Windows PVR/HTPC options (Score 1)

Having tried MythTV (and even Knoppmyth - http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html to make life easier), I decided that what I wanted was a PVR and not an IT project - I have enough of those Mon-Fri 9-5!

Hardware: Old Dell optiplex 110 with Pentium III 800MHz, 256Mb RAM, DLink 802.11b PCI wi-fi card. Cost - a favour to a buddy.

Additions: Hauppauge PVR-350, 200Gb Seagate Barracuda, USBUIRT http://www.usbuirt.com/. Cost of additions - £ 216

Wi-Fi with MythTV was hell, PAL TV out with X-Windows was hell, S-Video input with MythTV was hell, EPG download from http://www.bleb.org/tv with MythTV was flaky, IR support for driving my Cable set-top-box was not great.

I tried a copy of XP MCE, but unless you have certified hardware, forget this being easy or stable, so I went on the hunt for Windows based PVR software and came across http://www.gbpvr.com/.

I must say I have been suitably impressed with ease of setup, ease of use, stability and features. Pretty much all of the MythTV features, but a lot easier to set up. Total setup time from blank hard drive to working GBPVR on XP in under 2 hours on above hardware. MythTV took a weekend to have partial functionality working on the same box. The USBUIRT works well with GBPVR, and GBPVR is able to pull EPG from Bleb (Or other XMLTV sources). Main problem now is 256Mb of RAM is just not quite enough for XP... the box is now deemed prototype, waiting for more cash to buy a new barebones system with decent CPU and RAM. Probably go for a Shuttle small form factor like one of these ST62K's http://www.de.shuttle.com/en/desktopdefault.aspx/t abid-72/170_read-2782/