PVR Hardware
After a few days of research, I’ve come up with the following potential hardware configuration for a home-built PVR:
- Inwin BT610G MicroATX case
MicroATX cases have a very small form factor, about the size of an average VCR. - Chaintech 7NIF2 motherboard
This model of motherboard fits the main criteria I am looking for:- it’s microATX, so it’ll fit into the case I’ve chosen.
- It’s known to work well with the Linux distribution I’m considering.
- It has onboard audio, ethernet, and video.
- The onboard video has TV-out to serve as a backup in case I can’t get the TV card’s TV-out to work correctly.
- AMD Athlon 2400+ CPU
A powerful yet relatively inexpensive CPU. - Hauppauge WinTV PVR350 TV card
The PVR350 has both decoder and encoder chips onboard, so it can both process an incoming video stream as well as an outgoing one without having to use the host CPU very much. - 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM
512MB is pretty universally considered by the homebrew PVR community to be more than enough memory for a PVR box. - 200GB 7200RPM Seagate hard drive
Noise level is apparently the biggest concern (after capacity) for most people when building a PVR. Seagates are generally considered to be quieter than Western Digitals, which would usually be my hard drive brand of choice.
Additionally, I’m strongly considering using KnoppMyth, a MythTV-centric single-CD Linux distribution, as my base system.
As it currently stands, the hardware configuration I’ve chosen will cost approximately US$475 before shipping costs. I’m not placing the order yet, though; more research is definitely warranted before I dive in.
