make a pvr

[Gianmarco Giovannelli]

At 10.04 17/01/2006, Arne Woerner wrote:
 >--- Gianmarco Giovannelli <gmarco at giovannelli.it> wrote:
 >> I'd like to made a personal video recorder
 >> and I am guessing which hardware may I buy
 >> for the video recording.
 >>
 >If you use a fast box, you do not need a TV card that does
 >hardware MPEG encoding. I personally use two boxes (a very old
 >slow box (Pentium 166MHz P54C) for a hauppauge PVR 250 (that box
 >needs special care regarding the network traffic while the PVR
 >card is active; seems to be a problem with the old box... :-)) )
 >and my newer box (Athlon XP 2400+) for a pinnacle PCTV rave and a
 >Hauppauge WinCast/TV, so that I can record 3 channels at the same
 >time (1 in good quality 720x576 pixel
 >and two in less quality 448x336), but then I cannot watch TV. :-))

Hi Arne, thanks for your kind,
may I do some more questions ?

If I got a pvr 250/350 I can use the mpeg encoding of the card to 
record the tv (or other video source I suppose).
Is there similar hw supported by FreeBSD that I can buy if I am not 
able to find these two (250/350) ?

If I use a fast box I can buy a simple tv card (i.e PCTV rave or 
Hauppauge WinCast/TV) and then use somekind of programs (which ? 
:-)  to save the video in mpeg format. Any tips on hw well supported ones ?

Which program should I use ? Freevo ?

Thanks very much for your attention.


Best Regards,
Gianmarco Giovannelli ,  "Unix expert since yesterday"
http://utenti.gufi.org/~gmarco/