For about the last year I have been spending some of my free time playing around with building my own DVR (Digital Video Recorder). Sure I could have gone out and bought a TIVO or purchased the DVR receiver that my dish provider offers, but that would have been too easy. After spending many hours brainstorming different options, and testing a couple I now have a PC based DVR system that does most of the things I was shooting for.
While the normal DVR systems that are offered by your cable or satellite providers work quite well, I wanted a little more from mine. I wanted a multiple room TV recording system that I could share pictures and music over as well.
The only special hardware required for this system is a video capture card. I choose a card from Hauppauge. The card I purchased came with a remote, and USB IR sensor/emitter. I found out quickly that it is much harder building a DVR when your source is either satellite, or digital cable. The reason is that the PC can’t just change the channel on the card, it needs to send a signal to your receiver to change the channel. This is the reason I needed the IR emitter. Other than the card pretty much any PC that isn’t more than 3 years old should work fine. Here’s a picture of the innards of my PC.
As you can see I now have two tuner cards, so I can record two different channels at once. There are single cards available with two tuners, but at the time none came with a remote, and IR receiver/emitter. As you can see I also have some extra hard drives to increase storage. Here is a picture of the connections on the back of the PC.
As you can see one receiver is connected using composite RCA cable. The other is connected using coax, the reason is that currently that receiver is located in another room in the house. Also note on the far left is a video out that runs to one of my TV’s.
One of the things that I was trying for when building this was to avoid any extra cost I could. If I were to use a commercial DVR system, I would have to pay a monthly fee on top of the cost of equipment. The overall cost of my system is quite a bit more than a commercial one, but the computer would have been purchased either way. So really it is only costing me what the tuner card cost.
Since I wanted low cost, I tried GBPVR first. This is a free application that can be downloaded from their site. While I really like the things the software can do, I had too many problems getting it to change the channels on my satellite receiver so I kept trying, but I highly recommend giving it a try if you every build your own DVR. All you can lose is a little time. I tried several other free applications in the months to follow including Windows Media Center 2005. I didn’t have much luck with any of them for various different reasons.
When I decided to upgrade my computer hardware, I decided to install Windows Vista Ultimate. Included in this version of the OS is the new version of Windows Media Center. After about 20min, I had this working with my satellite receivers, and was watching TV through my computer.
For the last month now I have been using Vista’s Media Center, and it does most of what I want. The best thing about Windows Media Center is that I can use my Xbox 360 as an extender, which allows me to do everything I can on my computer from my Xbox. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, I can browse any pictures or listen to any music that is stored on my PC and of course I can watch and record TV.
While there are still some minor things that I would like to have the ability to do with my DVR, I’m getting closer that I was before. I will still try other programs as the features change, but for now I’m happy to have something that works. If you’re interested in building your own DVR, check out this Wikipedia article. This lists most of the DVR applications that are available. If you’re into Linux I highly recommend MythTV, it is one of the best applications available.
I’m sure I missed some details, feel free to leave a comment with any questions and I will try to answer them possibly in another post.
Posted by nickteg
