The one thing I would say is that if you're recording TV shows then get more disk space than you think you'll need. We started off with 1TB, but we're now up to 2.5TB because going through and deciding which shows to delete is much more of a pain than telling the computer to store 20 episodes and delete them after that. Not sure what Windows has to offer, MythTV on Linux works pretty well most of the time but is broken often enough by upgrades that I'm reluctant to recommend it to anyone who doesn't know what they're doing
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