| Software w/ remote admin and media playback (up to 10 years if annual subscription) | $300 (note2) | $509. | FREE | $80 | $125. | $70. | ||
| Approx. hardware cost (For HTPC minimum 1GHz CPU, 512 MB, 8X AGP, tuner, remote w/blaster, etc from sales and deals | $100 (ebay) | $600. | $600. | $600. | $600. | $600. | $600. | |
| FEATURE | RTV 55xx | RTV PCE | GBPVR | SAGE | MCE | MYTH (Linux) | BTV4 | |
| 1 | Remembering last position in a show for resuming at later time | Y | ? | no | Y | ? | Y | |
| 2 | Slow-motion playback | Y | ? | no | no | ? | no | |
| 3 | Notification that the software is going to start recording something, possibly losing LiveTV buffer | Y | ? | note1 | Y | ? | ||
| 4 | Show|Nav™: | Y | ? | no | ? | ? | ||
| 5 | Previous/Last (Jump back to last channel or last show) | Y | ? | no | Y | ? | Y | |
| 6 | Return to Live (last point of LiveTV buffer) | Y | ? | no | ? | ? | ||
| 7 | Overlap manager (see note1) | n | Y | note1 | note1 | note1 | note1 | note1 |
| 8 | Very long buffer, even with show changes on same channel | Y | ? | no | ? | ? | ||
| 9 | Notification that show is buffered, but not recorded, and data will be lost on a channel change | Y | ? | no | ? | ? | ||
| 10 | Out of the box Closed Captioning support (With or without Hauppauge tweak tool) | Y | ? | Y | Y | Y | ||
| 11 | Auto Comskip (with or without plugin) | Y | ? | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| 12 | Password (pin) protection of certain channels/ratings/shows/directories/ | Y | ? | Y (plugin) | only recorded | ? | Y | |
| 13 | Predictable recording (RTV PCE will have this) also see note1 | note1 | Y | note1 | note1 | note1 | ||
| 14 | Realtime web-based remote admin for recordings(note2) | note2 | ? | Y | plugin | Y | Y | sucks |
| 15 | Integrated DVD player capability | no | ? | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| 16 | Save buffer to a recording | no | ? | Y | Y | |||
| 17 | Weather plugin | no | ? | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| 18 | Audio normalization | no | ? | |||||
| 19 | Interface rating | 10 | ? | 8 | 9 | 8 | 10 | 7 |
| 20 | Spanish Language Translation | no | ? | Y | Y | ? | ? | |
| note1 | This can be remedied in the HTPC PVRs with multiple tuners and padding | |||||||
| note2 | Only mpeg2 can be played back across the network with Wirns or DVarchive. Remote Admin is limited |