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monthly fees? I figure why pay TiVo or a cable company or a satellite company to use a personal video recorder, after all, it's just a piece of timer software that records data to a hard drive. Just a matter of getting the tv listings, hooking up a home computer and finding the right software for one-time up front cost (something cheap, like $50 and not 300-500 like TiVo/ReplayTV charge you).
Easy, SnapStream, or I think it's now called BeyondTV, there was an article written on it in 2002 on tomsnetworking.com, great article: http://www.tomsnetworking.com/network/20020423/A little more than $50, but $69.99 ain't bad. If you don't already have a tv tuner card for your PC then get the bundle that comes with it.I'm not sure but I think the XP Media Edition PCs have similar software already built-in as well.
www.snapstream.com
Yes. You can just get a TV tuner card or something like an ATI All-In-Wonder video card for your home computer. Usually there's a TV recording software bundled, something like InterVideo WinDVR, which can download TV programs online.TiVo is popular for a reason. It's easy to use. Most people would just pay a few bucks a month for the subscription for the convenience. Plus, if you recorded to a computer, you had to hook your computer to your big screen TV if you wanted to view there.
El Gato has a couple of solutions if you're using a Mac. There's and "EZ" USB 2.0 box at about $150 that's gotten decent reviews.
www.elgato.com