[mythtv-users] Can I use MythTV for this?

[Mark Levitt]

Hi,
I've been reading about MythTV and I'd like to know if the following is
possible/desirable.

I want to dip my toes in the PVR water, but I'm not ready to build a small
quiet system that sits in the living room connected to the TV.

However, I commute to work by train and I'd like to be able to automatically
record shows and then copy the recorded shows to my laptop to watch on the
train.

I've got a spare PIII 800 that I'm using as a headless fileserver. What I'd
like to do is stick a WinTV-250 into it and set up MythTV so that it
automatically records various shows (ER, Westwing, Simpsons, etc). Then, once
the WinTV-250 captures them to Mpeg2, have them automatically converted to a
DivX AVI.

So, a few questions:
1) Is this possible?
2) If it is possible, is it possible with MythTV?
3) Is MythTV the best solution for this? Or are their simpler solutions that
will get me what I want.

Thanks!