Noob looking to build a PVR with lots of questions

[bank5]

I'm planning on buying an HDTV and would like to be able to record shows on my computer and play them back on the TV. I'll either use satellite or OTA for the feed.

What tv tuner would you recommend? Also do I need to get a video card?

My computer is a P4 3.0 Ghz, 2.5 GB of Ram, and 70 GB Hard Drive. I'll likely get a bigger hard drive so I can record more shows.

Is installing and configuring gbpvr pretty straight forward? Is there anything else I should consider?

Thanks for the help and information!

[Zato]

I'm out of the loop on HD content, but for the rest.

Yes, you'll need a video card - look for one that supports the best connection to your TV.

Get as big a HD as you can afford. You think you won't need that much space? You will.

You'll need to consider your sound options. Does your PC have digital sound output?

[smajor]

Most of your questions are probably in a thread here already, somewhere. I know a few years ago I was a noob and asked a lot of them myself.

I have HD working smoothly. I'm delighted. My final specs are close to yours: 3.2Ghz P4, 2GB RAM, and 160GB hard drive.

For me, I have Time Warner Cable in the US, so I settled on an HD-PVR for the tuner. Your choice would depend on your area and if your Satellite works well with an IR blaster or, better yet, allows channel changing via firewire. I don't know much about OTA because I live in the boonies and we don't get one single OTA channel.

For me, the hardest part was the video card. Maybe it is my motherboard specs, or the fact that I have a P4 (the specs for the HD-PVR recommend at least a Core Duo), but I had a lot of stuttering problems.

I initially tried an nVidia 8500GT (512MB / 128bit), but actually found that my 7900GT (256MB / 256bit) worked MUCH better. Maybe it was the increased bus speed with the PCIe. Both cards do hardware acceleration and 16x PCIe and more than meet the specs, so I admit I'm still scratching my head on that one. But the 8500GT is in my gaming PC now, so the explosions are pretty.

My advice would be to not get overwhelmed and get one thing working at a time e.g. get the video from the TV source working, then worry about channel guides, then channel changing.

[bank5]

Thanks for the help.

I was looking around and found this tv tuner and graphics card. How do you think they would work?

http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/Search.do...x=0&go.y=0

http://www.amazon.com/PNY-Verto-GeForce-...736&sr=1-1

[JavaWiz]

Wow $20 for a HVR-1600 seems like a great price!

It actually has two tuners on it (analog and ATSC or QAM), so you can watch one channel and record another, or record two shows at once.

The HVR-1800 is basically the same thing but runs off a PCIe slot instead, so depending on your motherboard, you could go either way.

Can't say much about the video, I have a GeForce 7600 and it seems to work fine. On the video front, as long as the card is powerful enough, you'll just have to play around with the Video Decoders BDA Multiplexers (for your QAM/OTA channels ) until you get the right combination.

[wannabepvr]

I was able to play some HD on a 6600GT but it was not as smooth as I would have liked. The 9500GT is pretty well priced at the moment, and there are some ATI options that are well priced also.

The thing that is hard with HD is there are many different image sizes and even more encoding formats. It you under-bake your graphics you will be frustrated with any results you get.

On the other hand, almost anything will do SD A lot of us seemed to be using 5200s for a while. Even onboard graphics will propably do. Maybe you should start there and get everything else set up?

[bank5]

Get as big a HD as you can afford. You think you won't need that much space? You will.

I'll probably get a 500-750GB hard drive. I don't watch a ton of tv but figure it will also be useful for backing up my file, pictures and videos.

You'll need to consider your sound options. Does your PC have digital sound output?

How can I check if my pc has digital sound output? It's a Dell Dimension 4700. I think it can support up to a 7.1 speaker system so I'm assuming I can connect it to my home theater system.

[lenor]

I'm planning on buying an HDTV and would like to be able to record shows on my computer and play them back on the TV. I'll either use satellite or OTA for the feed.

how will you want to get your recordings over to the HDTV? perhaps you might concider buying a hd-streaming client, which does a lot of work for the computer. many people here are discussing the use of the Popcornhour ...