don't know what to do.. I want a setup that does not require any tweaking... just out of box and ready to go.. and then I also want it to be able to handle 3 way... recording, recording and watching... you know.. lke all three fuctions.. also I want it cheap.. lol.. I want to be sub 400... I only know of one post I can find.. any recomendations?

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... hlight=400

-Cody

*Gazing into my crystal ball* Your future ... I see .. I see .. I see someone asking why this is in the Installation section

Sub $400 is tough and will require a lot of bargain hunting, and recycling used hardware.

I put my box together for about $620 initially, but was also looking for ease of assembly and thus started with a barebones PC. I probably could have trimmed $50 or more by buying case, MoBo, power supply, ... seperately but at the cost of a lot more time, effort, and risk.

You need either a decent CPU or a tuner card with a hardware encoder, either one is going to cost some money. At least $75 for a fast enough CPU, or $95 for a tuner card with an encoder. With a fast CPU you can probably get a tuner card for $40. With a encoding tuner maybe you can drop your CPU cost to $50...

Anything less than 256Mb of RAM and your playback will suffer, 512Mb is better. Figure at least $50 for that

The next temptation is to skimp on disk space, but having made that mistake let me strongly advise against it. I managed to pick up a HD for $0.50/Gb but $0.65-0.75/Gb is more likely.

The $620 price point was still less than a Tivo + lifetime service + ... and the machine is more functional.

Oh, and what the heck is this doing in installation?

LMAO

Well I put mine together for around $450 or so but that was after I got a computer through dell for $200. I found it on www.gotapex.com awhile back.