For my birthday this year, I made sure to arrange for material components for my spells, erhm, PVR.

It took three hardware components, one super cool free bit of windows software, and not more than a couple hours tinkering and setting up.

Read on for the the detailed fun of how I set it up.

“Ogres, man I’ve got an ogre slaying knife. It’s got a +9 against ogres.”

One DIY home PVR guide.

Hardware Ingredients:

• Hauppauge Media MVP - from Circuit City for $80
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150MCE from Amazon (now sold out) for $67
• Linksys WRT54G (running sveasoft firmware) from Best Buy for $43 (back up to $50 now)

Software Ingrediants:

• GBPVR
• GBPVR plugins - flavor as desired
• Hauppauge PVR-150MCE Drivers (do NOT use the PVR-150 drivers if you purchased the MCE)
• Hauppauge MediaMVP drivers

All this for way less than other solutions, and it’s more flexible too.

GBPVR instructions:

• Pour the WinTV-PVR 150MCE into the pan (install it). Be warned, I had some fun with IRQ conflicts between the PVR and the video card on my system, hopefully you don’t have a bottom of the barrel dell with a crappy bios.
• Stir in 150MCE drivers until thoroughly mixed.
• Using a toothpick, check for a barely moist interior.
• Ok, yeah, the cooking metaphor is just getting too unwieldy. Dropping it now.
• Install GBPVR.
• Signup with Zap2It account.
• Using signup information, complete GBPVR setup.
• Test on your local box. You should now have a working pvr on your desktop!

Networking instructions (or how to use a WRT54G as a cheap wireless bridge):

• Load up sveasoft firmware on routers (in my case, I had one WRT54G already upstairs by the cable modem).
• IP the primary router as 192.168.1.1, enable WDS, adding a LAN connection (under WDS settings), using the Wireless MAC (available from wireless status page) of the second router.
• IP the secondary router as 192.168.1.1, enable WDS, adding a LAN connection (under WDS settings) with the wireless mac of the first router. Configure with the same wireless settings or WEP as the first router (though you may wish to change the ssid–prevents you from associating with the second router and then your traffic getting bounced off it through the wireless again through the first router to the internet)
• Disable DHCP on the second router (the first router will serve requests from devices plugged into the second router)

You know have a dirt cheap 4 port (probably five if you really want to hack the device and change the uplink port settings) wireless bridge.

I’m using this to enable devices such as my gamecube, and the MediaMVP at the TV, without having to run cable to that location. This step is entirely optional, and one way to pay less for the same functionality.

Last step — Using the MediaMVP

• Wire up the MediaMVP into your tv or vcr as desired, plug into the network (either any of the LAN ports in the WRT54g if using above design, or any other port on the same network as the host running GBPVR), but leave power cable unplugged.
• On the PC, install the MediaMVP driver package.
• During the last step of installation, it lets you know you should unplug/replug the power to the MVP. Go ahead and power up the MVP.
• You should get connectivity from the MVP to the desktop. Not much will be available, but you’ll see the default MediaMVP menu once it’s fully loaded.
• Power off the MVP (leave plugged in, use the remote to ‘power down’
• Use the Stop script under the Hauppauge MediaMVP program group to shut down the MVP service. Additionally, using the Services program under ‘Administrative Tools’ in the control panel, disable both MediaMVP services.
• Copy ‘GB-PVR MediaMVP Server’ from the GBPVR program group to the startup group.
• Run ‘GB-PVR MediaMVP Server’, and power up the MVP.

If all went according to plan (does it ever?), you now have a fully-functioning PVR that is accessible from your Windows PC, as well as from a TV anywhere in your house.

There are other Linux based solutions (Freevo and MythTV being the two standouts) that I probably could have gotten running as well, but I avoided them for a couple of reasons. First, despite preferring Linux in general, my primary PC at home is a Windows box for my wife. I’ve got an older machine that I may build up into a linux pvr solution at some point, but I just wanted to get the thing up and going with as little effort as possible.

Additionally, while I’ve been very happy with GBPVR so far, I’m keeping my out for Media Portal, which appears to be a true Open Source product very similar to GBPVR. I’d prefer to use Open Source if possible, but it looks like Media Portal has some catching up to GBPVR before it’s on par (specifically no MedaiMVP support currently).

Posted by Jordan on Monday, February 14th, 2005 at 1:23 pm.