Old Laptop turned into a DVR / Media Hub

[TouchDown]

So, I think I've seen a thread on someone doing something like this in the past, but I can't find it.

I want to take an old PII, 1.99MHZ, 1GB, 40GBHD, XP-Home laptop and turn it into a Media Hub / DVR for downstairs bigscreen.

Anyone done this and what software would you recommend? PS - I'm doing this on the cheap and would be very interested in freeware.

 

[SkyWarp]

I think Media Portal can do that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaPortal

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Your specs look a little bit below the minimum though, certainly for HD playback.

 

[TouchDown]

eh. I won't be doing HD for sure. I get Analog cable at home, so crap in = crap out. I'll record at low res.

But you're right, I'll probably at a MINIMUM have to add a new hard drive and ghost the one I've got to do a quick swap out.

 

[Master slacker]

I want to take an old PII, 1.99MHZ, 1GB, 40GBHD, XP-Home laptop and turn it into a Media Hub / DVR for downstairs bigscreen.

With a 1.99 MHz computer, you'll be playing back all your favorite shows in stop motion format.

 

[TouchDown]

I figured the processor was slow, but I was hoping that it was good enought for low res - this is just an experiment in the making, if all else fails, it can be my media server so I can pull up home videos / pics and play on the TV downstairs.

I just figured that if I could get the kinks worked out and liked the computer in that use, that I'd replicate and get rid of my subscription Tivo.

 

[Wolverine]

I'm using an old laptop with a broken screen (now removed), attached to an external hard drive as a movie server/online portal. I hook that directly into a DLP projector and a surround sound processor and throw it up on a 10X6 screen hidden behind a curtain that pulls down over a window. No DVR'ing as I don't have cable, but me & kids spent half the rainy weekend watching The Simpsons reruns on Hulu.

I had a friend set it up for me, so I'm afraid I'm not much good on the technical specs.

I use XBMC as the movie program.

Cool thing is that, with the poor resolution in some of the older Simpsons episodes, running it fullscreen is out of the question, but running it in the small window is good enough and still larger than your average bigscreen TV. I acceptingly sacrifice picture quality for sheer size though.

 

[RevMen]

I recently finished setting up a 2-computer MediaPortal system. The main machine is in the living room where it runs the stereo and the big TV. The client machine is in the bedroom, running our bedroom TV. The machine in the living room has 2 1TB drives in a mirror and it stores all of our music and movies and TV programs. Both machines run MediaPortal using the databases on the server, so anything changes in settings or markers for programs we've watched are reflected everywhere. All of our other computers (we have a lot of computers in our house) can access all of the media, as well.

I really don't think a Pentium 2 (Do you mean 2 GHz?) could play video very well using software. BUT, many TV cards for computers have on-board video processing chips, and I'll bet one of those would let you could record and watch SD video just fine (but no guarantees!).

MediaPortal is fantastic. No need to mess with CDs, DVDs, BluRays, a DVD player, a CD player, or anything else. Everything is in the library and ready to go at any time. Plus it's a great DVR, better than any of the actual DVRs I've had. It takes some fiddling to get everything set up the way you want it, but that sort of thing appeals to most engineers anyway.