I’m a technojunkie.  I admit it.  I need my tech toys or I get stir crazy.  I can’t afford to live on the bleeding edge of technology, but I do love to get myself some cool crap now and then.

Because of my obsession, I had to have DVR.  We suffer through Comcast’s more-for-less business model (every month I pay more, but I always get less) but I’m willing to throw down an extra $10 each month to be able to watch my shows on my time.

But there’s something fundamentally wrong with these services.  The hard disk on which the recorded shows are stored is inside my cable box.  There’s nothing going on at the Comcast offices that warrant a monthly fee — but I’m strapped with one.  Even with TiVo, unless you were one of the lucky few who managed to pick up a lifetime subscription when they wereon sale several years back, you’re stuck paying a monthly fee on top of the cost of the equipment.  There’s nothing going on at some TiVo office to be paid for each month!

Enter MythTV.  The only thing mythic about this is the cost — it’s the only part that doesn’t exist.  Indirectly, at least.

MythTV is Personal Video Recorder (PVR) software that can run on most PCs.  Team it up with Linux and you have a cheap setup that will run even on your old PC that hasn’t been booted in three years.  And thanks to small form-factor PC cases available today, you can build a kick-ass system in a liiiiiiiiittle box for under $300 — far less than you’d pay for the latest TiVo box, and no monthly fees on top of it.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can drop a second TV tuner card into your PVR PC and record while you watch another show, or even use picture-in-picture.

Why are you still sitting there not building your PVR?

Is InvertedMind dead?  Did he fall off the planet?  Get hit by a rogue piece of falling space debris?  Lose his Internet connection?

You aren’t that lucky.

No, unfortunately, I’ve just been insanely busy.  See, Her Hotness, Her Cuteness and I are in process of buying a house.  It’s a quaint little place — nothing palatial but certainly no single-room fishing shack on a frozen lake in northern Saskatchewan, either.  No, we’re heading for slightly warmer climes, out of the hustle-and-bustle of the Washington D.C.-Boston stretch of I-95 (seriously, about four miles from here the Interstate is eight lines wide — and they’re starting construction to widen it to 10) to the slightly less crowded, and considerably more resident-friendly, northeastern parts of Raleigh, N.C.

Because of those plans, though, I’ve been seriously lacking in free time.  You all understand, I hope.

See the next post for a little something to hold you over: a new edition of Cool Crap of the Week.