On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 01:03:19AM -0500, Gabe Rubin wrote: > At the price range of 1K, who is your target audience? If I pay that > much for something tv related, I want it to work out of the box. Who > is going to pay that much of a premium? I think $500 might be the > price break point, esp if you are not fully functional and full > support, otherwise it is a hobbyist device...and the hobbyists are > here already ;)
A decent HD box is pricey, but not that pricey. However, typically if you do it cheap you will see: P4-3ghz plus motherboard: $200 250gb hard drive: $140 Cheap Case: $60 Nvidia 5200 card: $60 PC-HDTV card: $190 (For SDTV and 2nd tuner) WINTV-PVR-250 $130 512MB Ram: $70 Linux & Mythtv Priceless Total: 850 That's doing it on the cheap, though not the cheapest. For example, I got the P4+MB for less at a special sale, the drives cheaper with rebate, though I bought a more expensive case. I got the pcHDTV in a large bulk purchase. It was work to get my parts as cheaply as I did in many cases. Chances are you want a premium low-noise case, fancy cooling fans etc. With the work to assemble and slightly better parts it can easily be $1000. You could drop the wintv-250 card, or perhaps shortly get a 150 card with the brand new drivers for just $84 (as I have done), but in reality the pcHDTV isn't enough since it has just one RF input. (Though it could do digi-cable and HDTV on the same card but who wants tht?) Of course, Mythtv and Linux have the ability to run on older hardware you have lying around, which is part of the attraction. I can make a nice SDTV PVR for you by adding little more than a bigger drive and perhaps a pvr-350 card, or a pvr-150 card and a $30 TV-out card to your PC. Use the pvr-150-mce and now we're talking just about $150 in add-ons.
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