Tag: PVR

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PVR: Choosing a CPU

This is the first in a series of posts about choosing the right bits to build a Personal Video Recorder. A couple weeks back I decided that neither PlayTV nor TiVo really suited my needs, so I will be building my own.

It’s been a while since I looked at computer components, and the market has changed dramatically. Nowhere is this more evident than the CPUs. Originally, I had flagged a dual-core desktop chip like the Intel CoreDuo or an AMD Athlon II. However, there’s a new entrant to the CPU space: the Intel Atom that is at the heart of a lot of lightweight applications like netbooks, mobile phones, and media players.

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No play with PlayTV

I did more research on whether PlayTV would suit my needs, and it looks like there are a couple stumbling blocks:

  • PlayTV only records to the internal HDD. Given that it doesn’t compress the files, and will be sharing the drive with game saves and installs, I can see this filling up very quickly.
  • One can copy files from the HDD to an external USB drive, but there are extreme limitations. The PS3 only understands external drives in FAT32 format. This has a maximum file size of 4GB. Normally, this is fine, but under HDTV, you can squeeze maybe 30 minutes of TV. Forget longer shows or movies.
  • No ability to stream back from the PS3 to devices on the network other than the PSP.

This is sufficient dealbreaker for me, so I’m going back to building my own PVR. So far, I’ve built up an pretty impressive machine which will cost around $600. I still haven’t added in the tuner or remote control, but still not a bad deal.

I’m also mucking around with MythBuntu in a VM to see what it’s like (lack of tuner notwithstanding).

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PlayTV comes to Australian PS3s

I’ve been contemplating a PVR for a while. Lack of funds and partner buy-in have sort of left me dead in the water, but P. recently saw a friend’s TiVo and was intrigued enough to suggest getting one (eventually).

Things have gone quiet on that front, but have since done some digging. Basic TiVo is cheap enough, but extra features (like playback on your PC via ethernet) are $100+ addons, and when I totted up the cost, it looked like I could build my own for the same price and get complete flexibility.

And now Sony’s gone and thrown a spanner in my works by announcing the PlayTV is coming to Australia. I still need to check the full feature set (can it record while gaming, network playback, etc), this would kill two birds with one stone: I was also looking to get a PS3 this Christmas.

At full retail price, the PS3/PlayTV combo comes to $670. If I were to build my PVR, I’d be looking at $1200 for the hardware (many hours of making it work just right) plus $500 for the PS3. This could save me potentially $1000, so I’m definitely going to check it out.

This may do what nobody has been failing to achieve for at least a year now: get me to buy a PS3 😉