respond and not be able to help with the hardware you have, but since Dewey brought up MythTV, I’ve got to pop in.

My ex has MythTV and has been using it for gosh, probably 6 months now. I was around for the first couple of months, and it worked great. So it doesn’t help you with Windows based ways to do this, but if you are AT ALL interested in learning Linux or using Linux instead of Windows to do this, I’ve got to recommend MythTV. I didn’t actually install it or work with hit, he did all that, but we had great success with the recording and watching of programs.

Consider the Windows XP Media Centre Edition as an OS. It’s designed with this kind of thing in mind.

As for storage space, I believe it varies depending on your encoding options. Your best bet is just to go with the biggest harddisk you can get your hands on - however large it is you’ll probably fill it eventually, so it may be worth thinking about the expansion path for more storage space.

Given that the TIVO units I have seen come with 80 to 200GB hard drives, you probably want to get one in that range.

This one says 140 hours for 120GB, so that is probably for the lowest resolution.

Not purely relevant to the OP, but I’m in process of building a MythTV as we speak. I’ve got all the components. Last night, I installed RedHat9, and half-debugged a driver issue (the built in LAN won’t work). Hopefully, I’ll finish that tonight and begin work on the actual MythTV. Anyone interested is welcome to email me (or open a thread on the board).

I’m pretty excited; I’ll let you know how it turns out.

256 MB RAM should be fine. Figure about 1 gig per hour on the disk space more or less, depending on which settings you choose.

Take a look at myHTPC for an excellent free alternative to mythtv or windows media center.

I’m not sure what you mean by “building your own TiVo”.

I’ve built several HTPCs (Home Theater PCs) that can act as DVRs (digital Video recorder - think “digital VCR”). That’s a fairly trivial. I thnk my simplest was a $20-30 BT787 chipset video capture card on a Celeron 466 under Win98.

It’s sitting across from me in my bedroom right now, and though it’s a bit underpowered and sometimes drops frames when my cable gets almost a bit staticky (which doesn’t happen often). it’s quite decent [at LEAST as good as VHS for playback clarity to my eyes, though I usually recorded at 360x240 30 fps, rather than 640]. Generally recommend a 800Mhz P3 or better if you aren’t interested in tweaking your settings to get glitch-free recording. Though I’ve long been an Athlon fan, I recommend using an Intel CPU/chipset because they handle AV hibernation much better than most Athlon mobos.

I recommend the BT787 (or other BT7x7) chipset. These are, by far, the most common chipsets for standard video capture. There’s lots of support for them on boards like the AVSforum [everything you wanted to know about AV - and a whole lot you didn’t. Check out the HTPC forum there] I don’t recommend the ATI solution. Though I haven’t checked them out recently, they have such a long history of inefficient proprietary drivers that it’d take several years of stellar performance to make me consider them. I’ve had lots of ATI cards, but I wouldn’t use them for video capture

I suggest trying the free “tweaked” generic BT787 drivers from IUlabs.com (or similar) It’s amazing how much the quality of the OEM drivers vary. You’d think that they’d get the bugs out, considering how long the 7x7 has been out, and how well many of the major amateur-written drivers work.

You can use the program that ships with it, or any of the popular independent free or commercial Digital VCR programs. It’s a matter of personal taste. Do your homework on that choice. The user interface, remote control, and software features are the most important elements for casual users.

I’ve heard very good things about the open souce/linux solutions listed above for NTSC (normal video). There are others on Sourceforge.org as well. I just haven’t played with or updated my HTPCs in ages. They’ve become no-think video appliances (and isn’t that what we really want?)

If you are interested in HDTV, there are several good cards in the $250 range - cheaper than any standalone HDTV tuner I’ve seen. I personally have a MyHD card from MIT, and though its proprietary software is a little quirky, I’ve never had any real usability issues with it. If I had to do it all over again, I’d research the other options though. My choice was the right one for me at the time (late 2002) because the other HDTV cards were more expensive, and I just wanted to “get my feet wet” in HDTV. At the time, I think it was the only card that had two video inputs, so I could hook up and program my cable and my rooftop antenna (for HDTV broadcasts) separately, There may have been another but it was almost twice as expensive.

My myHD now lives on a 2+ GHZ Intel (which I picked up for well under $200 on eBay from a once prominent PC merchant who alas no longer eBays). It also ran happily on an Athlon 1700+ XP (whose real clock was more like 1.3 GHz) and briefly on a sub GHz P3. Each system plus the MyHD cost less than many HDTV tuners alone when I built them.

Aroint Thee hence to the HTPC forum of the AVS Forum It has all the answers. The AVS forum also has boards for every aspect of the project, like remote controls, compact cases, audio, etc.

I meant to add: if you meant “TiVo-like self-programming functionality” then your options are more limited. ZapTV (etc.) offer free TV schedule info and there’s open-source “scraper” software out there to harvese it but I havenb’t used them. They are also currently allied with the maker of a fancy but inexpensive LCD screen remote, but if you read the fine print carefully, you’ll see that they explicitly don’t guarantee that the scheduling service will remain freee to purchasers forever.

Sorry if I’m a little scattered tomight. I think I"m coming down with something.

there is a cool article about building a Tivo here.

one interesting quote:
*Those are all really good reasons to build your own TiVo-like device around a PC platform. Just don’t expect to save money doing it. *

On a side note, I bought my wife a Tivo (for $175 after a $50 rebate), and she loves it – mainly because of the ease of the software.

Nitpick – MythTV is free, too.

I have a system with a Radeon 8500DV (which is another kind of All-in-Wonder card). My CPU is a pentium 4.

The software is pretty good. I like being able to browse and search TV guide listings. Setting up unattended recording could be a little more convenient. Maybe they’ve updated their software - I haven’t checked in a while.

Is that a Pentium III? It would work fine for just watching and recording video. But if you need to encode video it will take a long time - and if you’re going to burn a VCD or DVD you’ll (probably) need to convert the files from ATI’s format to MPEG first.

While I respect your dedication - it seems easier just to buy a tivo to me.

And I have someone else to call if I have a problem. lol

Easier schmeasier. I love my tivo, but there are tons of things an HTCP can do that leave tivo in the dust:

region free dvd player
divx player
cd player
gaming
hdtv scaler
web tv
web radio

and on and on… also mp3 player and dvd burner, but there are now tivos that can do that.

The tivo software is really a beaut’ however, and htpc software hasn’t caught up yet in some respects, like auto scheduled suggestions based on viewing habits.