If you glanced at the PS3 and thought it was too expensive, this might help you justify spending your green. [ken_vs_ryu] put up a mini tutorial on running mythtv under Linux on the PS3 with an external USB capture device. When you consider the cost of a decent machine, video card and blue-ray drive, it’s not a bad deal. (I’m not sure how many Plextor ConvertX encoders you can run at once.) To get things working, you’ll have to thumb through the Gentoo Wiki for the details on setting up the ConvertX.
8 thoughts on “PS3 DVR How-To”
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“it’s not a bad deal” might apply if you are looking for a DVR with Blu-Ray, but assuming you aren’t interested in BR (which is a fair assumption at this point) then you can get a stand-alone DVR for much less than this.
If you were really into the MythTV route, you could still build a suitable (and smaller, if you used EPIA motherboards and such) machine for less. Which could still be updated with a BR or HD-DVD drive down the line, once they become more reasonably priced.
I suppose it is cool from a technical point of view, but I would personally say that paying $600 for a game console only to turn it into a DVR is quite a waste of money, and highly impractical.
“Hey! Let’s play Resistance! Oh…wait, the PS3 is recording Numb3rs…”
I want blu-ray, so your assumptions are wrong.
You know, this was inevitable. But I’d do it. Myth consumes little CPU power, especially with a hardware encoder. Right now I have it running on a Celeron 600. The additional downtime on the Cell BE would be wonderful for someone like me who needs additional STATIONARY processing power. This is the only thing that makes me want a PS3, and I mean WANT.
Sorry, just to tack on to my previous comment (if a mod combined these two, I wouldn’t complain), but who said the PS3 had to be a back-end to Myth? Towards the middle of its life, my XBox was heavily used as a MythTV front-end. Since the back-end was a separate machine, I could always reboot it when I wanted to play a game. No reason you can’t go the same route with the PS3. I mean, a back-end would give you more freedom, like High Definition capturing, additional storage, and the ability to make better use of your PS3.
You know, for me it doesn’t look expensive… Suppose it’s not worth of such money… I don’t like it!
Isnt there a cheaper option than the Plextor ConvertX? Its pretty expensive and i already have a ps3. Im 14 by the wy so it’s actually really expensive.
i heard that sony loses $200 every time a ps3 is sold so if you use a ps3 as a pc or dvr, ure getting a pretty good deal
I want to hook my PS3 to a recordable Panasonic DVD player so I can record movies played on the PS3, is this possible? and how?