Hannibal: Full-featured Prebuilt PVR / DVR Running MythTV

• November 7th, 2006 | PVR

Oh my word. I first saw this box over at Digg and thought I should let you know about it because it is totally sick!

It’s called the Hannibal, probably because it eats the competition. This is probably one of the single most complete DVRs on the market right now, well at least in my estimation. It runs on an Intel Celeron D 130 2.16Ghz CPU with a PNY Geforce 6200 128Mb 8x Video Card and a Western Digital Caviar 720 RPM 80GB hard drive. On top of this, it has a Linksys WMP54GA 802.11b/g wifi card and a LG GSAH10N 16x Super Multi DVD burner. And it’s all controlled by a Sony RM-V310 Universal Remote. Enough of the features, what can this thing do?

Well for starters it can display native 1080i output, 720p, 480i, 480p or standard def. You can connect it to any TV via VGA, DVI, S-Video, composite and component but there is no specific mention of a dedicated HDMI port. It can handle Dolby 7.1 Digital Audio and has a digital SPDIF output so you can connect it up with your stereo. You can play back pretty much any format on earth with everything from MPEG1/2/4, WMV, AVI, DivX to MP3 and WAV catered for, and everything in between.

What I really like about this product is the built-in wireless connectivity, which is put to good use with the integrated BitTorrent client controlled from the remote. The possibilities seem endless, you can rip DVDs to the hard drive or burn a DVD from the hard drive. You can browse your favorite sites with the remote, send emails etc. And it’s all powered by MythTV, an open source PVR application that has basic live TV functionality to allow you to pause / rewind / fast forward live television.  Apparently the case is very quiet and is available in silver or black, it also looks pretty cool.

So head over and have a look, or maybe even buy one of these bad boys for only $549. That’s unless you can be bothered to order the components separately and assemble it yourself. I’d suggest some TiVo subscribers might even be interested.  For more information check out this interview with TVease about the Hannibal (among other topics) over at The Linux Action Show.