MythTV
I’ve thought about building a MythTV unit for quite a while now. Back in Florida, I had friends with Tivo’s that swore by them. From what I’ve seen and heard they are a great gadget to have, although some recent changes in Tivo’s strategies have made them slightly less attractive. There were always a few things that kept me from building a MythTV, tho. Mainly it was the price, but there were also a few technical issues. As I use Time Warner and have digital cable, I have a set-top box that I have to use to access the higher channels and there didn’t seem to be a good way to connect it to a MythTV.
Yesterday a few guys in the office were talking about Tivo and asked me what I knew about it. I laid out what I knew, and they had the same reaction to the recent ad and DRM changes. I mentioned MythTV and that piqued everyone’s interest, and from looking around their website some more mine as well. To get it to talk to my set top box it seems the only real answer is with an IR Relay (You use a remote to talk to the MythTV, and it has an IR transmitter to talk to the set-top box). The price on the Hauppauge PVR-250 has come down a bit to around $130. Using that card’s hardware MPEG support, you can get pretty cheap on the processor and get something like a 2Ghz Celeron for just over $50 via NewEgg. Put the whole thing in a HTPC case like the Silversone Lascala or the Cavalier 4 and it would look just like a regular piece of AV equipment. Personally I would prefer a slimmer case, but given that it could replace my DVD Player, Set Top Box, and (to some extent, won’t play VHS but I really don’t care about that) VCR, I think I could live with the extra size.
Just running some preliminary numbers on the price:
- Processor: $60
- PVR-250 : $130
- Motherboard: about $50
- Memory: $50 – $100 (probably only need 512M, but 1Gig might help.. don’t really know)
- Hard Drive: $100
- DVD Burner: around $50
That comes to around $500, but there’s probably a bit more that needs to be added in there for the IR stuff, Network stuff, etc. I might be able to get the price down even a bit further by cannibalizing parts from some other machines I have. Is it worth $500? I’m not entirely sure, but there has to be some value in being able to consolidate 3 different remotes into 1 remote (TV + Cable + DVD), having some control over it’s features & functions, and being able to digitally record stuff on TV. Would also be nice for building a small catalog of some of Rhianna’s favorite stuff so we don’t have to keep switching out DVD’s or flipping channels.
So, I’m looking for some advice. Cases, specs, hardware, anything. One other consideration was to simply buy a Mac Mini and configure it as a MythTV unit, but the price seems higher than building it myself. Is there other considerations that make it more attractive? The size alone makes it interesting to me, but I don’t think I can justify $800 for one.
[tag:mythtv][tag:pvr][tag:tivo]
