Well, I've been talking about getting some sort of PVR / DVR / watch television when I want thing, and I finally broke down and got the PVR that my local cable companies gives you for $7.95 a month. I got it today, mostly because Mary and I wanted to see the season premiere of Smallville and also the premiere of Lost. So, we watched Smallville and recorded Lost.

It is pretty cool, being able to select programs to record and watch them when you want. This will definitely help keeping up with Enterprise, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, which air on Friday night. Now, that's not a great night for me, since Mary and I are usually out with friends doing something besides watching tv (okay, probably drinking and playing cards, but still more social).

And, yes, sadly, we do watch a lot of tv.

Oh, and the remote has a nice picture-in-picture function, which will be nice while watching football, so I can watch two games.

[Update: I love it! I just recorded Decisive Battles for later when Mary isn't watching, as she hates it!]

I love The Amazing Race. I'm very glad the midget got thrown off, though, because I really don't like her. Next, I'd love for the christian models to lose, mostly because the guy wouldn't do the Vodka shot. Of course, I'm currently watching the asshole guy and girl refuse to pay their taxi driver. Asses.

Of course, my favorite team is Chip & Kim, for sure. He really seems like an all-around nice guy. I like the fact that he is always amazed by the places he is at and the people he meets.

Well, the asshole guy got taken to jail. HAHA!

[Update: I just read Mary the bio for the asshole guy team, and this quote was it in. HuH???

Colin is the owner of a cell phone store. Among the accomplishments he is most proud of is getting Christie to fall in love with him, which he claims is better than being the top first-year dealer for a book publishing company in the United States.

Now, WTF? I don't understand what he is talking about with this comparison.

]

Well, what do you know, I've been talking lately (about the last couple months) that my next project will be to build myself a home entertainment pc. The main reason is to get TIVO-like functionality with added multimedia capabilities. Plus, no monthly fee! So, as I did with my PDA search, here's a list of requirements for what I want. I figure this is the best place to do it, since I'll (hopefully) get people's ideas and opinions on it.

My goal is to have one central PC attached to my television/surround sound that can control everything, including watching DVD's, recording television, playing music (with visualizations), surf the web, watch mpeg's and quicktime movies. In effect, I would like to have one computer to rule them all!

Requirements for Corey's Home Entertainment Multimedia PC:
PVR capabilities, including pausing of live television, rewinding, scheduled recording and series recording;
CD/DVD playback and recording;
Music playback - CD / MP3 / WMA / etc.
Able to upgrade hard drive, memory, etc.
Remote Control

I've looked a bit at Microsoft's Media Center PC, but I really don't like the idea of having to buy a pre-built machine to get it. The operating system looks cool, basically XP with some extra cool multimedia stuff. However, I can't bring myself to buy a whole computer from a dealer for it. Plus, the price tag seems a bit high, usually starting around $1000. I figure that I can build myself a better computer for that.

So, it appears that NVidia and ATI both have a system packaged with a graphics card that ostensibly can do what I want.

NVidia's offering is the NVidia Personal Cinema. The key points are there: Watching / Recording / Controlling live TV; Full Media Player; DVD Recording. I watched their little video today, and it looks pretty cool. I'm still trying to find some reviews of it. I haven't looked at ATI's offering, yet, but I'll update this when I find more information.

Update:

My friend at work, Mark McElroy, just stopped by my desk to say that he picked up a media center pc and is loving it. He searched around, figuring that he could undercut a pre-built, but found cyperpowerpc.com had a media center pc at a great price that he couldn't beat by enough to justify building it himself. So, he picked one up, sounds sweet! So, I'm going to look at them and perhaps pick one up. Mark said that I could come over and fool around with his after work one day, see how it works. Naturally, I'm a bit nervous about chipping out the bucks and then finding that I can't hook it up nicely to my existing sound system. But, from talking to him, it looks like it has all the outs that I need.

A cool side note is that I can then install Virtual PC and run Longhorn on it, as well.

You know, I'm sitting here watching Tech Live on Tech TV, and it really stinks! It seems to me like Tech TV's version of Entertainment Tonight. What a pain to watch it. Screensavers (gotta love Sarah), Awesome! TechLive, STINKY!

I just stumbled upon that SciFi Network is replaying the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys series. I miss lying on my couch on Saturday night, slightly hungover (okay, don't miss that), watching Hercules and Xena.

Oh, and next week is the season premiere of Stargate SG-1, another geek show I absolutely love! Tonight they are playing a SG-1 marathon, ending with the season finale from last year, which I haven't seen. SG-1 is one of the major reasons I'm looking to get some sort of TIVO like device.