Any good freeware PC PVR software?

I have an HP ExpressCard TV Tuner in my Dell laptop. I'm looking for a freeware PVR program to run it. I've tried ChrisTV, but was unable to get that to work. GBPVR used to work, but it stopped working. I tried BeyondTV/Snapstream, but it's not worth the hefty price tag for me.

VLC player works, but changing channels is a pain.

Any good recommendations?

All I know is that there's supposed to be a whole-PC Ubuntu based solution.

Microsoft Vista Home Deluxe (or whatever it is called) contains a module called Windows Media Center (MCE). MCE supports PVR and Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) functions.

MCE will stream video to MCE "extenders" over home LANs. One interesting MCE extender is XBOX. Plug the XBOX game console into the home network and stream live video (among other things) on the XBOX. Nice.

MCE supports number of the new video tuner cards and/or USB video tuners are supported.

My peers at work tell me that this is a pretty well thought out solution. Maybe some irritating aspects around Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Today, I was able to stream live video from a guy's home Media Center system onto my AT&T Tilt phone over the AT&T mobile network. That was pretty wild. The web interface, provided by a Microsoft partner for free, also allowed control over the Media Center system. Sort of like a more generalized version of Slingbox.

I've been looking at some of the Free and Open Source solutions but they are a bit too "Heathkit" for me these days. This would include Linux based solutions.

So I'm thinking about approaching Mrs runarut, our home CEO/CFO to see if this is something she might be interested in.

Did I mention, I'm a Mac.

LinuxMCE (http://www.linuxmce.org) is a complete open source solution that includes the install of Linux and the DVR function. It is still a bit of a 'HeathKit' but possibly less so than other solutions.

They have a killer video that shows off the functionality as well as the install and configuration process. Links are on the website if you look for them.

The Linux geeks in my office like this solution the best.

How about the xbmc??

Media Portal

Cheers,
Rick

If you're using Windows, GB-PVR is pretty good but setting it up is a little bit of a pain. Vista Media Center is pretty good too(a lot easier to set up)