Digital Video Recorder (PVR)
- Sunday, September 14, 2003
A personal video recorder, or PVR, is essentially a digital TV and VCR in your computer. If you're familiar with Beyond TV or Tivo, a PVR is the same thing, except it's in your computer. Of course, I wasn't so much interested in watching TV on my computer. Frankly, my screen's too crowded already! For me, the really interesting part was the ability to record shows all day and night, and then watch them whenever I wanted. No switching tapes or rewinding. So here's what I did.
For the DVR software, I choose Beyond TV3 from Snapstream. It's affordable and easy to configure. Here's the article that inspired me to use it. It does everything I want and more.
Next, I purchased an ATI TV Wonder Pro card which just pops into your computer in an availble PCI slot. It comes with a remote control and radio frequency receiver which plugs into a USB port. Add a cable splitter and 16-foot cable from Radio Shack and I was ready to go. To watch TV, I just push the TV button on the remote and that's it. Even better, because the remote is RF not infared, I don't even need to point it anywhere.
The ATI TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition cost $100, which is more than I really needed to spend, but I just wanted to make sure I had everything. Apparently it comes with "Digital VCR" software, but I haven't really tried it out much. When I do, I'll write a separate review.
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