Topic awaiting preservation: REQ: info about setting up a computer based Tivo setup (Page 1 of 1)

Okay - just kinda thinking out the side of my head.

I'm somewhat interested in setting up a TV capture card where I can record TV shows on hd, then do some minor editing (remove commercials, etc). Ultimately, I'd dump to DVD (who doesn't want a full DVD of "The Nanny"?).

I know, I could just reload my machine with Windows XP MCE, but I'm not inclined to do that.

I'm looking for recommendations from things you've USED. I can Google just like you, but I'm looking for past experiments, and what you've found that works (or doesn't).

Thanks!

PS - Keep in mind that this is for typical broadcast and basic cable stuff. 5.1 Dolby and the like aren't really needed.

Anyone?

I've been looking at something like the WinTV-PVR-350, along with an external USB drive of the mega-size type.

If you have a reasonable digital video camera, I've found one of the easiest ways to capture from the TV is to jack the TV through to the camera via component video / A/V or S-video, and firewire the camera to the computer into a video editing program and capture like that.

-Xel

I believe what you are lookin' for is MythTV. It does require a lgood chunk of linux knowledge and a lot of fiddling around. If you're not too familiar with linux, there is a distro based on knoppix with but tweaked for mythtv support called knoppmyth. It simplifies quite a bit (but not all) of the installation and configuration. Mythtv just came out with a new release so if you plan on using knoppmyth give it a little time to catch up and come out with a new release as well.

I am planning some experiments with Sceneo's TVcentral or the free Media-portal. Combined with an trusty win2k setup, AMD Athlon 2400, 512MB of ram and two hardisks. The first HD will be used for OS and the programs the second for the video/sound dats. I am doubting about an DVD writer or an CD Writer. The Graphics card is going to be most likely an ATI Radeoon 8500LE , which has only an silent pasive cooler. For the cooling of the CPU i will use an Zalman system with all those copper blades sticking out and a big fan hovering above it.
The TV-tuner card is going to be an analogue brandless card with wdm drivers i have laying around. To complete this whole thing i am looking for an little LCD screen on the front of the case which could show some data like artist/song when playing mp3s or channel/program when watching tv or the start/stop time when in video mode. Ofcourse i do need an remote control which uses infra red to comunicate with my comp. Both the remote and the LCD are being resaeched by me at the moment.

My girlfriend and me are saving money for an big world journey so i cannot spend a lot of money on the tivo system thus a lot off DIY and spare parst are needed.
The Win PVR from Haupage works realy well with the earlier mentioned media portal i believe.

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Support Justice for Pat Richard

quote:

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who doesn't want a full DVD of "The Nanny"?

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me.

There's a couple of questions here.

First is if you want TiVO like functionality or if you just want to record from TV.

MythTV is probably the best TiVO type software package out there. However it's Linux based so that can be problematic.

Check out the Install Docs because that has a lot of good information, not just about MythTV but some general tips about types of Encoder cards. (especially the hardware vs. software encoding cards.)



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

Well, I have some needs, but basically, they are that I be able to record & store broadcast TV, and that I be able to edit out commercials, and burn the resulting data to a DVD that can be played on a standard (non-PC)DVD player. I would make the DVD when I have enough recorded to create a full disk. So, I record several hours of NYPD Blue, and have a disk full of commercial free episodes.

Drive space, memory, and processing power aren't a problem. I just need to determine which capture card & software to use.

I've also done some reading about SageTV