MythTV is pretty much out for 'technical acumen' reasons. It suffers similar 'design by programmer' issues that 'the GIMP' does, so makes sense to the programmers, but won't to normal users.
If you do want to go the computer as recorder route, you can get ATSC decoder cards, and USB boxes. And you use a TV watching application to watch/record TV. On the PC side, there's a common standard for ATSC decoder cars drivers called 'BDA', so any BDA capable software can use them. On the Mac side, you're going to have to find a card or USB box that works with ElGato's Eye TV. (http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/home.en.html) ElGato produce their own decoder hardware, which probably works best with their hardware.
I'd probably recommend a mac-mini with as much disk-space as you can get, suitable TV display adapter, and appropriate Eye TV hardware dongle. I'd go for one of the Eye TV Diversity USB dongles, and intend to get one myself at some point.
However, having said all that...
The best thing for your Mom is probably a Set Top Box all in one Digital Video Recorder. You will not save money trying to build one from a PC, because it's really not a mainstream thing to do with PCs. You can get a DVR for the same cost as an Eye TV Diversity.
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Date: 2008-04-27 08:49 pm (UTC)If you do want to go the computer as recorder route, you can get ATSC decoder cards, and USB boxes. And you use a TV watching application to watch/record TV. On the PC side, there's a common standard for ATSC decoder cars drivers called 'BDA', so any BDA capable software can use them. On the Mac side, you're going to have to find a card or USB box that works with ElGato's Eye TV. (http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/home.en.html) ElGato produce their own decoder hardware, which probably works best with their hardware.
I'd probably recommend a mac-mini with as much disk-space as you can get, suitable TV display adapter, and appropriate Eye TV hardware dongle. I'd go for one of the Eye TV Diversity USB dongles, and intend to get one myself at some point.
However, having said all that...
The best thing for your Mom is probably a Set Top Box all in one Digital Video Recorder. You will not save money trying to build one from a PC, because it's really not a mainstream thing to do with PCs. You can get a DVR for the same cost as an Eye TV Diversity.