Low Cost PVR Box, was: RE: Showshifter vs. Tivo - the final score, Sky + Wins

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxx>]

I'd use the "regular" suppliers like ebuyer, novatech, scan, reds= tore
On a quick glance, you can get a PC together capable of AV goodness as
follows:

ATX Case:      15
(no name, crappy, but it's *just* a box..)
Mobo:          100
(ABit KR7A - stonking board with RAID and DDR)
CPU:           64
(Athlon XP 1600+ 266FSB)
Fan:           11
(Coolermaster, XP rated)
Ram:            &nbs= p;  28
(256Mb DDR2100 SDRAM)
HDD:           60 &n= bsp; x2:  120
(40Gb ATA133, 7200rpm)
Keyboard/Mouse: 5
(no-name cheapy: although I would use a wireless one myself)
TV Card:        76
(WinTV Theatre, has 5.1 pass through, and native 4.1 sound card ;))

So, total cost: =A3419 ex vat. That's for a pretty kick-ass machine,
considerably higher specced than I use for SS myself.

Design decisions:
Abit Mobo, would be cheaper without RAID. With a 7200RPM disk and a decent<= BR> controller, you won't drop frames anyway, but for *very* high quality
capture: full res, 25fps and being able to compress straight to DivX withou= t
any issues, the extra headroom is not too expensive.
DDR and an XP proc add more to the cost, but again, give overhead to allow<= BR> the PC to do other useful stuff whilst being a PVR.
WinTV Card seems better specced than the AIW's just now, and the dscaler technology (not available for ATI chipsets yet, possibly ever) is a big
hitter.
Drop the second HDD and lose another =A360.

Worth noting: this is not some "cobble together" ( ;) at Mark M) = It's a very
capable AV PC.. the "flakiness" comes entirely from the software.=

My footnote: I am *not* a dedicated follower of SS. I just don't think Tivo=
is either a company I wish to give more power to, or a solution to my needs= .

Ian.

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