The story of my life

Well, I’m kinda depressed this morning.  I admit that things were finally going smoothly for once.  Everything was set up the way I wanted.  None of my scheduled recordings were being missed.  Things were actually calming down around here for once.  Then, about this time last week, the UPS on my HD server/development system beeped on me, and when I went to check on it wouldn’t you know it?  The system won’t turn on anymore.  It wasn’t a power flux in the house.  Only that one UPS beeped.  I imagine that the PSU went out and spiked the UPS.  I guess that’s not too unreasonable though, because after thinking about it for a while I realized that that system was about 9 years old at least.  

But the reason that I’m depressed is that this is the system that housed my HD tuner and I now find myself with only an SD recording of Monday’s episode of The Big Bang Theory.  So I have a bit of a dilemma.  Do I spend the time and money trying to revive the system so that I can continue to use the same configuration and not have to do a new OS installation on a new system or do I spend a bit more money and build a new system to do the same function as the old system.  Or, do I ditch that system all together, throw the HD tuner in my frontend system – making that a frontend/backend – and then use my laptop for development?  I could probably build a new system for around $500.  What to do, what to do…  Hmm…

Until I figure out what I want to do going forward, I imagine that I will at least start by throwing the HD tuner into my frontend for now.  I would really like to have something functional by the time the Super Bowl comes around in a couple weeks.

Feel free to offer an opinion.  What would you do in this situation?  If you’d build a new system, what would you use for parts?  Let me know!