[RobertH]

Originally posted by 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?

Yep I use a lower powered box (see sig) and both of my machines give extreemly good video most of wich I use to burn dvd-video to archive my important shows

- 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.

not quite following you on this one? If your tv has a progressive input (dvi/component) then go with a card with dvi and svideo otherwise just get one that has vga and svideo the nvidia card will boot directly to the svideo connector if there is no display connected to any other connector. the pvr250 is a capture device it has no output, the 350 has video out but it only works when using the wintv software from hauppauge

- 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?

yes you can watch a video file from your local archive at the same time the system is recording, timeshifting works on mpeg for livetv and recordings, and also works in windows media mode but only during playback. In the future there will hopefully be support for dual tuners as it has been one of the most requested features

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

I keep my 800mhz box up all the time it is always sitting at the ss fullscreen main menu unless i have to get to the desktop to use the dvd burner. the only crashes I have with snapstream are when I try to use the pvr on channel 3 it has issues with my cable modem because that is the upstream channel and when there is a lot of activity it causes the encoder on the pvr to crash occasionally this will later (1-2 hours) cause snapstream to crash while changing channels. other than that it records about 9 times aday and doesnt cause any problems, the machine is also a webserver and a database server

- 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 have been a user and a beta tester since version 1.5 since then they have not charged for any major update from one version to the next, 3.0 was in beta testing for almost a year from what I remember, but during testing releases occur about every 3-5 weeks depending on how much in-house testing they have to perform. Some of the features that have been tossed around are dvdplayback, mouse support, dual tuners, a programmers/developers api interface, HDTV support, and a whole slew of other stuff. There isnt a solid timeline/feature list released to the public/beta testers.

- 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?

this would be enough horse power to do recordings but would probably die during playback, however with a home network you would be able to share the store from one machine on the dedicated tv box and then you could play the files over the network

- 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.

Ive used showshifter before and couldnt stand the horrible interface but that was a while ago so dont know if any of the issues Ive had with them, and I didnt try sage because of the whole no listings for 90% of the country

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