paging darsy: PVR

What s/w did you use for your PVR project again? And, as far as you know,
does it support DVB cards? Also, is it vaguely scriptable or automatable -
for instance, presuming there's a module to grab a schedule from somewhere,
can you automatically create recording "jobs" for each thing in the
schedule?

TIA etc

 

....and will I be able to make a quiet one (120 Gb) for £300?

 

not sure - you'd need to check the website. I know it supports multiple
tuners, but not sure what /sort/ of tuners.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I use XMLTV to grab listings once a
week, and these are directly read by GB-PVR, which you can then tell
"always record programs with this name, whenever they're on" - is that
what you mean?

Alternatively, GB-PVR is easily extensible - there are a big range of
plug-ins already, and I'm sure a 1/2-way technically competant guy like
yourself would be able to sort something out...

 

not "with all the trimmings", no. Fairly basic, and not with a nice
box, maybe.

 

OK, I was wondering about something along the lines of getting an entire
schedule for a channel, say for a day, and then recording *every* programme,
separately, in that schedule. I imagine if there's a relatively
straightforward API it would be a doddle

 

ah. I've not tried it, but I *think* if you just go "record now" on a
channel, it has an option to split all the programmes into seperate
files and lose the adverts.

 

So don't buy the shuttle one, bet I can find a way to put one together
at a similar spec for under £300, and with better spec than a 120Gb
drive...

OK, here goes - took me 5 mins.

Soltek EQ3704GD £125.72
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Soltek_barebones.html

AMD Sempron 2200+ 1.50GHz (Socket A) £ 30.49
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/AMD_Sempron.html

2 x Crucial 256MB DDR PC2700 £ 51.58
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Crucial_Value.html

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 200GB £ 65.21
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/maxtor_ide.html

Total (and all these prices include VAT) £273

Plus a bit for keyboards, mice, etc...

There you go, job's a good un.

 

Might need to add a CPU cooler... call it an extra £20..

Still under budget.

 

I built a Shuttle system for under £300 - bought the barebones system,
memory and CPU as a package deal from Aria. Transferred the old 120gb
hard drive and DVD/CDRW from my old system, but even factoring those in
will get the cost to within a few quid of three hundred quid. Virtually
silent operation and gives a good display on the telly using the onboard
graphics card. Just need to source a TV tuner for it now, if I can be
arsed.

 

And a fair bit for a decent TVTuner/PVR card...

 

Hmm, I thought they were only about £10?

 

A tad more than that. For the darsy/Champ one, £100ish quid

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?product_uid=45466

 

Ahh, I'd got one of these sat on my shelf, which is my only experience
with a TV card. It works ok.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=
4300418349&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=36428

 

AMD Shuttle Bundle SK41G/1600/256 , Item Price = £149.99, Quantity = 1

256MB PC2700 DDR RAM (DDR333) , Item Price = £20.95, Quantity = 1

Plus hard drive, optical drive (I didn't use a DVD recorder, just a
DVD-ROM / CDRW) and TV card.

Don't really know what the drives and TV card would cost, but I'm not a
million miles away from £300 if I add a basic TV card to mine.

 

So I'd be just as well off to buy an off the shelf HDD DVD recorder?

Are you back now?

 

That's the point that Ginge missed as well. It's not a basic TV card,
it's a PVR card and they're a fair bit more.

 

You do know that's a sitcom, not "female seeking male" personal ads,
don't you?

 

only if all you want to do is record programmes to HD or DVD.

Yup - the pause live TV is great if you're at at good bit in something
and the phone goes or whatever.

The programming guide in GB-PVR is better than the one that comes with
the Telewest STB we have.

I haven't got around to that yet, mainly because - living in a house
with actual real other people - I rarely listen to music in the room
where people watch TV.

GB-PVR has an IMDB plug-in, so you can look stuff up without having to
drop out of PVR mode into PC mode.

 

Are you talking about "Desperate Housewives" (C4, 10pm last night)?

If so I'd hardly call it a "sitcom".

--
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Kawasaki ZX-6R J1, Fiat Coupe 20v Turbo
BOTAFOT#2,ITJWTFO#6,UKRMRM#1/13a,MCT#1,DFV#2,SKoGA#0 (and KotL)
BotToS#5,SBS#25,IbW#34, DS#5, COSOC# Suspended, KotTFSTR#
The speccy Geordie twat.

 

Yes, that's the one.

Well, no, but that was the first word that came into my head, I realised
it wasn't correct, decided that I should think of something different,
thought about it a bit, decided that "drama series" wasn't quite what I
was after, then decided that this is only Usenet and I'd spent too long
thinking about it anyway so just hit Send. So shoot me.