[MooDoo]

I'm interested in a Tivo box but I don't want to get stuck with their inflexible solution. Can SS with the right hardware give me Tivo quality?!?

I am planning on having a dedicated pc next to my TV running only SS. The pc would probably be a P4 2.4, 512MB RAM, 120GB HD, GeForceFX 5200 128MB, NVDVD, PVR-250, WinXP. We have no plans to stream shows to other pcs, we just want to record shows, watch recorded shows and use the live-tv/timeshifting feature.

Questions:
- Will this setup give me clean crisp live-tv/timeshifting and recordings?

- Is there any advantage to using the FX card with TV-Out or is the base FX card fine? I'm not sure how/why people would use this when they already have the pvr-250.

- My understanding is that with this setup I can only record one show at a time but that I can use the live-tv/timeshifting functionality while another show is being recorded. Is this true?

- How stable (system crashes, dropped frames, etc.) would this setup be with ss v3.2?

- If I buy v3.2 of ss, are all future 3.x releases free with the 4.x releases requiring me to pay to upgrade? Any idea on the major features expected during the next year?

- I could also dedicate a PII 450, 384MB RAM with the same components listed above but I assume that it wouldn't be enough horse-power, correct?

- Any comments on SageTV or ShowShifter? The main reason I have focused on SnapStream is feedback that is available on this board. Getting help/feedback on the other products seems much harder.

Please let me know if I'm missing anything else? Thanks in advance for your advice!!!