Inspiration strikes!

This year my suitemate Jon got a TiVo for his birthday. We used it a lot and I realized that there are a handful of shows each week that I don’t want to miss. The Daily Show, Scrubs, 24, Viva La Bam, and a few other gems. The thing is, I won’t be living with Jon next year so I will no longer have access to the wonderful little TV-bot known as TiVo. This desparation for a proper DVR has inspired me to have a very clever idea. I don’t have the money to buy a TiVo box and the expensive subscription fee – I’m workin’ for a living here.
Instead of buying a Tivo and paying monthly fees, I have decided to use my ridiculously out of control mental genius to… build my own TiVo! All I need is an older PC with a decent hard drive, and a TV capture PCI card. I wondered for days what PC I could use – an old one from the computer lab I work in that we don’t really use anymore? Should I buy one on craigslist? Should I build one? After a few days, I realized… “Hey, why not just use Molly’s mom’s old PC that I gutted and built her a new one from?” So I went over to her apartment and took the old box (and she was very happy to see it go). It has almost everything I need. An ok but sort of small-ish hard drive, a Pentium III, decent motherboard, etc. Now all I need is the TV tuner card. I’ve done a bunch of research, talked to my boss who has a TV tuner card, and I’ve picked the Hauppage WinTV 150. It’s very midrange in price, it’s pretty good quality, and it doesn’t have lots of extra features – it’s what I need for this, no more no less. I talked to Molly and she is very excited to have this homemade TiVo, or as I call it, “GhetTiVo” at our fingertips next year. Since the PC we’re using is an ugly HP biege box, I decided we should paint it or cover it with stickers or something. After some brainstorming, Molly and I decided that she would paint some Homestar Runner characters on it (she’s a great artist). We’re still not sure exactly which characters, but probably Homestar and Homsar. We’ll see. No matter what we paint on the sides, this GhetTiVo is going to rock. It’s far less expensive and far more flexible than a normal TiVo, and I can always take out any part and upgrade it in the future… assuming I win the lottery or something.

If any generous soul out there wants to help me get any parts, especially the TV tuner card, please check out my wishlist. Thanks Gees! I’ll have a post with the drive home from school very soon, with pictures from the road!

Listening to: Bottom Line – Follow Me