homemade VDR

[zabomb4163]

i am looking into building a homemade VDR (TIVO is a pos)

how do these specs look for making a VDR ?????

1.3 Duron
256 SDRAM
radeon 7500 all in wonder
80gig maxtor
ECS K7S5A
FOXCONN BLACK MID TOWER 300W


imput appreciated

 

[thirteen13rulez]

it would work, but if you really want blinding performance and you have some money to thorough around, youd probably want to get a cpu upgrade and a new vid card. but the cpu upgrade would Probablyrequire a new mobo (which could be good because then you could get some ddr ram). if you dont feel like spending much, just get a new vid card.

 

[DaddyB]

It'll do, it might be good to have 2 hard drives instead of one (one for the OS and one for the videos you will capture) but either way it will get the job done. That MoBo supports both DDR RAM and SDRAM (only one or the other not both at the same time) so you could go for DDR if the price is right. Im not so sure how much better then a Tivo it would be though, if at all.

 

[cullam3n]

VDR? Am I missing something? What does that mean? =P

-PC

 

[Crash893]

like a tivo right?

first off i would just buy a cheap tivo becuase it comes with pretty much all you need

get one with little crappy drives and you can put your own in ( hack on the internet out there some where)


if you insist your going to do it your self i would go one quasi small hdd for the os and other things

and then two hdds on raid or something from what i hear if you want to store anything of any quality and size its alot of info coming in

 

[RoadWarrior]

If I were doing this, I'd go for cheap lower power CPU like VIA C3 and spend the bucks on a SCSI controller and 10,000 RPM SCSI drive and hardware video encoding, best I could afford, MPG 4 codec on a card probably.

Dunno about doing MP4 Realtime on a 1.3G Duron, don't think it will. In which case you just need MPEG 2 and anything better than a PII 233 SHOULD be able to cope with that. So either you're overspecced or underspecced on the CPU.
Road Warrior

 

[Jawsome]

might as well just get a 1600 off newegg and a stick of ddr or get a board that supports both so you can try your SD out now and if you need to upgrade to ddr later

 

[zabomb4163]

thanks guys

the reason i am doing this is because a tivo cost 200$ min,

then spend 200$ lifetime subscription
I'm up to 400 now, not including tax

the above mentioned specs (and winxp home)-including shipping cost me 413 .....why the heck would i buy a tivo with only one purpose while i could use the box i am making for having access to mp3's on network, gaming machine, and vdr

...the tivo runs off of a 60 megaherz processor granted its 64bit and also runs off of a tv encoder. but its a 5400 rpm drive and slow slow cpu.
that would be a huge waste of money in my opinion for anyone to purchase a Tivo

 

[Crash893]

i belive its the subscription that makes the tvio so much better

you can replace the hdds with diffent ones.

 

[DaddyB]

I dont know much about tivo so i went and looked up what this subscription service is all about (here is tivo's info about it). You can do basically all of that stuff with an all in wonder radeon for free, the AIWs come with Gemstar's TV guide plus (2 of my old RCA TVs have it too) and you can set up what to record (and set up up to do it once or weekly, daily.. blah blah) and all of that just like on the tivo.