MY PVR Experiment

I figured for my first post I'd share my recent interest in PVR (personal video recorder) and HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer) technology.
You might ask "Why an interest in PVRs?" Well... Steph and I got a DVD player/recorder which worked well for the last year until the clock mechanism broke... which means it can't do timed recordings... thus is is now an overpriced DVD player (which isn't that great at the playing part). So I'm looking for something to replace it... preferably something from Amazon since I get gift certificates through work for Amazon :-) Don't have the money in the budget for fun gadgets.

I looked into TiVo, but I utterly cannot stand paying for overpriced "service". The new TiVo devices are utterly useless without the service... they actually wont even let you manually record something! Don't get me started on that subject... I looked at some other pre-packaged TV recording devices, but either they will be obsolete soon (Analog Cable) or way overkill. Eventually I looked at a PC based solution, thus the HTPC.

I did some research and become worried that any TV tuner card that I purchased would become obsolete in Feb 2009 because of the digital cut over. The best I could find were some ASTC digital cable input cards and OTA (Over the Air) HD input. I think the ASTC only picks up channels 1 - 125.

I did some research and decided that I couldn't afford to build a new PC to record TV and be a basis for a HTPC so I stuck with the Dell Pentium 4 2.6Ghz PC that I had. I decided on the Hauppauge-WinTV-HVR-1600 TV tuner PCI card that has input for both ASTC digital cable and OTA HD along with Svideo and audio inputs. The card comes with some tv recording software, but I hear it isn't that good. Did some research and saw some good reviews about GB-PVR and its freeware. I've also heard some good things about beyondTV.


I may have jumped the gun, due to the digital conversion coming up in 2009 and the fact that ASTC only covers 1 - 125 channels. Does anyone know exactly how the digital change over will affect a guy like me who has basic cable tv using a TV made in the early 90's? I'm pretty sure I'll have to buy a converter that will convert the digital signal back to analog, but is there anything else? I know that I'll probably miss out on some available channels because with the elimination of analog signals they can have more digital channels on the same amount of bandwidth and I'll only be able to view the first 125. I'm pretty sure I'll still be able to use my new TV tuner card, but it'll only be able to capture 125 channels worth of data. If you guys know of a different card that I couldn't find let me know... I can always sell the card on Ebay :-)