Sweet techno-victory

This weekend, I didn't buy a TiVo. Ha!

My guy and I recently had a DVD-player breakdown. This led us to the idea that we should start recording TV on our current hard drive. We don't have TiVo or rent a DVR from Comcast, because we feel about subscription fees the way most people feel about visits to the dentist (besides, back when I taped things onto videotapes, I owned the darn thing I was recording onto. I controlled it. It was mine. Why should I settle for less now that we've gone all digital?).

The obvious solution seemed to be to hack our desktop computer - after all, it's got the storage space, right? The cool part is that I just finished getting it working, it adds to my geek cred, and it was easy. It was also cheap, at least when you compare it to other electronic gadgetry out there. So here's my setup:

• Existing desktop computer: 200Gb hard drive, some kind of Pentium chip, etc.
  
• New Hauppauge 350 TV tuner + PVR card - $133
  
• Splitter to send our incoming cable +internet signal into two separate jacks (the TV tuner + cable internet modem) - $15
  
• GBPVR software - free (tho I'll send the guy a donation once I've run it a little longer)
• Monthly subscription fees - none! Works just beautifully without 'em.
  

The only things I can't do with this setup:

• Watch my recordings on the TV in the living room. If/when I care, I can hook things up using Hauppauge's MediaMVP.
  
• Watch one show while recording another. If/when I care, I can install a second tuner card.
  

Sticky points:

• Rearranging the wild jungle of cables under the desk. It's still wild, but no longer actually prevents me from reaching the printer.
  
• Figuring out which tuner card to buy. Hauppauge seems to be industry standard, but they've got a 150, a 250, a 350, and a 500. I opted for the 350 because it had a bunch of enthusiastic user quotes re: picture quality, and because it has TV-out jacks. If we ever put the real TV in the same room as the computer, I can use those TV-out jacks to hook my computer directly up to the TV.
  
• Figuring out which software to use. Hauppauge's own software is a pain. My options were SageTV (costs $100), BeyondTV (costs something, and the UI got poorer reviews than SageTV's), MythTV (works on Linux, not Windows), and GBPVR. I was sceptical of GBPVR at first since it's free & has no manual, but it got so many user raves that I decided to try it. It turns out to be some of the easiest-to-install-&-use software I've ever run across, and the support Wiki & the user forums had all the info I needed.
  
• Installing Microsoft's dotNet 2.0 framework. Windows told me I already had it, so I didn't realize at first I needed to install it. Grrr. Evil Windows!
  
• Configuring the Mpeg decoder settings on the GBPVR software. This actually wasn't hard, I just forgot I needed to do it.

And there you have it. It's up, it's running, and I'm recording Grey's Anatomy on Thursday.