It's been a while since I decided that I want to create my own PVR/DVR. A Tivo like device to replace the VCR.

I'll create one instead of buying one since I'm not US based so no-one provides any such toy around, and Tivo won't ship overseas. Probably because their hardware is NTSC only. The Bastards!

I'm considering using an Allwell iTV3036 unit as my base platform. But I'm still looking at other options. I'd also like it to serve as a DVD player (an all in one device), I'll probably hook it up to a coffee machine at the end :-)

The Allwell can be mine for about $400 but it only has a 300Mhz CPU which is not sufficient for encoding MPEG2/4 videos. I'll consider using an MPEG2 encoder PCI card to do that.

Another possibility is using my current 700MHz K7 machine by adding a tuner card and a TVout card. But then I won't have any use to the channels on my TV itself. Pretty wasteful. So I want something that has a pass-through mode so that it can actually act like a regular video.