Right. I'm looking at building a system to cater for my parents ridiculous viewing habits. They have around 60 VHS tapes which they religiously record EVERYTHING onto. What makes this feat even more impressive is that they only have the 5 terrestrial channels at their disposal My brother and I want to shift them over to freeview and obviously a built-in hard disk recorder isn't going to cut the mustard. Whatever solution we go for, it has to be extremely simple to use as the pair of them are pensioners. So, your ideas catering for the following criteria would be appreciated:

1) A minimum of 240 hours of recording space, consideration for HD capacity at a later date.
2) RAID 5.
3) A simple interface with a channel guide, series link, etc.*
4) Standard format TV interface (for example, SCART, component), plus HD format interface for future requirements (HDMI presumably).
5) A Dual layer DVD recorder, with uprgradable to Blu-Ray in future.
6) Output to 2 TVs plus recording of 2 channels additionally, so 4 tuners I presume.*

Now, RAID 5 would rule out a slimline box next to the telly unless it's possible to link it all up to a separate box elsewhere?*

Your thoughts would be most appreciated


*I'm thinking GB-PVR caters for these needs, but would be very interested in anything else that you can think of

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small powerfull computer under the tv with myth TV
NAS box in another room ?

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lol sounds like some people that I know, they don't realise that they HAVE to get atleast a freeview box or no more telly.
Going to maybe considering freesat HD when a few more channels become available, and they will be having built in epc and hdd etc....

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works for my mate - has a media PC under the telly, NAS is the garage, and Logitech squeeboxes dotted about

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Tried mythtv with alot of frustration but is the "media centre"-type solution. May give it another crack

Have recently tried kaffeine with Ubuntu and works a charm. Records at 51.6Mb/min (just tested it ) in either std def and HD channels.

Which means 3.096Gb/hour which means about 12.5Gb free space is required minimum. Approx. 80hours for a 250Gb hard drive, so whack in a 500Gb.



Not sure if you can get HDMI gfx cards but tbh, DVI=HDMI, just alot smaller. Same leads/connections, just smaller connection. Hopefully the telly has DVI connection. You should be able to easily source a DVI>HDMI lead anyway.


Raid 5 for a slimline = Drobo or eSATA headers with SATA enclosures (if mobo supports 6 eSATA drives) - they would be a bit more afordable but the drobo would be a neater solution


Blu-Ray SATA drives should be a reality already but my question is the throughput in the FSB for Blu-Ray. Then there's the media cost - but is there ANY blank Blu-Ray media? SATA optical drive should be fine


Four tuners would be correct, unless you get a double header card. You can get Dual DVB-T PCI-E cards that can show one channel and record the other and most mobos have 2xPCI-E
slots.


Good luck with that You MAY be able to get LIRC to work with an IR remote in Ubuntu.

In summary, if Ubuntu with kaffeine or the mythbuntu solution doesn't work, may I suggest Vista Home Premium? If going this option, make sure the tuners are Media Centre compliant for easier build

Good luck and it's nice ur paying for it Beefy! Nice touch

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hdmi vid cards are easy to get, and you can just put in 2 tuner cards or buy a dual tuner

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dreambox with added hdd

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I got power cinema with my tv tuner, you might want to try it, nice looking and very simple.

I'm still working on adding a card reader so i can record movies from my sky subscription

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