Originally published June 21 2005
Media center tools offered online
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A recent article in The State describes how web products, like Linux's MythTV, allow users to build digital video recorders to suit their needs.
The Web offers plenty of help to people who want to build their own media center or digital video recorders.
A media center stores all of your media, such as music and television, in one place, available throughout your home.
A digital video recorder, or DVR, lets you record TV programs --- or videotapes --- onto a computer, where you later can burn them to DVDs or CDs to play in a DVD player.
You can use a free Linux product, MythTV, or buy products that ship with TV cards designed for PCs.
Nearly all the TV products will work --- but use extreme care in buying your hardware if you plan to build the Linux product, making sure all the hardware works with Linux.
There's a special MythTV/Knoppix package distribution put together just for this project.
If you use a DVR, such as the one furnished by a cable company, you already know about recording, pausing and "time switching" of digital content.
But it is closed box, meaning you don't really control the content.
Building the Linux box is the least expensive option, but there is free software you can use with the PC version.
The most expensive piece of the puzzle is the TV card.
(Whatever you buy, make sure it works with the software you're going to use. If you build a media center, I'd recommend against buying external devices; buy PCI cards instead.)
Pay close attention to what you can record.
For example, Hauppauge's $49 WinTV card records only in MPEG1, which is not what you want for DVDs.
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