PC Help Request

I’ve started a new project that should cut my bills down by a little more than $80 a month. I’ve heard a lot about building a DVR using a computer, essentially building a Media Center PC at home. I want to take it a step further and completely eliminate my cable TV bill. Most TV stations now broadcast over the air in Digital TV, including HDTV, in preparation for the mandatory switch over in 2009. What most people don’t know is that the frequency remains the same, only the TV tuner needs to change. This means that the basic, run of the mill, $15 TV antenna is perfectly fine. All I need is the ability to record my shows and watch live TV when I feel like it. Enter the MythTV box.

MythTV is a Linux based program that schedules and plays back TV programs, plays live TV, plays Music, and a few other cool things that are useful in a Media Center PC. Best of all, it’s free! On inspiration from a friend and Episode 2 of Systm, I’ll probably use KnoppMyth, a quick and easy installation of Knoppix and MythTV.

So here’s my plan:

• Build an HDTV capable computer
• Use MythTV
• Every night, move any recorded shows to the network file server but leave a link behind so that MythTV can still play them back.

Step 3 can be achieved using a task scheduler and a custom script that tests if the file is a shortcut or a real video file. If it’s a video, move it to the file server and then leave a shortcut with the same filename behind. Now, to build the actual computer…
Someone just moved out of my building and threw away a computer. Of course, I salvaged it. As a reminder, review this post about hard drive security. While the hard drive in this computer was dead, I could easily have looked at the data had it not been. I had an extra hard drive laying around, so this wasn’t a big deal. I did find out that the processor is a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, which is the bare minimum for live HDTV, but that’s ok. The video card works, the RAM works, and one of the two CD drives works. I bought an AverMedia A180 on ebay, which should be here shortly. It was very cheap, and it’s known to work with Knoppmyth. In a few days I’ll come back with a synopsis on the process and talk some more about over the air DTV.