I’ll be the first to admit I’m cheap. In fact, very soon you’ll see a series of features by Yours Truly on how to put together a seriously kick-ass home theater system for less than most people pay for just the TV. But I do pay the extra $10 to Comcast for my DVR. And I love my DVR. But it only holds so much data, then I must choose what to lose and what to keep.

So I devised a way to capture the Mpeg video off the DVR’s hard drive via Firewire to an old Apple Mac G4 I had. It’s time consuming, sure, but I get to keep the stuff I’ve paid for.

Zack Price, over at the SnapStream blog, has worked it up a notch. He’s built his own machine with 5 seperate HD tuner cards, tons of storage, and, using Beyond TV, is using it to archive every night of TV he could possible want to watch, for free. It’s not just about not missing your favorite episode, it’s about owning them.

I’m not going to go into all the technical details, he’s done that for us, and I don’t get down with re-inventing the wheel. But if you’re looking for a project for the weekend, we just found it for you.

Fall Primetime is here… make your own “DVD Box Sets” with Beyond TV [SnapStream blog]