Build your own DVR

[Ghoulish Delight]

In a fit of wishful thinking, I've been trying to devise a way to put together an affordable DVR. I've explored a few options, and so far I like
this guy the best. It's the easiest way to go.

Technically, I could just buy a couple of those and hook them up to my laptop. Voila, dual tuner DVR. But it would mean sacrificing my laptop to that use. So that's where the real cost comes in, building a system.

It doesn't need to be particularly high powered, this kind of application is pretty non-intensive. So here's the way I see it (prices are based on some quick research at online discount outlets I know of):

Barebones system (case, motherboard, power supply, etc.): ~$80 for what I need
CPU: A 2.8GHz CPU should be plenty of power, another $80
RAM: 1GB should do it, $70
Tuners: 2 of the pinnacle tuners I linked to above (hey, If I'm gonna do it, it's gonna have dual tuners) - $200
TV Out Card: Don't want to watch TV on a computer...plus I don't want to buy a monitor. Doesn't have to be particularly powerful - $60
Sound Card: $10 (holy crap, when did sound cards get so cheap!?)
Storage: 200GB should be good to start. ~$80 (less if I find a good deal)

Adding fudge factor for tax and other incidentals (I may want a keyboard an mouse to leave attached to it, and I'll probably need a couple cables here and there to complete the setup) and the total is around $600.

Not bad, not great. There are DVRs out there for less than that, but either they require a montly fee, or they're not as fully featured as this solution (single tuner, no commercial skip, etc.).

I don't know why I'm posting this. I'm not going to do anything about it and I'm not even positive the useability will be all that good (how much can be done with the included remote, how much requires pulling out the keyboard/mouse?). But it would be a fun project...and maybe once it's time to replace our desktop, I can salvage the old one for parts.