Build a Mini-ITX Personal Video Recorder

Let's take a look at our choices for components for our compact PVR and I'll explain a bit about why these parts are a good fit for our recipe.

Mainboard: Via EPIA-SP13000 Compact mini-ITX form factor with VGA with S-Video & Composite TV-Out; 168-pin DIMM memory sockets (2); 10/100 LAN; AGP2X with 2D/3D Graphics Acceleration with motion compensation for DVD playback; Sound Blaster Pro Compatible Audio; and one PCI slot and two USB 1.1 ports to which an optional 2-port USB 1.1 module may be added. Chosen for its on-board data encryption engine.

Memory: Kingston KVR400X64C3A/512 (512 MB, 400 MHz) DDR DIMM. This is reliable and affordable.

Case and Power Supply: Travla Model c158 with 90-watt power supply and holders for media and hard drive. Chosen for its solid construction, power rating and good looks. (Back I/O panel supplied with motherboard.)

Hard Disk: I chose Seagate's Barracuda ST3300831A, 300 GB with 8MB cache. Provides high speed, capacity and reliable data storage.

CD/DVD burner: Quanta's SDW-082 Slimline CD-RW and 8x +/-DVD writer

Video Card: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 350 With its onboard MPEG encoder/decoder hardware, this card offloads much of the work normally done by the processor. The MPEG-1/2 hardware encoder/decoder is a must for operation without the power of a high-end processor. Comes with an infra-red remote control transmitter and receiver.

Slimline CDR-to-ATA Adapter: This is needed because the Quanta SDW-082 has a slimline design for laptop and notebook connecters.

Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor: You'll want a standard PS/2 keyboard, mouse and VGA monitor around for software installation and configuration. But you may not want to make these permanent parts of an entertainment system.

PVR SOFTWARE

My choice for PVR software: iMedia MythTV. The default MythTV template on iMedia Embedded linux automatically installs the drivers needed for mythtv running on VIA mini-ITX mainboard with a Hauppauge PVR card.

This template also configures 2d/3d and MPEG hardware acceleration on VIA boards and has the latest drivers for hauppauge cards (including firmware).

Here are some features of iMedia MythTV I especially like:

• It's based on stable and popular MythTV 0.21 svn release 13181.
• Small distribution size, about 128 Mb.
• Silent graphical booting and automatically loading of MythTV.
• Supports MPEG and 2D/3D acceleration on all Via Epia mainboards.
• Provides the latest video drivers for VIA Unichorme chipsets.
• Supports Hauppauge IR and serial remotes.
• Runs MythTV out-of-the-box for EPIA mainboards with Hauppauge PVR capture cards.
• Menu-driven installation automatically installs the drivers needed for MythTV.
• Network updates are provided via FTP or HTTP.
• Zero CPU utilization for full-screen MPEG playback on VIA boards.