I’ve been contemplating a PVR for a while. Lack of funds and partner buy-in have sort of left me dead in the water, but P. recently saw a friend’s TiVo and was intrigued enough to suggest getting one (eventually).
Things have gone quiet on that front, but have since done some digging. Basic TiVo is cheap enough, but extra features (like playback on your PC via ethernet) are $100+ addons, and when I totted up the cost, it looked like I could build my own for the same price and get complete flexibility.
And now Sony’s gone and thrown a spanner in my works by announcing the PlayTV is coming to Australia. I still need to check the full feature set (can it record while gaming, network playback, etc), this would kill two birds with one stone: I was also looking to get a PS3 this Christmas.
At full retail price, the PS3/PlayTV combo comes to $670. If I were to build my PVR, I’d be looking at $1200 for the hardware (many hours of making it work just right) plus $500 for the PS3. This could save me potentially $1000, so I’m definitely going to check it out.
This may do what nobody has been failing to achieve for at least a year now: get me to buy a PS3 😉