Building a PVR for the computer-illiterate

[ionothanus]

Hello,

I bought myself a Sapphire Theatrix a while back, and have been quite happy with it and GB-PVR. My sister and her hubby saw me using it one day, and have now approached me with the task of building them a new system. They are looking to create one complete system for everything from e-mail to gaming to, of course, watching and recording TV. The TV bit will be on their actual TV, and everything else on a proper computer monitor. However, they have digital cable, and do not want to lose that with going to a home-brew PVR. I am wondering what can be done with this setup. Are there cards that can use the digital stream? Will her cable company curse her soul for ever more if she uses one of these cards? Or is it better to stick with the digital cable box and send an analog signal to the computer, as if it were just a plain-old TV? I've been happy with the Theatrix (the ATi T550P) but is there anything better for the price (driver issues aside)? I know a bit about TV-out capabilities on most video cards and I know that to enable/disable it the controls are generally buried off in the Display Properties window. Is there any way to bring it down to one or two clicks to switch between TV and monitor? I'm not worried about any other portions of the system, just the tuner and how to make all of this as user-friendly as possible. Thanks for your help.

[ChristianW]

Since GBPVR is not (currently?) supporting using soft-/hardcam's you can only get unencrypted channels via Digital Cable (presumably DVB-C).

-C-

[stefan]

GBPVR does not currently support DVB-C either, only DVB-S and DVB-T. Sorry. So for now you'd be better off with your own suggestion; the digital STB sending analog signals (preferably s-video) to your analog tuner card. Can't tell you if the theatrix is supported by gbpvr (it should say so on http://www.gbpvr.com).

You would need some sort of channel changer if you want gpbvr (and you will want to) to change channels on the box for you when it records stuff. The USB-UIRT is popular.

As to the switching between TV/monitor - many (most/all?) support using bot the tv out and the monitor out at the same time - hence the problem would go away, I guess.

[ionothanus]

Alright, thank you very much.

Yes, the Theatrix is supported by GB-PVR. I'm using it as I type.

As for the channel changer, I'll look into them and inform my sister that they actually exist, since I'm sure she doesn't know about them.

Again, thanks for your help, stefan and ChristianW.