How To: Build A PVR

Hello surfers! Today you will learn how to build your own PVR machine. A PVR is a Personal Video Recorder. As the title suggests, it let's you record shows, movies from your TV to the hard drive. A PVR can cost anywhere from $10 to $20 a month just for a PVR upgrade. The things you will need for this project are; hard drive, old computer! I say old computer, because you wouldn't want to save movies and shows on your gaming PC or business computer. So, take an old computer, buy a TV Tuner card. TV Tuner cards allow you plug in your cable/antenna or dish directly into the computer. That means you can watch shows and movies on the computer. Some TV Tuner cards also have TV-Out which is great too. If you can find a cheap one that has both, that would really help if you do not have a very good TV. Now for the hard drives. You can buy external hard drives from many computer stores. You can buy a 1TB external hard drive from TigerDirect.ca for only $159.99. It is kind of over sized but it works. 1Tb is 1000 GB, that is a lot. If you do have a lot of money, buy two. The last thing you need is some software to stream your cable/antenna or dish on your computer. Your TV Tuner card should come with a application to stream live tv. If it does not, you can get a 21-day trial of Sage TV's software. Sage TV's software works with most TV Tuner cards. Install your software, attach your cable/antenna to the PC. Run your software and every TV Tuner software has a record function built in. Just hit record, and let it record! That is it. If you did buy a TV Tuner and TV Out 2 in 1, then you can stream your recorded videos onto your TV. The great thing about this "PVR" is that it has no extra monthly fees. I also recommend buying JUST a CPU, it is really cheap. You can get one for only $70. Playing videos does not require a vast amount of RAM or 8 cores. You just need it to be small and it should be able to play videos. If you are buying a CPU, make sure the video card says dedicated. Dedicated video cards can be removed and upgraded. Integrated cards cannot be removed. If it already has a TV Tuner and TV Out, then that is great. That's pretty much it! This is the most basic way to make a PVR, but can be costly depending on the size of external hard drive. A 160GB External Hard Drive costs $70, so buy that one if you don't need 1TB. Thanks for reading!