The Dead Space Society

We had been using vhs tapes to record our shows when we couldn't watch them. Mainly, my wife records two soaps on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can't remember the last thing I recorded to vhs. Anyway, the tapes we have were getting old and pretty much ready for the trash. Additionally, the TV/VCR we have randomly quit recording which created a bit of anger on my wife's part and of course, that ends up on my lap one way or another.

So thats the premise. I figured these HTPC setups can't be that difficult and considering my experience, why should we rely on a 30 year old technology. After doing a bit of research and pricing, I decided on the Hauppauge 1062 PVR-150 MCE.

There are two PVR-150's available from Happauge. The one I purchased is ready for WinXP MCE and Vista. The 1045 is 2000/XP only and doesn't have the composite inputs. I did install this card briefly on a Vista setup however I really wanted a HTPC setup and not a clumsy computer sitting in my living room. There are a few manufacturers available however Hauppauge seems to carry the best reputation. Additionally, Hauppauge has quite a few models including a model that has two tuners enabling you to watch one station and record another. You can accomplish this by installing two cards like the one I purchased as well.

The packaging was typical for pci expansion cards. The contents were as follows:

PCI card
FM antenna
USB IR receiver
Remote control (with batteries)
Various software

The installation was straight forward as far as physically installing it. I paired it with a Pentium D, an Asus Motherboard, 1G dual channel DDR, and an Nvidia FX 5200.

I loaded Win XP at first and installed the TV software that came with the card. I then loaded MCE (Expansion Pack) on top of XP. Shoot me a note if you are interested in this method. The software was a bit buggy at first but nothing to do with the card itself. Once I had MCE updated and the appropriate filters and codecs installed, it worked like a charm.

I have a small write-up in my blog about my HTPC but here are the basics. We only receive arial stations at the house because cable has become way too pricey. We plan on exploring Dish or DirectTV once we get in the new house but for now, we get 7 stations and it works...for free. With MCE, I set my Guide up to stations by location. The pc connects through the net to download the station guides for the channels I have selected. A two week schedule is kept and updated daily.

We are able to pause live TV, record shows individually or the whole series. I have 165G allocated for recording and keeping tv shows although we haven't touched it at this point.

I have also shared my mp3's which you can listen to. This is handy for cleaning house and so on. The other bonus is converting all of our DVD's to XviD. I store them on a server and don't have to load DVD's any longer. This feature works great if you have children who like to toss the DVD collection around the house.

So, if you are eyeballing a HTPC setup, I suggest looking at this card. I plan on picking up another for this setup and two more for HTPC's in the new house. The next phase will be backing up the TV shows we have recorded to DVD.

Tripper