I had an idea. Two ideas, actually. First, get PVR on my machine. Second to be able to convert old VCR tapes to DVD. Hopefully, I could do it on Linux, but I can settle for Windows as well.

Hardware

I got a regular "build it yourself" box (high-end Athlon CPU, 1GB RAM, quiet antec Sonata case, WinFast video board from Leadtek).

The big thing is, of course video tuner. I have Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE l.p. which stands for Media Center Edition low-profile card. In the hindsight I am not sure if I made the right choice. 150 is a newer version of 250/350 and all the information about 250/350 applies to 150 as well. That part is good. And 'l.p.' (low-profile) didn't make any difference except for being smaller and cheaper. That's perfect.

It's the MCE part that caused me a lot of problems. 150 includes Remote Control and IR Blaster to control your set top box. 150MCE, on the other hand, includes FM input. I didn't think IR Blaster was important, until I realized that there is no other way to change channel programmatically. So, if I want to record a show at 1am on channel 7, and then another one at 3am on channel 9 - I have to switch channels manually. More on that later.
The second problem came from MCE's assumption that it will be run under Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). Apparently, MCE boxes come with MCE remote controls, so the card doesn't include one. And you can't set up MCE without remote control - it just refuses to continue if it can't find the remote. Bummer!

Instructions

Linux

It wasn't my first Linux installation, but it wasn't my 100th, either. So, I am fairly new to it and good instructions are crucial. I was using Fedora Core 3, So a step-by-step guide was perfect! I will list here several here some instances were I had to deviate from the guide (I printed it some time in May, 2005, so it might have been updated since then).

• Initial System Setup. For some reason this installation crashed before going into graphic mode. Fortunately, Red Hat apparently expected that something like that might happen and provided nofb switch at the boot. So, my startup command was linux xfs nofb. Also, you don't have to install MySQL Database (in fact, my recommendation would be not to install it; more on that later).
• Get and install apt, update your OS packages and Kernel choices. There is a good chance that your installation is way out of date. I got my DVD from NOAA and it was cut in November, 2004. My installation had some 350 packages that need to be upgraded. So, the first thing you want to do is to upgrade kernel: yum install kernel. As of this writing kernel version is 2.6.11-1.35_FC3. After that install ATrpms!
  Apparently, the location of synaptic has changed. So, to install it like this:
  # apt-get install http://dl.atrpms.net/testing/packages/fedora-3-i386/atrpms/synaptic-0.55.3-21.rhfc3.at.i386.rpm
• Get and install video card drivers. For users of nVidia Video Cards I would recommend to install drivers from nVidia site instead (currently the latest version is 1.0-7667). The reason is that the drivers are kernel version-dependent, and they are recompiled for the particular version! Note: for this reason every time you upgrade the kernel, you need to reinstall drivers.
• Get and install MythTV. mythtv-suite includes MySQL, that's why you didn't have to select it during install. If you don't care which version of MySQL - you can skip my MySQL-related ramblings. FC3 distribution includes version 3.23 which is couple years old! If you want more recent version (I have 4.1) defer this step until after you install and set up MySQL.
• Get and install capture card driver(s). As I said, I have PVR-150, however, most of instructions for ivtv-based cards apply.
  
  I needed to download firmware (or I would get error messages about missing files in system log when wunning modprobe ivtv). The instructions are here. Make sure to read all the notes, since the files on the CD (and probably on Hauppauge's web site) don't work any more.
  
  I downloaded 0.3.x ivtv drivers from ivtv releases site (note, that new versions appears almost daily, but I didn't experience any difference). This is the only component that I had to compile (read the instructions, but essentially you need to make and make install drivers and utils). I didn't need to modify modprobe.conf.
  
  ptune-ui.pl is not copied anywhere, so you need to run it from /path/to/ivtv/utils/ directory or create a symbolic link. In order to run it you also need to install several additional packages (synaptic to the rescue!): perl-Video-Frequencies, perl-Video-ivtv, and perl-Config-IniFiles. If everything is good - you don't need to set up through ivtvctl - ptune-ui does the job. Note that most video players (tvTime, xawtv, etc.) don't support hardware-based compression cards, such as Hauppauge PVR. So, test if everything ok using mplayer or old-fashioned cat (and then mplayer the file). It's a bummer!
  
  If there is no sound sometimes it helps to run "Soundcard detection" - apparently it resets the audio.
• Set up MySQL. I installed MySQL ver. 4.1 Choose server, client, and make sure to also install Dynamic client libraries (including 3.23.x libraries) . This way mythtv-suite will not insist on downgrading your installation to 3.23. Now get and install MythTV. Since MySQL 4.1 and later is using different password scheme that is to be incompatible with php-mysql library, the simplest solution is to add a line old-passwords to your my.cnf file.

Update May 14, 2006. For Fedora Core 5 (FC5) installation instructions - great notes by Stanton Finley, and for dual-boot between Windows 2003 server and FC5 you need to actually copy a boot sector from one drive to another, as described in Ed's HOWTO

Update November 21, 2006. Video experiments with Linux are for now off. I moved my PVR card to Windows-only box. I haven't recorded from TV in months, and I don't need MythTV to record from VCR. OK, maybe a project for the future. Additionally, I started the upgrade to Fedora Core 6 (FC6). The first attempt wasn't successful (booting between Linux and Windows didn't work. The second attempt - is to follow instructions. We'll see...

Update June 17, 2007. I installed Oracle. My troubleshooting included disabling SELinux. Once Oracle was installed, I re-enabled SELinux, and the system wouldn't boot. Then I noticed that Fedora 7 is out there. So, rather than fix my FC6 I decided to upgrade. And while I was at it, I decided to upgrade to 64bit. The upgrade went fine, even the dual-boot with Vista continues to work fine. But now a lot of thinks look weird. Pirut reports an error; firefox wouldn't start; and yum subbornly connect to i386 repositories, rather than x64_86. Probably, I will install from scratch (rather than upgrade). There is a new installation guide, so hopefully it will be smooth!