Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:19:28 -0700, stryped wrote:

Wes Newell wrote:
Go to ebay and buy a couple of old Air2PC Rev.02 cards for $25 each.
These are OTA only. They don't do QAM.

Put together a cheap PC equal to a 754 Sempron 2800+ or faster. Use a
board with 4 or more PCI slots. Fry's has these on sale almost every
other week lately for $79 (Nforce-3A MB and Sempron 3100+). Add 512M
ram, An Nvidia FX5200 or faster video card. 120GB minimum HDD. Figure
7GB per hour of storage you want and buy accordingly. Rec. 300GB or
more. Now put it all together, download KnoppMyth and install it. See
sig line.

I run mythbackend server and 3 clients off this, with one being on this
machine, and one on each of my other TV's/Monitor's. A client only
machine cost about $200. I can record up to 4 HDTV shows at once.

Can anyone explain to me in lamens and newbie terms what that is?

What "that" are you talking about?

Can I actually build an over the air HD tuner for my old tv's in the
house?

Well, you can't build the actual HD tuner, but you can buy them and put
them in a PC and end up with a box that will record and/or display HD
downconverted to 480i on your old TV. If that's what you are asking.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

Alan Figgatt wrote:

Looking back at your earlier posts, if you are 20 miles from the
broadcast towers and all the digital channels are UHF, a Channel Master
4221 (or 3021) 4 Bay Bowtie will work. I have one in my attic and it
picks up the Washington DC stations at 16 miles and the Baltimore
stations (with occasional dropouts for the weakest channel) at some 42
miles. It is still large, but 1/2 the size of the CM4228. Or perhaps
something smaller with a still wider beamwidth might fill the bill.

Good info!

I'm all for small and discrete

So will check it out

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

Wes Newell wrote:

Duriing the transition of it from the attic to the top of the house I had
it sitting on top a patio table and it worked ok even with the roof
blocking line of sight. I don't know how well it would work inside the
apartment. Too many unknown variables to say. But for best performance,
outside with line of site would be much preferred.

Understand

But I rent and cant always put the antenna where I want

And I like small and compact things that are easily
moved by one person (me)

Plus I'm lazy and don't like a lot of installation
problems. g

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

Wes Newell wrote:

Any advice on something low cost that does the job
well? Or is everything still above $500?

Build your own for a lot less.

Wes

What you think abt using one of these slim line PCs
form HP as a base for a HD pvr?

http://tinyurl.com/h4lvl

Has a laptop Pent M cpu in it
And I can buy the whole system at Costco cheap

Only has one internal slot tho. That's OK as I only
want one tuner

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

Wes Newell wrote:

Any advice on something low cost that does the job
well? Or is everything still above $500?

Build your own for a lot less.

Question... there is NO WAY you'd buy a set top box to
do above?

You'd always build your own huh?

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:11:22 -0500, me wrote:

Wes Newell wrote:

Any advice on something low cost that does the job
well? Or is everything still above $500?

Build your own for a lot less.

Wes

What you think abt using one of these slim line PCs
form HP as a base for a HD pvr?

http://tinyurl.com/h4lvl

Has a laptop Pent M cpu in it
And I can buy the whole system at Costco cheap

Only has one internal slot tho. That's OK as I only
want one tuner.

Certainly wouldn't buy a Celeron based system from the start. I think
you'd be wasting your money.. I wouldn't spend more than $300 on the
system If i just wanted one tuner to start, but I'd sure want room to
expand it to 2 or more tuners. If you have a Fry's close by, wait til they
run a sale on an AMD Sempron 3100+ with the ECS Nforce-3A MB For $79 again
and get that. Add 512MB PC3200 ram, a TR2-M6 CPU cooler, a 128MB FX5200
video card with dvi and svideo out, a CDrom or DVDrom/writer, and start
with at least 2 tuners. You won't regret it at only $25 each. Put it in
the case of your choice. I bought a black case with 500W PSU and side fan
for $25 from CMI. Worked great. Throw in a 250GB or larger HDD, a KB/mouse
and you're set. Total cost should be under $400. If you need a monitor, I
bought a 19" on sale Best Buy for $69 after rebate. I use that as the Tv
in my bedroom. for real HDTV. If you are going to use an old analog TV,
just use the Svideo out of the video card. That's what I dd for my wifes
TV. Each location reuires a PC, but only the one running the master
backend server requires tuners and HDD's.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:12:18 -0500, me wrote:

Wes Newell wrote:

Any advice on something low cost that does the job
well? Or is everything still above $500?

Build your own for a lot less.

Question... there is NO WAY you'd buy a set top box to
do above?

You can't record with just a STB. There's no way I'd buy an HDTV recorder
that was limited to just 1 or 2 tuners and one tv set. And there's no way
I'm going to pay for one and then have to continue paying for guide
service every month forever.

You'd always build your own huh?

No, with analog NTSC, I had an S1 Tivo (didn't require guide data to
record), an RCA DRS7000N (free OTA guide data, I still recorded manually),
and a couple of VCR's all hooked to the same TV.

I really haven't bult any per se. I bought tuner cards and installed in my
existing PC (already running Linux) and installed the MythTV software.
That was that. Now fro the other locations, I built bare PC's so they
could run a MythTV clients (frontends) off my server. As far as PC's go,
yes, I always build my own, if you call putting the parts together and
installing the software building them.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

Wes Newell wrote:

Certainly wouldn't buy a Celeron based system from the start.

Agree

I def would not go celeron.... Id get the Pent M model
only

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

Wes Newell wrote:

You can't record with just a STB. There's no way I'd buy an HDTV recorder
that was limited to just 1 or 2 tuners and one tv set. And there's no way
I'm going to pay for one and then have to continue paying for guide
service every month forever.

I see your argument above


I should have said STB with hard drive in it....as that
is what I meant

I'm just so cramped for time anyone that I'm not sure I
want to mess around with assembling one and then
installing Windows OS and Myth and all that.

Sometimes I think id just as soon buy a STB with hard
drive that has all programming in firmware

Any cheap off air HD receiver boxes with PVR functions yet?
 

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:38:07 -0500, me wrote:

Wes Newell wrote:

You can't record with just a STB. There's no way I'd buy an HDTV recorder
that was limited to just 1 or 2 tuners and one tv set. And there's no way
I'm going to pay for one and then have to continue paying for guide
service every month forever.

I see your argument above


I should have said STB with hard drive in it....as that
is what I meant

I'm just so cramped for time anyone that I'm not sure I
want to mess around with assembling one and then
installing Windows OS and Myth and all that.

You won't have to worry about installing windows. it doesn't run on
Windows.:-)
You would install from a single CD like Knoppmyth. It installs a somewhat
bare debian based linux system along with all required MythTV modules for
you. you don't need to know anything about Linux to install it. it will
ask you questions and you answer. Takes about 15 minutes maybe. So go
ahead and screw it up a few times.:-) Hit the reset button and start over.


Sometimes I think id just as soon buy a STB with hard drive that has all
programming in firmware

There's always the Sony model if that's what you want. The Tivo S3 may be
out by September, but it's going to really cost you and arm and a leg. And
then the corner of your mouth where they can put the hook in to keep you
making those monthly payments.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm