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Part II: Home Entertainment
Extensions
There are lots of ways you can build upon what we’ve done here. Each tuner
card can record only one show at a time. If it’s in your budget you can add a
second tuner, which will resolve single scheduling conflicts. I’ve found that
there’s rarely a need for recording more than one show simultaneously.
You can also have the machine running as a server, recording shows that
can be rebroadcast to other PCs on your network. You could even create a
web interface that allows you to watch your recorded shows from anywhere
on the Internet.
The software chosen for this project records video using regular MPEG
codecs, which makes it easy to transfer the video to SVCDs or DVDs. You
can archive the entire season of your favorite shows without giving up stor-
age on the hard drives.
There are many simple and free MPEG editors available, too. In fact, you
can download one from the same page where you got the PVR-250 drivers
and software. This makes it easy to remove advertising from the shows you
archive.
Lastly, there are some rather expensive but extremely well-designed chassis
that are specifically intended for HTPC use. Some great examples are the
D.Vine series from Ahanix, Coolor Master’s ATC-620, and the HT-200 by
Kanam. Some of these even allow you to integrate an LCD display in the
face of the chassis where you can display information like ...