System Setup...

[snowman2154]

I have a Pentium III 800Mhz box that I am not doing anything with. It has 512 MB Ram, 60 GB Hard Drive, and a older NVidia video card without a TV out. I was thinking about making this a media server and PVR machine.

What would I need to do this with DirecTV? I am not sure what my options are and what might be the best setup. I would also lik to be able to watch and administer the maching through my TV.

Thanks in advance.

Jake

[Terminal]

I would recommend getting the PVR250. If you don’t already have the software you might look at the package deal SS offers with the PVR250. You also need a Video card with TV out. A Nvidia FX5200 seems to work pretty well for this, and they are not very expensive. Also a Internet connection would be nice. Your system specs are very similar to mine. You might be a little light in hard drive space if you want to keep your files in MPEG format. If you transcode to WMV you can save quite abit of content on 60 Gig. I only have about 70 Gig of space in mine and I have yet to get close to running out. I don't keep MPEG on that system, however, I move them off and archive to DVD.

Also you will want to look into a tuning device for your direct TV box. There are a couple of options, if your box supports a serial link that would probably be best. SS is working on a new IR solution I think. I have the IR blaster and it works well for me, but it's hard to recommend to someone when SS now says they don't support it completely.