A Total Virgin Needing Advice

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Hey gbpvr clan,

I am a total noob to the whole PVR/Freevo and would really appreciate it if someone out there could help me with what hardware and setup they would recommend to someone starting out fresh. there are so many options and combo's, it's hard to nail down what the best option is for me. I will try and give you some details to help you in answering my question.

*I am leaning toward the PVR-350, I like the S-video out, but heard it can only handle MPEG-2 datastreams and nothing else (ie windows menu, EPG software etc).... is this true? If so, are there solutions or workarounds with gbpvr or would a PVR-250/150 +MediaMVP be a better alternative? What are the real advantages and disadvantages to each card in the Hauppage line

*if possible, it would be nice to have the PC in another room. Is this still viable if I decide on the PVR-350 (ie. is remote IR or RF)? Also I have the necessary hardware to go wireless (g router and bridge), but is 802.11g fast enough, and reliable?
*should I be considering other cards outside the Hauppage line (eg Plextor, or ATI)
*Currently I don't see a need to get multiple tuners, but can be convinced otherwise if someone can give me a good reason to go that direction

Any input you have would be of tremendous help, I'm itching to start my winter project.

SF

[the-warriners]

I use 801.11g to go from the pc under the tv to my main pc and it works fine. I get the occasional blip but preferable to using cables.

[fhmanas]

I have a P4 3.0Ghz with 1GB RAM, ASUS board and 1 200GB IDE for master and 2 150 S-ATA Drives for the recordings which I configured into a RAID 0 setup. OS is Win XPSP2. I got the Hauppauge PVR-500MCE for the dual tuner in 1 PCI slot. Also, got 2 MVPs, 1 for my bedroom downstairs and 1 for my child's room. 1 MVP is hooked with wireless-G using 2 linksys WRT54G routers, one acting as DHCP and another as bridge for the MVP (Just followed the wiki's advice on setting it up) the other MVP is wired to DHCP Router.

I didn't experience any video stuttering with the wireless connection, just as long as signal is strong. I do get occassional disconnects but it has been lessened when I upgraded to Net 2.0 (Net 1.1 is still needed). Also, noticed that having the recordings in different drives, or at least in a different partition greatly improved video playback. Machine is slight overkill for dedicated GBPVR since MVP has it's own MPEG decoder and PVR-500MCE has built-in MPEG Encoder, although I heard transcoding AVI requires a stronger machine, but I can still use my machine for other tasks without disturbing the experience for the 2 MVP users.

Do get large HDs as they do get full quite fast. Having 2 tuners, makes a decision for recording a lot easier, depends really on your needs, but occupying 1 PCI slot means more room in my PC for ventilation or more room for additional tuners.

Hope this info helps you out. Good luck on your PVR.

[Old Dog]

You will soon learn that more tuners is always better. PVR-150s seem to be the most used, PVR-500s have two tuners and FM I think.

For the other room, the most recomended solution seems to be a wired MVP.

One hard drive for the OS and a separate monster drive for your recordings.

Stay away from PVR-350s.

[David]

I have one tuner (pvr-250) in my dedicated machine. When I need to record back-to-back, I loose the padding time at the end of the first show and beginning of the second. If the station has skewed their time, small portions of the show can be lost at the beginning or end. My wife has noticed and is on-board with getting a second tuner, so I am saving my pennies.

[soccerdad]

Welcome
I probably represent a great many of the GBPVR users. I have a single 150mce tuner and view it through a pair of MVP's. A lot of us use older boxes since you really don't need too much horsepower. Just get a good big drive and get started. I can't program but I love technology so I have a lot of fun checking out all the plugins and new skins. The wife loves the system and so do the kids. A seven year old can easily find shows on the MVP. The future will likely add another tuner and MVP or modulator to push GBPVR to all the TVs in the house. Net radio is also cool.

[dazzyb2k3]

The biggest tip I can give you is to think big from the word go. We all started off with the 'all i need is a small case, micro MB and one tuner idea' HTPCing (particularly with GBPVR) is very addictive. A few years down the line it'll be the flashiest box stuffed with 5 tuners, several hard disks, card readers, LCD displays, silent cooling, remotes, keyboards and MVP's all over the house!!!

If i'd planned for all this from the off i'd have saved an absolute bloody fortune and not have a room full of cases, old tuners and hard disks which have to be hidden from the wife and are just begging to be built up into the next wave of GBPVR bots......OMG it's starting again lol :eek: