I'm in the process of building myself a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) and was wondering what others would want to see in their ultimate entertainment rig...

At the current moment i have 6 channel audio and a tv tuner which will do all of my encoding/audio; I'll be using BeyondTV4 and WinAmp for most of my viewing but I'm wanting a bit more...

I plan to have Emulators installed so I'm able to play my older gaming consoles on the system as well as an adapter to have my VCR plugged into my PVR on its own tuner (as to not tie up anything with the main tuner and not have to switch wires at all).

The Tuner I bought has FM Radio Support as well, and the system will be running WXP SP2.

Hardware Specs:
6 Channel On-Board Audio
2 DVDRW's
500GB Hard Disk
256MB Graphics Card
1280MB DDR Ram
AMD Athlon XP 1700 Processor
Hauppage 350 Tuner (with additional tuner addon)

In all honesty it's an overkill system for what it'll be used for; but no harm in askin for opinions to broaden my scope ...

So, the big question is, if you could have something for your ultimate amusement, what would you do ...

Would more ram enable smoother playback? I was shopping for one recently and remember reading they recommended maybe 2gb I never bought it (I hate to admit that I spend that much time watching tv now )

My Hauppage card has an onboard encoder/decoder so most of the rendering should be done "on card", I've heard of plenty of people running a decent PVR on a 500mhz cpu with 512mb ram so I'm not sure about the 2gb you've heard of.

If you think about it though, I'll have 2 SVid out (Video card, hauppage, and the addon card for the hauppage) and several in (hauppage, addon as well) so I can have some fun there as well ...

My first testing will be on the video output of the hauppage vs the video card, seeing if it only works when the card is enabled in the OS or if it's always on, and which gives a better/cleaner picture...

I believe it was at ars technica, tho it may have been an hptv which does other things like play games and such

Ahhh, interesting enough...

My root functions where to digitally record my favorite TV Shows; but I wanted more, so the 2 DVDRW's came in so i could do duplications...

...Then in came the FM Radio grabber, and the PlayStation 2 Controller Adapters, and the Emulators...

...I'm planning on getting a wirless KB/Mouse as well, you know, so I still have computer functionality...

Whats wrong stilly?

nothing really.. It's just that I researched my new computer build only 6 months ago.. and now I'm lost again on all the latest stuff. Progress is a funny thing.

I want to build one too but I want silence so waiting for a pentium M barebone with HDMI out

You need a Zalman Reserator 1 Plus

Ya know, somehow I doubt I need watercooling for this project lol...

If you want silence, you need water But reserator is too expensive anyway

Condidering it's goin in a room with 4 computers which sound like an airplaine runway, noise dispertion isn't an issue... In any case, it'll be fairly quiet anywho, did testing with the PSU i'm going to use, and the fans where bought due to their noise level vs power req...