Building Tivo-like HTPC?...

I want to build a HTPC with Tivo-like capabilities. Well, there's a lot of info around about generic HTPCs, but people seem to be much more focused on HD and FTA tuner cards... which I couldn't care less about. I just want to link it up to my Optus box, have electronic guide to flag what to record and leave the box alone to do it's bit. Then I watch what I want, when I want it... hence the question here as OzTivo essentially does that.

I thought I'd get my old Duron 1.3GHz and couple of HDDs that are laying around... and then get Hauppage PVR-350 with hardware en/decoding on my TV. Put on Sage or MythTV and optical drive in it to play movies & MP3s and that's it. Will stick in wireless card too to grab TV guide or if I need to push anything to it; and also will setup IR to switch the cable box which I reckon the software will take care of.

The bit that I don't understand is how will the PC control the Optus box for scheduled recordings and is it possible at all? Googling around, I discovered manual channel switching via IR blaster of some sort is no probs; however I can't find anything that will explain how to setup the recording (apart from programming both the box and PC).

Any comments?...

i was looking into something like this myself. what i discovered was that to have a truley integrated HTPC i would need a PCI satellite tuner card that had a CAM and supported the current encryption that foxtel is using. This way, i wouldn't even need an external STB, i could just whack my providers smart card into the back of my HTPC.

the problem... this card im looking for doesn't seem to exist :(

so i went for tivo and will wait till the HTPC thing is more matured.

my .02