PC as a personal DVR

[Renegade6]

I would like to use my PC to record my favorite show and view them later. I would like to record 2 shows at once, like what the new Tivo does. Is there any software that will do this?
Do you recommend a Hauppage card to do this as well?

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

What are you recording from ? Cable, OTA ?

[Renegade6]

I am recording from cable.

[bits]

I would like to use my PC to record my favorite show and view them later. I would like to record 2 shows at once, like what the new Tivo does. Is there any software that will do this?
Do you recommend a Hauppage card to do this as well?

Thanks.

I have been using the Hauppauge PVR 150 and 250 cards for quite some time (capturing from Cable) and have been happy with them. I also cap OTA (Over the air) HD TV using DVICO FusionHDTV USB. I routinely cap 2 shows at a time and I know people who cap as many as 6 or 7 at a time.

GB-PVR is freeware that works quite nicely with most cap cards and specifically with Hauppauge. The guide update and scheduler works quite nicely as well.

Sage-TV and Beyond TV, both are payware, also are quite nice and are geared towards HTPC, as is GB.

If you want to go a step further and view your captured shows a your TV then I suggest looking into Networked Media Players (Linkplayer2, TVIX4100SH, Ziova CS510 or 505 to name a few)

IMO if all you want to do is capture, watch and delete then stick with TIVO or the DVR you can rent with your cable service. However, if you want flexibility, want to be able to cut commercials, archive and so on then you are going the right direction.

Go hang out at the BTV, GB-PVR or Sage forums and you will learn a lot...

Good luck!

[jman98]

You will need 2 capture cards to do this and a cable splitter so you can feed the cable TV output separately into each card. Hauppauge would be a good choice as their cards have chips on the card that are used for encoding video captures. ATI and other cards that use software encoding would be a poor choice as I think it would put too much strain on most PCs to try to record 2 shows at once. This should be doable with PCI cards, but I'm not sure if this would be a good idea with 2 USB cards. The Hauppauge PVR-150, 250 and 350 are all fine cards. The PVR-350 has TV out, which might be useful to you if you're using it as a Tivo type device.