Cool Tech Reviews

Jason Cross checks them out at ExtremeTech:

Let’s say you don’t have Media Center Edition and don’t want to wipe your drive and install it. You have Windows XP and simply want to add a TV tuner card and PVR type functions so you can hook your PC to your TV or sit across the room from your large monitor and enjoy all the benefits of TiVo. There are quite a few programs available that let you do that; we’ll examine three of them today, including SnapStream’s Beyond TV, Cyberlink’s PowerCinema, and SageTV.

We were planning to include InterVideo’s Home Theater 2, but ran into some insurmountable setup problems with it and were unable to test it for this roundup. We’ll continue trying to get it working, so look for a review of it in the future. People familiar with PVR applications for the PC are probably aware of Myth TV, and are wondering why the free homebrew project isn’t included. The answer is simple: It requires Linux. There’s nothing wrong with Linux at all, but our roundup focuses on competing Windows applications. Besides, if you want to turn your PC into a PVR with Linux, Myth TV is pretty much your only good option.

Hit the link for the details, but all the applications tested had various annoying oddities. That’s too bad, because a good PVR package might attract a crowd.