In article .com,
Mike Pepper wrote:
I really like the idea of a hard disk - no more hunting round for a

blank tape with enough free space left; no more hunting round for
that
tape with the final episode of '24', which I know is there
somewhere -
but have some concerns...

I very much like the sound of the hard disk based systems too, but one
critiscm I have read is of excessive noise from the units, (presumably
fan noise and noise from the HDD itself). - Has anyone who owns such a
unit got any comments on this?

You are now entering the realms of the home server + network arena -
You have a living room "appliance" which is nothing more than a small
(fanless) PC (boot off flash) with a slot (combined CD+DVD reader), an
RF/UHF in with digital tuner on-board, Video & audio out and a network
interface to take the data to/from the "home server" stashed under
the stairs..

Well gekky stuff, but it's all do-able with todays technology, and open
source stuff.

Hopefully this year I'll get my act together and build such a thing... I
already have a spare small PC - little pizza box size thing, works
off a laptop PSU, boots from flash, 500MHz VIA processor, although
the processor might not be up to playing video from the filestore and
recording off-air at the same time.

I've already gotten rid of the old Hi-Fi stack from the livingroom - my
DVD player seems to play all my audio CDs quite well... (Amp & Speakers
are still there though, but the Amp is now in the telly cabinet and not
part of a separate stack)

Gordon