8. General Impressions And Conclusions

The real test of a system like this is to just use it and get a feel for it over time. In this case, everything worked. I could record, playback, pause, and more. But even though all of the required functionality was there, my system really felt like a bunch of separate components instead of an integrated PVR appliance. It just seemed clunky.

I'm a bit biased in this area, because in a previous life, I spent a few years working for a company that designed, built and marketed an integrated PVR system. With this home brew system, a number of things were just a bit sub-par. For example, the responsiveness of the system was always less than what you would expect on a video appliance. It would often take five seconds or more to bring up the program guide; this with a 2.2 GHz CPU! On the system I worked on, the guide would appear in a second or less on what we, at the time, thought was an extravagant 300 MHz CPU.

Other commands were also slow. Starting to watch a live TV stream took much longer than it did on my stand-alone satellite receiver, and navigating the menus was sluggish. Other things needed a bit of polish; for example, the left-most column of the program guide often showed programs that were already completed, and so should have been omitted.

Also, every remote command had a sound associated with it. This became annoying after a while, and I found no way to turn it off. I also found no way to trim down the contents of the program guide to the 20 or so channels we normally watch. Instead, I had to scroll through page after page of channels I never view.

But I have to admit, the system worked and it fulfilled my requirements, so in the grand scheme of things, these are relatively minor complaints. Even so, with its tangle of cables, multiple pieces, idiosyncrasies, and sluggish behavior, no one would mistake this setup for an off-the-shelf PVR appliance.

After all my troubles, aggravation and finally a working system, did this experiment succeed? In a way, yes. If you were limited in your choices and you wanted to jump on the PVR bandwagon, a setup like this would give you the ability to pause live TV, record programs for later viewing, and skip commercials.

But it was a painful journey for me, and it reminded me of why I now believe that it sometimes is just not worth the time, effort and aggravation to take a do-it-yourself approach when similar pre-configured devices are available off the shelf.

Join our discussion on this topic