This is the first in a series of posts about choosing the right bits to build a Personal Video Recorder. A couple weeks back I decided that neither PlayTV nor TiVo really suited my needs, so I will be building my own.
It’s been a while since I looked at computer components, and the market has changed dramatically. Nowhere is this more evident than the CPUs. Originally, I had flagged a dual-core desktop chip like the Intel CoreDuo or an AMD Athlon II. However, there’s a new entrant to the CPU space: the Intel Atom that is at the heart of a lot of lightweight applications like netbooks, mobile phones, and media players.