Building a budget PVR ...

[nfredrick]

I have an old computer laying around that I thought I could try to turn into a PVR. I read an article about using an old PC to do so. My question was, just how old can you go?

I have an old 800 MHZ Athlon thunderbird with 512 MB of SDRAM. I've found a pvr/tuner card that will run on an 800 MHZ processor (AVerMedia MULTRA1500). I read that the recomended processor speed for GB-PVR was 1 GHz. Does any one have any experience with such an old chipset? I'm not really interested in rewinding or fast forwarding "live" video. I’m mainly interested in the on screen TV guide, the recording and the other HTPC aspects. Thanks.

[dneprrider]

I have an old computer laying around that I thought I could try to turn into a PVR. I read an article about using an old PC to do so. My question was, just how old can you go?

I have an old 800 MHZ Athlon thunderbird with 512 MB of SDRAM. I've found a pvr/tuner card that will run on an 800 MHZ processor (AVerMedia MULTRA1500). I read that the recomended processor speed for GB-PVR was 1 GHz. Does any one have any experience with such an old chipset? I'm not really interested in rewinding or fast forwarding "live" video. I’m mainly interested in the on screen TV guide, the recording and the other HTPC aspects. Thanks.

My first GBPVR system was with a 600MHz P3, 512MB RAM, MX440 s-video graphics card and PVR150 card. The system worked fine for recording and watching recordings. The only issue was slow menu changes, but perfectable acceptable considering the budget price.

GBPVR worked so well it suckered me into the whole HTPC scene and now I am on my third system in over a year. I even went and upgraded to a 42" plasma to round out the whole system.

Once you start you get hooked and want a better and better system because it is so much fun.

Welcome to the club....

[Filip]

Welcome nfrederick, I just joined and I'm in the same boat as you. I've started a thread to list out what I've done so far if you want to take a look:
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?p=162445

In short, I think your hardware will do what you want, but the menus will be a little sluggish. I think that's acceptable considering we're below the minimum.

I want to experiment more with tweaking GB-PVR soon. Let me know if you come up with something!