I've been using Windows Media Center since 2005 works great.  Windows Media Center now comes standard with Windows 7.  Plus if you subscribe to Netfilx you can watch movies online and there is an addin for Hula.  Recently I added an XBOX 360 which works as an extender for Media Center.

Check out www.thegreenbutton.com

Here's my setup

nMEDIApc HTPC 100
Nvidia 9400GT
MSI 945GCM7-F
Intel E7300 Core 2 Duo
1.5TB Seagate SATA HD
OCZ 4GB DDR2 800Mhz
2x ATI DCT
HDHomeRun
Sony Blu-Ray
Windows 7 Home Premium
ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3
PowerDVD 9 Ultra

My mom has to be able to use this, which is a lot of the problem with a HTPC. For the price of the Moxi, though I coudl get a pre-built Lenovo that, while more complicated to use, would be far more versatile.

I've used BeyondTV by Snapstream for many years and loved it.  At the height, I could record 4 standard video streams (nVidia DualTV *2 - discontinued) and 4 HD streams (HDHomerun *2) while watching a previously recorded show, all at the SAME TIME!

It's PC software and you'll want a somewhat beefy video card if you plan on using HDMI out, forget onboard video cards.

I grudgingly took my DVR offline for two reasons: Wanting the ability to record encrypted HD channels such as Showtime and the fact that I switched to FiOS and they only have digital channels.

But to summarize, I initially dropped my TiVo's because I wanted to drop the subscription fees too and I wanted a DRM free DVR (BeyondTV rocks in that department).  But once you start down that road, the Upgrade Fever strikes you.  I figure that I would break even in around a couple hundred years....

TIP: Have multiple hard drives in your DVR and do not use your system/boot drive for recording media. BeyondTV can handle a pool of drives and divide up the recordings to multiple drives.

Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

Quote:
I grudgingly took my DVR offline for two reasons: Wanting the ability to record encrypted HD channels such as Showtime and the fact that I switched to FiOS and they only have digital channels.

Have you thought of switching to Windows Media Center and using a Digital Cable Turner?  I'm currently using two ATI DCTs to recorded encrypted cable channels and both Silicon Dust (makers of HDHomeRun) and Ceton will be releasing Digital Cable Tuners soon.

Ceton's tuner will support 4 cable streams using the M-Card leaked retail price is supposed to be $399.  Silicon Dust has yet to give any details about their DCT other than it will be a network based tuner like the HDHomeRun.

Quoting Tracer:

Quote:
Have you thought of switching to Windows Media Center and using a Digital Cable Turner?

I'm currently working on converting my DVR PC into a Windows Media Center movie player using ISO's stored on a custom NAS so that could eventually be an option.

For DVR I use Hauppauge HD PVR to record from component out of any source. No DRM hassles. It takes optical in for audio. It will record in .ts, or .mp4 and has pre-built profiles for XBOX 360 and PS3. It ships with TotalMediaTheater capture, player and conversion software.

To play ISOs, I use VLC player or WMP with Virtual CloneDrive natively under windows, or LoadDVD Pro to automate it inside a DVD Profiler window.

All my soft media is on Windows Home Server, and hard media are inside changers controlled by LoadDVD.

i hate to say this while installing  cat-6 may have benefits for for a computer based world take this in with food for thought, 90% of consumer electronics that has network integration barely supports gigabit speeds, the best you can hope for is 10/100, someone planning a tvserver may even want to consider running fiber optic as even with still using copper you will face limitation of the copper medium.

sadly i think we're 15-20 generations away from gigabit on everything as networking in general is still a new medium within the consumer electronics industry as a whole, the best we could hope for is 10/100, gigabit is way to far into the future for my liking, though until fibe3r becomes the main conduit into the home anything over 10/100 is going to be pointless venture for the simple fact the internet connection is 1/100th of the speed of the home network and as i said before most electronics gear coming out with network association is based on the older 10/100 gigabit has yet to integrated, so you're wasting your time integrating gigabit into the home where over half of the devices connected to your network are still serviced by a 10/100 connectionn so you can't benefit from the gigabit speed..