said by BHNtechXpert:Alright BB... now tell him the hardware investment costs Lets not get him too excited until he finds out
how deep it's gonna put a hole in his wallet
I've edited this a few times for clarity... I keep thinking of more stuff!
Well, that all depends on what you want to do with it, how many tuners you want, how many extenders you plan to run
simultaneously, and how much storage space you want to have for recordings. With 4TB of storage, I can keep quite a few shows. I currently have over 600 shows recorded, and I'm only using about 2.5TB. I've never had to delete something before I watched it, in order to make room for new recordings. Mind you... this is FIVE rooms... three kids, wife, and me... all scheduling recordings on the same DVR. And, I have about 200 episodes of shows that I don't want to delete! (Two and a Half Men, and... The New Adventures of Old Christine)
I'll give you three examples of systems that will EASILY handle all your HDTV needs. All of them have the same storage space... 2TB. All of them have a Solid State Drive (SSD) for the operating system (FAST!). All of them use integrated Intel Graphics (3D BluRay Playback!). All are top-quality components (You could go MUCH cheaper). And, of course, if you already own a fairly new PC (bought in previous year or two), you probably already have most of what you need. These three systems are easily upgradable (by swapping only a few components) if you ever want to add more rooms (extenders) that will need to watch TV simultaneously. This is important... you can have more than the number of rooms listed below, all connected with extenders, but the systems I recommend below will handle SIMULTANEOUS viewing on the number of TV's (rooms) I list below.
**first is for a 1 room DVR with 4 tuners
**second is for two rooms, same PC configuration as the first
**third is full-boat... five rooms, 8 tuners (could probably even go six rooms with very little degradation in performance, for only an extra $150).
Most of the items below are available at NewEgg.com, and I'll list their item numbers.
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1 ROOM, 4 TUNERS:
CPU: $134.99 - N82E16819115090 - Intel Core i3-2105 3.1GHz CPU with integrated HD3000 graphics
MOBO: $84.99 - N82E16813131716 - ASUS P8H61-M Motherboard
RAM: $22.99 - N82E16820139659 - Kingston DDR3-1333 RAM 4GB (2x2GB) KVR1333D3S8N9K2/4G
SSD: $99.99 - N82E16820233223 - Corsair Force Series3 60GB SSD CSSD-F60GB3A-BK
HDD: $119.99 - N82E16822145475 - HITACHI 2TB Deskstar 5K3000 hard drive HDS5C3020ALA632
PSU: $79.99 - N82E16817182068 - Rosewill 550W 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Power Supply
CASE: $69.99 - N82E16811204030 - nMediaPC 1000B Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
REMOTE:$19.99 - N82E16880101008 - Rosewill MCE remote control
TUNER:$198.99 - N82E16815706001 - Ceton InfiniTV 4 tuner CableCARD tuner
ODD: $57.99 - N82E16827135247 - Asus BluRay/DVD/CD drive
Cable: $3.69 - N82E16812270093 - ByteCC 18 inch SATA cable (two come with mother board, need three)
OS: $139.99 - N82E16832116992 - Windows 7 Professional - 64 bit
TOTAL: $1,033.58, plus VERY MINIMAL shipping.
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2 ROOMS, 4 TUNERS:
Same as above, just add one Media Center Extender (XBox360-no HDD required, LinkSys DMA-2100, or HP-X280N),
about $150.
TOTAL: $1,183.58, plus shipping
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5 ROOMS, 8 TUNERS (8 CableCARD):
Same as 1 room, but
ADD:
4 - extenders @ $150 each
1 - $198.99 - N82E16815706001 - Ceton InfiniTV 4 tuner CableCARD tuner
REPLACE the following components from above:
CPU: $219.99 - N82E16819116400 - Intel Core i5-2405S 2.5GHz CPU with integrated HD3000 graphics
RAM: $39.99 - N82E16820148476 - Crucial DDR3-1333 RAM 8GB (2x4GB) CT2KIT51264BD1339
HDD: $129.99 - N82E16822148834 - Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM Hard drive
TOTAL: $1,944.57 plus shipping
OR: You can swap the extra InfiniTV tuner for two Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 tuners ($119 each) to receive QAM/NTSC/ATSC programming... that's the route I've chosen.
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Now, I have to add... that you CAN get a real bargain on extenders, if you search e-bay. I paid less than $100 each for my four extenders. The prices I've listed above are for HIGH QUALITY PARTS! These machines should last a long, long time.
Plus! You can make any of the above-listed PC's into a fully functional 3D BluRay player for about $100 by purchasing software (the latest version of Total Media Theatre). All of the above can also play NetFlix (with subscription), and if you add other FREE plug-ins to Media Center, you can get Hulu, automatic commercial-skipping on non-copy-protected shows (the TV networks hate this, but it is SO NICE!), and much, much more! Best DVR you've ever seen!
Lastly, for the pay-back....
On the single-room setup above, assuming $10/month for your DVR rental, plus another $10/month for the DVR "service"... the payback is about 52 months. Not real impressive, but you get a DVR that blows away their DVR... more space, more tuners, BluRay playback ($100 extra), NetFlix, Hulu, etc, etc, etc.
On the Double-room setup above, assuming $20/month for two DVR rentals (4 tuners), plus another $10/month for the DVR "service", plus another $20/month for the "whole-house" service... the payback is about 24 months.
On the FIVE-room setup above, assuming $20/month for two DVR rentals (4 tuners), plus all the other boxes and service you're going to pay for (about $82/month plus tax), the payback is 24 months!
In the single room case, it's hard to justify... you have to get 52 months out of that shiny new PC to get your money back. I would expect a quality PC to run for 10 years (120 months), but with lightning and other possible problems... you never know. But for the Double-room setup (or more rooms) I think 24 months is a no-brainer. In 24 months, I made my money back!
Now, of course, all this assumes that you know how to build, setup, configure and maintain a Windows PC. If you don't... then you can wait for the Ceton "Q". The speculated price for it is around $700. They have stated that the "Echo" will sell for less than the cheapest XBox 360... or $149. So... if you bought the "Q" for a whole-home five room system (assuming $700 for the "Q" and $149 for the "Echo")... you'd have about $1300 in the whole thing... or a pay-back of about 16 months. No brainer.
RE: Hardy101... send me a PM at thegreenbutton.tv. My username there is barnabas1969.
Thanks, Brian