Brand Newbie- Help Appreciated!

[tamhag]

So my husband is planning to build a PVR.  We have an HDTV with built in digital antenna, plus we got an OTA indoor antenna that works great.  The picture quality is better than it was in HD with Comcast, and the antenna cost less than half of one month's cable bill!  Amazing.

So, we're starting so completely from the ground up.  My dream would be to access the stuff we record via our wireless network.  Beyond that, though, all I really care about is dual tuning capability (can we split the signal off the the one antenna, or do we have to have two?) and that it works.  I started finding stuff about cards/tuners, etc, but there is a LOT of info.  It's kind of overwhelming.

Is there an easy place to point us?  I know it would be Windows based, probably Windows 7.  What do we need, what is worth spending good money on, where should we go cheap, is it best to just piece stuff together or should we find a cheap PC and pimp it out, etc.  If there's some obvious thread I didn't see, you can point us there, or if you choose to reply with what you've found to be awesome that would be great :)

Ok, one thing- if we're recording in HD and want to be able to store lots of stuff- say 100 hours- how many giga/terabytes should we get for the hard drive?  What's the ratio of hours of TV recorded to gigs of disk space?  Thanks :)

EDIT: As a PS, my husband works in IT. He's currently in help desk support, studying for software development, so you can be pretty technical.  I'm above average with the technical speak and am not afraid to look stuff up if I don't know it!

[Mike23]

if you haven't looked, project journals has some great ideas.  I'll throw out my opinion on a couple of items:

1)  OTA is always much better because the level of compression.  Satellite, cable, etc. use a ton of compression--sometimes more sometimes less.  HD can really look awful if they squeeze it too much IMO.
2)  A minimum file size (IMO) is 2 gig/hour at standard definition.  That's what I normally get with standard definition recording at pretty high quality using store bought DVD recorder.  On the HD side, I just bought and have started testing a Hauppauge HD PVR (takes 1080i component input from satellite receiver to computer via USB).  I can record between 2 and 13 Mbits/s.  Default is 9 Mbits/s and that game me a 9 gig file for 2.5 hrs.  I dropped it to 7 Mbits/s and the file size dropped accordingly.  The lowest bit rate I think that is recommended for HD is 5 MBits/s which should be about 2 GB/hr??? 
3)  Hard drives are ~$100 for one TB. You can get better deals, that's just a baseline.  At that price, I wouldn't buy anything less than a TB.  And having more than one in the system with hotswap is a nice touch (IMO).  Gives some redundancy so your PVR is up and running even if your drive fails.  Allows easy backup, etc.  Backing up...you said 100 hours.  I think the norm for that is about a 250 GB drive.

Question:  you said recording over your wireless network?   Are you watching TV over the net (like Hulu)?   There was discussion related to that the other day, but, it sounded like it had to be turned into analog, then brought back into the PC and digitized.  Not sure, but, I think there are programs that can capture digital streams from the net.

[Craig]

All you need is windows 7 media center, an inexpensive 1tb HDD,
an ATI HD 4550,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150484&cm_re=hd4550-_-14-150-484-_-Product
and a dual tuner like the HVR-2250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116036&cm_re=hvr-2250-_-15-116-036-_-Product
or
AVerMedia AVerTVHD Duet
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100041
I'd go with the HVR-2250 since it comes with a remote and IR reciever.
Your choice of case, Power supply, memory, DVD/blueray drive, processor, and motherboard and you're golden.
With the 2 tuners mentioned you just run one cable from the antenna to the tuner and the tuner splits the signal internally.

Wireless N will be required to stream HD content through the house.

Newegg is about the best place to order from in my opinion.

Recording OTA HD you'll see about 7-8GB/hr for recording size. You won't be able to change that unless you compress it after it has been recorded.

[tamhag]

Question:  you said recording over your wireless network?   Are you watching TV over the net (like Hulu)?   There was discussion related to that the other day, but, it sounded like it had to be turned into analog, then brought back into the PC and digitized.  Not sure, but, I think there are programs that can capture digital streams from the net.

I do watch Hulu, so what I mean was more being able to watch (but not record, necessarily) Hulu shows on the PVR, like a normal computer hooked up to our wireless network.  Sort of how, say, there are Blu-Ray players now that can access Hulu and your Netflix queue and such.

I also wonder if it's possible, though, to record, say, The Office, on the PVR and then access it from my laptop via the wireless network.  Is that able to be done or does it require special software?

[Mike23]

You can make the drives accessible to the network (share them).  Thus, the files are available to anyone logged on to your network. 

Sharing is available using the Explorer menu.  You can share whole drives, or just specific folders.

[Miller]

You can stream with normal file sharing techniques, but the downfall of this is you have to navigate and read through all the weird file names to find what you want. A better way (in my opinion) when you're using another computer to stream to is to set up a server/client. In GBPVR you would set the computer that has the tuners in it as the server. Then install GBPVR on the laptop and set it as a client. You'll get the nice menu system and you can interact with your recordings just like you were on the main computer.