How To Build Your Own Mini-ITX DVR
Over at XYZ Computing they have posted a great article on How to Build Your Own Mini-ITX DVR. This is actually the third part in a series of articles on building a tiny Mini-ITX based computer. In the beginning, the Mini-ITX motherboard booted a very small Linux distribution off of a flash drive and was not very powerful, but definitely small and quiet. The second part of the series added a better “cube” shaped case, more cooling, and it booted a larger Linux distribution from a CD and could actually save data to a Comact Flash card.
In this, the third part in the series, XYZ Computing shows how they took their existing Mini-ITX system and added a hard drive and Video Capture Card with TV Tuner so that they could turn it into a DVR running MythTV that could replace a TiVo or ReplayTV.
This is a project that I have been thinking about tackling sometime in the near future and it’s interesting to see someone else’s approach to this idea. While I think that their final Mini-ITX / DVR system is nice, there are some things I plan on doing differently. For one thing, I think that the noise level is extremely important when building a computer that is going to be in the living room next to the TV and I would like to try and build one that doesn’t need any fans. Either it is water cooled (if possible) or runs cool enough that it doesn’t need any additional cooling — again, if possible. The other thing I know I would do differently is to use a case that is more like an audio or video component case than the tiny cube shaped case that XYZ Computing used. This will be a larger case that will help solve some of the space issues they had inside the cube case and it will fit in better with the rest of my home entertainment system.
With lots of pictures and specific hardware examples, this article will be a great reference for anybody trying to build a Mini-ITX based DVR — I know that I will be referring back to it when I start my DVR project!
Technorati Tags: Mini-ITX, DVR, PVR, TiVo, ReplayTV, MythTV
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