Nforce 3 board for PVR

[badgers]

I am really new to the whole PVR concept.
I have looked at the itx platform and it seems really expensive for a small form factor.
I have plenty of space in my home for a mid-tower case, and standard "stuff"
I found a biostar board with a sempron chip, 8X AGP and 4 PCI slots for 92 bucks local.
I also have a choice of an NForce3 board for 140 bucks from the same place.

It seems everyone is using a Haupage 350 TV tuner in the itx boards.

1)would it be better to go with the biostar "standard" board and get a seperate TV out AGP card or go with the Nvidia Nforce3?
2)TV-In, is it possible to have (2) TV tuners so that I can record one station while I watch a second station and record it so that I can pause when I need to go to the bathroom or record two stations while not watching TV
3)I have digital cable, is it possible to control the digital tuner AND make sure the PVR knows which TV tuner is recieving from the digital cable tuner and which is "expanded basic" so that it does not try to record channel 500 from the wrong card.

#3 seems to be the one that may be a show stopper. I have found a couple of alpha stage projects to let linux control a digital cable box(charter communications in Madison,Wisconsin) but all of the examples I have googled were for a single tuner and that was it.
I record Adult Swim on the Cartoon network(expanded basic) and then there is something on "digital cable" like the extra discovery channel will have a special on something cool(chanel 130 for me) sometimes discovery health 128 runs some cool surgeries programs later in the evening.(have you ever seen a face lift OMFG )

PS how do you get the TV listings? that was not 100% clear to me either

thanks
_________________
Abit KD7-S
Athlon XP2500+
166mHz FSB
512 Meg PC3200 Ram running at 166mHz
LiteOn DVD dual Layer burner(hdc)

2.6.17 Suspend2 kernel with no scsi support

[JeffBlair]

OK, I think I can get some of your questions out of the way.

Yes, you can have 2 tuners in your PC. Some people have had luck with the Haupage 500. That one has 2 tuners built in(like 2 250's). That way it will do what you are wanting.

I have also heard of some people hooking up there cable box via FireWire. I think they can also control there box that way.

As for the PC, if you get a 250/300/500 it has encoding/decoding on board. So you don't need as big of a CPU. (spend it on storage space )

For the chanels, it depends on what PVR software you get. Most of them will use XMLTV. I use MythTV, and it uses DataDirect. About the same thing. You can set it up to get new info every night. Also with MythTV, you can play DVD's, Music, and have it on a web page to set it up.

Hope this helps a little.

[badgers]

thanks, I appreciate your help.

I was not looking to up the CPU as much as I was trying to find the sweet spot in pricing.
the lowest rated cpu I could find was a 2200 sempron, with a VIA chipset-92 bucks compared with the 125 bucks I was finding the itx kits.
The other thing is that the sempron setup uses as cheap a PSU as I can find currently on the market, where the itx has a low product volume PSU/Wall Wart system.
I like the itx system but it is just at a premium and VIA recently changed the license on their video drivers so they are no different then nvidia IMHO.

I guess I was really asking if opinions on Nforce3 vs AGP video card with TV out, I think the Nforce3 has TV out!?

I had google searched and found a serial cable connection for controlling my digital cable box. But like I said above I couldn't really find out how to make sure that the PVR would be Smart in its selection of tuner card/cable controller. I want it to try and use the "basic cable" connection and only switch to digital cable if the channels are above 99
_________________
Abit KD7-S
Athlon XP2500+
166mHz FSB
512 Meg PC3200 Ram running at 166mHz
LiteOn DVD dual Layer burner(hdc)

2.6.17 Suspend2 kernel with no scsi support