MY PVR
February 01, 2006 - Parts ordered!!

Well, I whipped out the credit card and did some damage. I also blew off too much time at work. I keep trying to justify this time wasting as tangentially educationally about technology yada yada. . . . I doubt that will hold much water with my bosses. But then again, I have a feeling many geeks in the office will wander over. "Whatcha doin'?" Hopefully, I can play Tom Sawyer and enlist their help if heavy lifting is involved.
I ordered 50% of my parts from PC Alchemy - a Home Theater PC specialty house. They have some nifty stuff. The user reviews at the PC Alchemy website plus the comments on the http://www.byopvr.com/ site have been incredibly helpful.
Another great place is http://www.newegg.com/. They have all sort of computer and technology stuff. and the number of buyers that post reviews is quite impressive. I have made a mental note to self to go back and individually review each item I bought.
The final BOM is as follows


Green is stuff from NewEgg. Yellow from PC alchemy. The 2nd tuner card was out of stock, so I will wait on upgrading that until later.
Final damage ~$1,200. OK - it is 6x more than a $200 Tivo. But I have high hopes that it will replace my Tivo, DVD player. And it will enable a PC on a big screen. Which my wife will hopefully like.
I also envision a time when I can use this as a speakerphone. But more on that later