# Making a TIVO at home...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-tivo-at-home/242176>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [April 26, 2004, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-tivo-at-home/242176 "2004-04-26T23:36:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![SSgtBaloo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac91a4/32.png) [@SSgtBaloo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SSgtBaloo)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-tivo-at-home/242176/1 "2004-04-26T23:36:56Z")

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Well, not _really_ a TIVO. And not at home either. I may be moving in with my nephew in a few weeks (hard times – don’t ask) and he’s something of a Luddite technophile (if such a thing is possible). He likes to buy these things and use them, but is (almost) completely resistant to learning anything about how they work.

Anyway, he doesn’t like the recurrent problems associated with recording things to watch later on video tape and I suggested that when I move in, we could probably build a hard drive recorder.

Has anyone else done this (I’m sure someone has)? If so, please tell me some of the pitfalls to avoid. I figure an older Pentium platform running Linux might do the job. My nephew’s dad used to work for IBM. He’s a Linuxite and avoids Windows like the plague. What will my parts list look like and how can this be done with the least cash outlay (balanced, of course against future aggravation caused by _excessive_ cheapness)? I’m asking for anecdotes, tips, suggestions, lists of parts, etc.

Have a nut! I await your responses.

–SSgtBaloo

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-tivo-at-home/242176/2 "2004-04-27T02:33:13Z")

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The two biggest software projects for homegrown DVRs are [MythTV](http://www.mythtv.org/) and [Freevo](http://freevo.sourceforge.net/). Both projects have reccomended hardware and OS configurations. Good luck!