Episode 1 saw me trying to find a way, hopefully using existing hardware, to replace my DirecTV service. Specifically, the functionality afforded by my wonderful RCA DirecTIVO.
The result of my hard work (”Yellow”) worked well for a while. My Hauppauge 950Q USB tuner did not live up to expectations and was horribly unreliable. In contrast, my extremely old PCI tuner has been great.
It was bound to happen, and it did! Yellow decided to retire itself. The motherboard and the power supply both went out. I was trying to avoid spending much money, but in the end I had to bite the bullet and get some new stuff.
The case and the hard drive were fine, so here is the shopping list:
In the name of speed, all were purchased from my local Fry’s. I added a 1Gb Hitachi drive that I had lying around.
Installation was no problem. The motherboard unlocked the extra cores in the CPU, but I’m not a fan of the SATA connectors. Instead of being perpendicular to the board, they stick out from the rear edge, which means they are hidden under the drives.
I added two new tuners, both Hauppauge. The first was the WinTV-HVR 1950 (USB). I am not currently using this one as it seemed to be unreliable. But I’m going to try a better antenna and see what happens. The second was a WinTV-HVR 2250 (PCI Express) with dual tuners. I like this one.
“Yellow” has performed very, very well. As has the Beyond TV software. I am often recording three shows at the same time, including HD, with no problems. The system has been up-and-running for five months. For several months I ran it in parallel with DirecTV, but after I had seen Yellow prove itself I cancelled my satellite service.
Next episode … How we watch the recordings.