A PVR setup

[specofdust]

Hi all, I'm looking to learn alot about PVR's and very fast too. I only recently stumbled across the idea in any detail, and now think it's a fantastic sounding device. I just gave up using VCR to record shows a while back becasue the quality is such tat, but a PVR could be great.

Heres the deal, my birthday is coming up in a few days time, and I've been thinking I could get a 28" or 32" CRT, along with some of the kit for a PVR, but I need to know what other peoples thoughts on a few things are.

Firstly, is an always-on internet connection absolutely vital, or could I survive just by using the 56k that I have now, and updating program schedules every night or so?

Secondly, if I got say a Hauppauge PVR-250(or any of the x50 cards), would that be all I'd need to process a television signal? I'd obviously need an ariel as well, but I wouldn't need a freeview box or anything would I?

Third: Freeview signal in our area isn't great, in the near future I'll hopefully be gaining access to a proper large outdoor ariel that we use already on another TV and works fine, but untill then, would it be possible to buy a very good internal ariel and recieve most services? Bearing in mind that a bog standard ariel doesn't even get ITV and C5 in a few of my neighbours houses.

Fourth: Would SageTV be a good idea for a UK PVR? Or are they too american-centric, and would MythTV be better for a UK shindig, or just in general? Would SageTV work well with a couple of PVR-x50 cards so I could record more then one show at a time?

Fifth: Are there actually big differences between the various PVR x50 cards from Hauppauge? Is there one I should really be aiming for?

Lastly: For around the £200-300 mark, could I actually get a decent sized decent quality LCD screen, or would whatever I got be crap and small? CRT may be a fat technology, but I know it's very good value for money, and very good in general, so I generaly favour it.

Price range overall for this whole project is probably somewhere roughly around the £500 mark, but that's very rough for now. If anyone could refer me to a good forum on PVR's that'd be great also. Thanks for any and all advice folks.

[Byatt]

Right...in the order you asked them, I'll try to give my answers!

Always on internet - you can get away without it, I reckon, if you're only planning to get terrestrial channel information - it'll still take a fair while though. If you want to get the snazzy functions of a PVR, such as being able to set it to record from somewhere else, you'll obviously need an always on connection.

A PVR-250 in a PCI slot and a decent aerial would get the terrestrial channels out of the air (1-5) and encode it to mpeg-2 for you - you won't be able to get digital freeview with it though.

Internal aerials - my thoughts are stay away, especially if you intend to get freeview off it at any time in the future! Get a proper approved one (any site that does freeview postcode checks should link to some help) if you can, I would say...guesswork on this one, though

SageTV - I don't know! I've spent the time since I've come back from uni putting together a mythtv system, and, although it's been my first dabble in linux, and sometimes it's been frustrating as hell, it's now at the stage where I am pleased I went for it - it is ridiculously feature rich.

If you've not done linux before (I hadn't) and if you are prepared to be a bit of a sheep and follow Jarod's guide to setting up mythtv on fedora core 3 you'll probably get by...

In terms of which tuner - if you choose the myth route the pvr250 is a good choice, as it'll encode mpeg2 for you (cuts down on cpu usage) and be supported pretty well. The 150 isn't quite as well supported afaik, so I'd avoid it. The 350 is the 250 with TV-Out and is fairly widely used, the 500 has two tuners...and is not that well supported yet, from what I can see.

If you want digital freeview my Nova-T seemed to work out of the box with the 2.6.12 kernel...as will quite a few other cards, check the linuxtv.org dvb wiki for details.

Myth will manage multiple tuners, in any case...don't know about sage.

As for a monitor...you won't get much LCD space for £2-300 pounds, I'd either get a CRT monitor or a fatty tv!

As for forums:
http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php are pretty good...if you go down the mythtv route, I highly recommend you get on the mythtv-users mailing list...the mythtvtalk forums are alright, but mostly, I'd stick to Jarod's guide and pray you don't hit trouble as often as I did.

[specofdust]

Great response, thanks. All the PVR X50 cards are only capable of recieving standard terrestrial chanells then? If I were to get a cheap freeview box, then could I output it's signal into the PVR 250? It's just everyone seems to like the happuage cards, and I'd like to go with the most popular/used tuner, or would I have to get a digital freeview tuner?

I don't really need any of the remote setup stuff, but getting all the freeview channel information would be a goal, is that asking too much from 56k?

Bottom line is, this thing has to be able to recieve a digital freeview signal, getting a PVR for the 5 analogue channels wouldn't be worth it, especially as the analogue signals getting cut of in 2009 where I am.

Link much apreciated, looks good! Thanks again.

[5lab]

for £300 i wouldnt look at a lcd - you will get a LOT more crt (and quality) for your money at any price point below around £600 (and even above there, you will still get more size for your money)

[specofdust]

Yeah, gonna go CRT. I can get a 28" sony(which I quite like) for £300, so I'll look into 28" wide CRT's.

[Byatt]

Yes - all the x50 cards are strictly analog only - you need to look at the Nova-T if you want a PCI freeview tuner - I'd recommend buying one of these over buying an x50 and pumping a freeview box into it - much cheaper, for a start, and does exactly the same job (i.e just gives you an mpeg-2 stream of whatever channel it's tuned to, CPU usage free!).

Getting all the freeview stuff takes a while on my (1Mbit) connection, well, I say a while, it's under 5 minutes, and I'm used to things being instant - but it doesn't have to be done that often...the xmltvguide listings last for 14 days iirc, so technically (if you didn't mind them being out of date if stuff changes) you could take 30mins or so every fortnight getting an update.

Thinking about it, you will want broadband if you build a mythbox, as you'll have to download a shedload of packages (I've filled an 8Gb / partition on mine!)

[Lee H]

Could always try the hybrid card but I don't know if this is supported by any media center software apart from MCE2005 at the present time ;

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/pro...a_hvr1100.html

[starbuck]

I have a pvr-350 and went through the same thing as you did before I bought it. I have cable tv so just run an arial out/svideo from cable box into tuner and it works perfectly.

as for software, I was introduced to GBPVR which is free(very good point), uk based and a damn good prog. also, you could try tv-cards.com which gives advice on all this as I found this site a while ago and got so much info from it.

when looking at freeview, prob better to get a card which can run freeview as if you have a separate box, you have to program the box for the right channel at a certain time and the program the software to record it. Freeview tuner will do all that for you.

[dshepsman]

if your gonna go for a freeview card try a Nebula card. it may not be an integrated video card, but quality is top notch, and a weeks listings takes about 1 min to download over 0.5Mb broadband - for all channels.

i got it for £100, but im not going back to analogue viewing again

[Spud1]

Are you dead set on making your PC into a PVR rather than buying a dedicated box?

I would take a serious look at Tivos, although they are not sold new anymore you can find plenty on ebay at reasonable prices.

Ive had mine for about 6 months now and love it - you wonder how you coped before Much better than any PC PVR system, especially if you upgrade it with a network card so you can connect it to your pc

[specofdust]

Hi again, sorry for lack of reply, was awway for a few days. I'm hoping to shortly have broadband, but I guess if I can't get it I'll go with sageTV which is supposedly very good, and that way need to download lot's less then with mythTV.

Byatt: Why would I need a freeview box if I had a "Nova-T" which can recieve a freeview signal?

Avoiding MCE2005 right now because I doubt it's as good as some of the things out there, and it costs lot's, but thanks anyway WildMonkey.

I'm wanting to buy a freeview TV card starbuck, so hopefully I'll be able too, but it seems confusing enough just trying to find one of those that's supported.

Dshepman: checking out the nebula, I read a review once and it was good, but it would need to be compatible with whatever software I get I guess. I don't need an integrated video card, a passive fx5200 will do that.

And Spud1, I am definately going to get a computer to do the job, that way I can have frontends all over my house eventually, it's more upgradable, and I beleive you can do alot more with the things. Plus if I don't like it I can install other software, or use the box as a file server.

TiVo's seem expensive, rare, and it just seems abit of a gray area with support etc. I feel like a PVR would be easier in many way.

[bennydad]

try the humax 8000t pvr - its cheap and self contained and has a freeview box built in.

[Byatt]

I meant pumping the freeview box into the pvr250

With the nova-t, as you rightly say, you've got all you need - decided what to do yet?

[specofdust]

I'm waiting to find out about a possible source of some extra money, which could open up my options. I've decided to definately not go for an all in one unit like the Humax or anything else, it's either all or nothing for me .

Gonna go for a CRT display, since they cost so much less, and I could get a high quality one for £500 fairly easily.

I'll be building a full media centre PVR, very tempted by the Nova-T, and will look into what PVR OS's it supports, hopefully it can manage mythTV. If not, SageTV seems worth a look to. THanks very much for the help folks, I might be back in a few weeks to finalise some details, but regardless, you've all been very helpfull

[madmaca]

I built a Shuttle based HTPC / PVR box and it works a treat. It uses Windows MCE and a Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE. I read in numerous places that the PVR-150 MCE was actually "better" than the 250, since it used an updated chipset. Don't know if that is true - but the PVR-150 MCE is certainly cheap enough (about £50) and does a great job.

I record from Sky using the output normally plugged into the video - straight into the line-in of the PVR-150. If you buy a Windows MCE remote, it comes with an IR Blaster that will change your Sky box channel when you have shdeuled a recording.

All in all - I am very happy - go for it - they are great and your mates will be soooo jealous!