So after deciding that a Media Server of some sort was needed for the home, dismissing Windows Media server for all the usual reasons (cost, noise, cost, inflexibility, cost, lack of EPG), looking at a couple of Linux/Mac solutions and arriving at the conclusion that they were in their infancy... What about a Tivo? I stumbled across the NZ and Oz tivo sites and read everything I could

Tivo arrived yesterday from the US after 8 weeks in the care of the US Postal service, CacheCard arrived 5 days after I ordered it (7 weeks ago) along with a spare drive bracket (just in case), and an IR thingy, a local PC shop for the 250GB drive and a 512MB SIMM. A friend's PC to image the drive - Mac and PC laptops only in this household, 6 weeks ago. Time was passing very slowly just lately... I made a serial cable I am yet to use "just in case" - took 15 mins, didn't pass much time...

Assembly, setup and playing - 3 1/2 hours last night and its all good. It works, does more than I expected and I am delighted by the results.

Some suggestions for others that follow.

* The ORAC http://210.48.107.133:8000/ emulator has a lot going for it, perhaps make a note of the address, I am using it and not sure what the downside is - yet...

* IF you use the ORAC emulator you get logos, you have to browse the Tivo and manually (in my very recent experience) and associate them to a channel

* The setup of the Pace Sky box is a little vague in the guide. I have chosen the unit id ending in "1", fastest speed and three digit channel numbers, this works, but I couldn't find any better advise here.

There are probably a bunch of sensible hacks beyond the 30sec skip - done!

Any recommendations?

I am considering installing vserver as its mainly a Mac house and I like the idea of using TivoTool to pull the media files off and converting to MPEG or DIVX as I have a DVD player that plays both and it would be a good way of making DVD's that will keep a 4 yr old happy. Inter standard video conversion is a house speciality.

Its great that such a community and site(s) exist, thank you to all who post here and build this stuff. Is there a need for any funding of the hosted Emulators or such?