[pknowles]

My wife wants a Tivo badly. But after looking at them and some of the very limited features I think I can build something better for the same price using an old PC. Computer wise I have an old 550 MHz P3 that I would like to use becuase currently it's just sitting in the corner taking up space. I realize this may not be enough, but I plan on using the Hauppauge 500 card which has hardware encoding, so I don't think I need a powerfull PC. If I use hardware encoding all the processor is going to do is control the streaming of data to disk and run the interface program, which I think a P3 should be able to do. Anyone have any advice as far as software (Beyond TV, Sage, etc.)? I'm leaning toward using windows since my wife will be using this and I really don't want to put myself through the pain of teaching her Linux (which I'm sure she doesn't want either).

As far as hardware/software I think I need:
1. TV tuner card (leaning towards Hauppauge 500 so I can record one channel while watching another)
2. Video card with TV out (not sure want I want, but a Matrox G200 TV should be cheap)
3. Need a lot more then the 8 GB harddrive the computer currently has. I'm thinking about 300 GB should do it.
4. Software (Beyond TV, Sage, Windows Media Center, etc.)
5. Remote

I guess I should say that I want to go the PC route instead of Tivo becuase my wife likes to review her favorite shows all at once. So I plan on burning her shows to DVD, so that she can watch them all at once. The only feature that I have not seen is that when you are looking at a show is there any software that will tell you what season and episode number the show is? That would make it alot easier to put the shows in the correct order on the DVD. Does a Tivo even do this? Any advice is appreciated.