Making your own TiVo?

[Spook01]

I don't feel like paying a monthly fee for Tivo if i could just do it for free with the PCs i have, so how would I go about making my own tivo?

I have an extra computer that i could put in the living room and dedicate to recording shows. Would a 1400 mhz athlon, 512 ddr ram cut it?

I currently have a geforce3 in this computer, which im planning on upgrading, so once that happens, the makeshift tivo box will have a geforce3. Because of that, i dont want to buy an AiW card for it. What are some good video capture cards that wont cost me an arm and leg? I'd perfer if it had a remote control.

What kind of software should i look into?

Lastly, would i suffer any type of quality lost for doing this? Im not gonna hook it up to a monitor, its gonna be hooked up to my TV. And, i have direct tv satelite; they have tivo avialable for it, so this should work for directtv right?

[Siliconjunkie]

http://www.snapstream.com/ will do the trick.

[Xtreeme]

You guys here ati is looking into makeing a sat tuner for PC! Its gonna resemble a floppy drive but take your access card! That rocks. Been about 8-12 months since they mentioned it so id say soon it may appear without warning! I'll buy one. THey were saying ruffly a $60 item by prediction alone. Only one resisting is Tivo cause it will kill their service with us pc freaks. Too bad-boohoo. Tivo is unreal $.

[ArcticFox]

Originally posted by Xtreeme
Only one resisting is Tivo cause it will kill their service with us pc freaks. Too bad-boohoo. Tivo is unreal $.

Not only will they lose money from us (that we wouldn't have paid anyways), but they won't get the user data from the boxes. Meaning, they can't find out how many times you watch the "boob scene" if you transfer it to your TivoPC.

Ok, ok, I'll let it die.... No one mention the boob thing again.

[tony_j15]

Ya know, I was watching the boob thing again the other day....

Snapstream is very good! Also, you don't need to buy an AIW card, ATI makes PCI based recorder cards. The main thing is make sure you have a TON of hard drive space. Depending on your encoding settings, it will eat about a GB an hour.

[joker_927]

I bought this TV tuner and it works really well for what I use it for (transfering VHS to DVD)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...122-181&depa=0

[tonyromen]

I seriously considered doing the same thing. But then my girlfriend went out and got me a TiVo. I don't mind paying the monthly fee. I think it's entirely worth it. The elegance of the entire experience is top notch and probably can't be fully expressed in words, only through experience.

I do wish they made it easier to take stuff off the box without getting into hardcore hacking of the box.

IMO of course...

.:T:.