What is Needed For This Setup?

[zeroinfish]

Hello.

I am a DVR newbie, and not very familiar with computer hardware (or TV!), but I am not an idiot and consider myself fairly computer literate. I saw TiVo at a friend's house and was impressed, but I don't watch a lot of TV, and that monthly fee is too annoying to me. A bit of Googling directed me to this SageTV website, and it sounds really nice! But not really having a strong base of knowledge to work from, I am pretty confused about what I need, and I am worried about shelling out cash only to find out I didn't know about some item or another that is required. I am hoping this forum can help inform me as to exactly what I need to buy.

I have three TVs that get regular use and I'd like them all to be able to watch recorded shows. I already have a pretty old yet serviceable windows PC that I can press into dedicated service. I am sure it has a worthless graphics card with no TV-out or anything like that.

I want to be able to record shows and browse them with a remote, and watch them from three TVs in different areas of the house. I want to know exactly what I would need to buy, including all cables, remotes, graphics cards, and any of that, so I can get a price tag. Can anyone help?

Thanks!

PS: It would also be nice to burn recorded media onto DVDs to build a library for later viewing. Is this possible with SageTV? Difficult?

[teknubic]

Welcome to the forums
First, I'd take a look at what you watch. If you're not doing high-definition, you can get away with 3 Hauppauge MVPs, a Hauppauge 150MCE, the SageTV server and 3 media extender licenses. If you need to record two shows at once, you'll either need two 150MCE cards or a 500MCE.
The cool thing about the MVPs is that they come with remotes and the cables to connect to your TV. If you don't have ethernet where you need it, make sure to get the wireless kind (assuming you have wireless lan).
Oh, and of course you'll need recording space. Some here have terrabytes but standard-definition recordings only take up about 1.5GB/h and if you don't anticipate having a lot stored, you can get away with surprisingly little. I have 4 tuners and only 250G for storage and I never run out.
Look at PCAlchemy.com to get everything you need.
Post a reply with more details if I haven't answered your question. There are several considerations to make when architecting a PVR solution. It's definitely not hard but there are gotchas that can bite you in the arse.
HTH