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| 2006/9/26-27 [Consumer/TV] UID:44545 Activity:moderate |
9/26 Hi, I'm looking for a cheap DVR box. I don't need anything fancy
and I'm not going to pay Tivo for monthly subscriptions. I just need
need something to replace my VCR. Can Tivo work without the monthly
fees? I'm willing to buy a used Tivo box on ebay if olders ones
can work as standalone boxes. Thanks.
\_ LiteOn has DVD Recorder with 160GB HD. It should work a lot
like a VCR. I saw it on http://Costco.com for about $300. Not sure
that is considered cheap.
\_ I'm told that a S1 Tivo can work as a VCR BUT you have to have
it dialup at least once and sync itself.
There are some anoyances, like the onscreen display that says
that your Tivo is unregistered.
\_ I am not 100% sure that is true. I remember S1 Tivo will
go into "boat anchor" mode if you don't subscribe. "Boat
anchor" because is basically useless without subscription.
Maybe the difference is in the software version a
a particular S1 Tivo is running.
particular S1 Tivo is running.
\_ If you have comcast/timewarner cable, they have their own DVR
boxes. You still have to pay a monthly fee, but it's added
to your existing bill. If it's the monthly fee you have a
problem with, just build one; it's very easy. check out
http://byopvr.com
\_ Side note to this, if you want HD, cable DVR is pretty
much the only economical way of doing it. Tivo HD costs
about $800 to buy. DIY solution won't allow you to
record any encrypted channel (such as HBO, Discovery HD,
etc.).
\_ DIY will work no worse than Tivo HD. You need Cable Card
support in either case unless you want to use an IR blaster,
which sucks.
\_ Can you tell me which consumer dual tuners card has
support for HD that can utilize CableCard? I wasn't
aware of any. My original point is that you still
can't beat the $20/month price tag cable company
charges for having dual channel HD DVR capability and
allow recording of premium channels. HD Tivo will
cost $800 + ~$13/month + ~$2/month per CableCard.
\_ And no one said anything about it not being the cheapest.
pp was just contesting your "DIY won't allow you to
record encrypted channel" which is certainly not true
w/ sucky IR blaster. However, keep in mind that every
cable DVR i've ever seen a review of sucks even worse.
Can you tell me if you've found a good one?
\_ 1) I think we are not discussing the same thing.
I am talking about "HD" here (not your usual
encrypted SD channel such as HBO). The only
2 solutions I know of recording encrypted HD
content is cable's HD DVR and HD Tivo. That
was my point. Re-read my original statment,
I said "if you want HD..."
\_ Edit my own post, I know there are also
HD DVR for satellite, but cost is
still high ($3-400 range).
2) I had the original TIVO. I ditched it not
because other SD DVR is superior. I now use
a SA8300HD (from TimeWarner) because there
are no reasonable alternative if I want to
record non-OTA HD content. Is Tivo superior?
Hell yeah. But I am not spending all that
$$$ for a HD Tivo.
3) So once again, tell me a DIY solution that
can record encrypted HD premium content. I
am always open to alternatives/competition. |
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| Costco.com -> www.costco.com/CustService/UnsupBrowser.htm Costco provides a wide selection of merchandise, plus the convenience of specialty departments and exclusive member services, all designed to make your shopping experience a pleasurable one. |
| byopvr.com You can now be notified before a scheduler task takes place with balloo n hints. You can choose to display scheduler task information : task nam e, channel name, duration, recording mode. Optimized support of FFDShow filter for software capture devices. Improved detection of TV Cards with MPEG2 Hardware Encoder. Fixed the teletext initializing problem when using Windows XP or Direct X 9 in other language than english. Improved and optimized the Timeshift buffering engine for some capture devices. It's a good review, but it's more about specifications and gaming benchma rks than the home theater / video playback/accelleration features I'm sp ecifically interested in. ViXS video processing for on the fly transcoding/processing! Looks like a MSRP of $ 169/$189 (two different models: one for MCE 2005, one for regular XP) They seem to be positioning the NVIDIA DualTV as a high(er) quality captu re quality and some interesting bells and whistles. NVIDIA Pure Vid eo Decoder is at mpeg2 decoding it should be a pretty awesome card! Of c ourse the proof is in the pudding and the greatest hardware in the world is useless if the good 3rd party PVR applications don't support it. Innovation One has developed a USB IR transceiver that makes using multiple cable & sat boxes with MythTV much easier and more relia ble (they are based in Canada, fwiw). They are seeking a few more Beta t esters before they finalize the CommandIR - and were looking to see if a ny BYOPVR Canadian users was interested. They do charge a nominal (below their cost) fee for the units, but if you 're interested in helping with the testing and have mulitple set top box es to control and/or want a better way to consolidate your IR receiving/ blasting this seems like a good product to check out! VideoReDo MPEG editor has a new version out called VideoReDo Plus wi th a feature they call Ad Detective. The Ad Detective is an integrated c ommercial detection/marking/removal tool built into VideoReDo Plus. VideoReDo is that it's both really fast/easy to ch op up MPEG2 files (there's not transcoding or long load time and the int erace is pretty straightforward), and it makes frame accurate mpeg2 cuts without screwing up the audio sync. This new commercial detection piece is just icing on the cake. In any case it's definitely worth the trial download to decide for yourse lf if it's the right mpeg2 editing / commercial remvoing tool for you. told TechBlog that these were probably just "false positives." "Denney said the copy protection is trigged by a flag in the video signal . The reports appearing on the Web appear to be cases where TiVo misinte rprets noise in the signal as a copy protection flag, and imposes the re strictions." PVRblog broke the news of content protection in Tivo rearing it's he ad albeit supposedly it's just an accident/glitch. The fact that the cap ability is built in and can be triggered "accidently" at the head end wh en certain shows should expire doesn't bode well for TiVo, in my opinion . "A bug in the latest version of TiVo's operating system has some users co ncerned that the service's content protection mechanisms--supposedly int ended solely for pay-per-view and video-on-demand content--may someday b e applied to broadcast television programming." Kottke: Tivo hates its customers You probably already know how I feel about DRM in general, but to surmise : I can't stand that a device I own and a service I pay for can be a mov ing target (in the wrong direction) with the possibilty of me having les s PVR functionality now than when I purchased the device. |