Build Your Own HTPC/PVR

I really like these types of articles, even if I don't agree with everything said, mostly because a lot of times it will give people ideas they didn't think of, or create debate amongst other users. he doesn't really go a route I'd recommend–using an old computer like this is just going to make you want to improve anyways, so why waste your time?

How old can that computer be? Well you’d be surprised, most of the tuners have encoding processors built into them, so the computer itself will do very little when video is being recorded or played back. As a minimum I would say at least have what I have, which is shown below.

P3 866MHz CPU
512 MB RAM
Approx. 7 years old
Approx Value at a garage sale $100.00 if you take those Vanilla Ice CD’s with it

Read the rest here.