accsys
Green Cove Springs, FL
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az99 wrote:accsys wrote:A regular ole TIVO will do the job nicely and is available at most big box electronic stores. There is a monthly subscription rate or a lifetime subscription. As I recall, the monthly rate is less than $10 and allows the unit to keep a program guide along with season passes, etc. Why would anyone pay TIVO $10 a month to record shows on a piece of hardware you had to buy first? What am I missing ?
Apparently you have never used TiVo or its season passes.
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wa8yxm
Wherever I happen to park
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I can tell you how I record OTA broadcast TV without satellite service.. now I can not personally do HD but this method works the same for HDTV with one small change.
I have in my coach a pair of Digital OTA converters (you can get them in both HD and non-HD. the NON-HD ones convert to NTSC (Standard) and the HD ones convert or not depending on settings and chosen output)
I also have a pair of REPLAY TV DVR's These are NTSC only which is why I can't do HD.. You can get TiVO or other DVR's that do HD
My replays can talk to each other
They also talk to the converters
They also connect to the internet and download program guides (There is some work to do here due to the way the Rplay works it's not all that simple but... It used to be)
The result is that you can schedule a show on either replay, from either replay and watch a show on either replay no matter which replay recorded it
Modern Tivo units have ATSC tuners built in (Negating the need for the converters) and have the same features as my vintage Replays.
But Replay had those features from day one.. TiVo not till series 3.
Also.. You can get a Hauppauge Win-TV card for your computer, These come in both "Card" types for a full size computer and USB types for laptops
These come with DVR software ... Most of the same features listed above including web-based TV-guide
There are several other TV-Tuner card brands as well. All come with software to record shows on the computer's hard drive... Most even use the same recording format
REPLAY TV PC-Edition (Very good software) works only with the Hauppauge Win-TV cards and then only some of them. You can get it bundled with the card.
If I ever upgrade my computer DVR's to an ATSC type. I will go with Replay for the PC.. I'm that sold on Replay
Nothin adds excitment like something that is none of your business
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az99
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accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:A regular ole TIVO will do the job nicely and is available at most big box electronic stores. There is a monthly subscription rate or a lifetime subscription. As I recall, the monthly rate is less than $10 and allows the unit to keep a program guide along with season passes, etc. Why would anyone pay TIVO $10 a month to record shows on a piece of hardware you had to buy first? What am I missing ?
Apparently you have never used TiVo or its season passes. Apparently not.  What are season passes and why would I be willing to pay $10 a month after I purchased their recorder ?
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az99
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dclark1946 wrote:Frys is now selling a HD DVR with ATSC tuner made by Channel Master that requires no monthly subscription.
Dick Can you record a satellite feed or cable ? Or is it just for OTA ?
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accsys
Green Cove Springs, FL
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az99 wrote:accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:A regular ole TIVO will do the job nicely and is available at most big box electronic stores. There is a monthly subscription rate or a lifetime subscription. As I recall, the monthly rate is less than $10 and allows the unit to keep a program guide along with season passes, etc. Why would anyone pay TIVO $10 a month to record shows on a piece of hardware you had to buy first? What am I missing ?
Apparently you have never used TiVo or its season passes. Apparently not. What are season passes and why would I be willing to pay $10 a month after I purchased their recorder ?
Season passes allow you to set the recording of a program and then it will record every airing of that program without you doing anything else. If you only want new episodes you set that option and it will not record reruns. No matter what day or time it comes on, you don't have to worry about forgetting to record it. The cable and satellite DVRs have a similar function.
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jim isham
stevensville, michigan
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accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:A regular ole TIVO will do the job nicely and is available at most big box electronic stores. There is a monthly subscription rate or a lifetime subscription. As I recall, the monthly rate is less than $10 and allows the unit to keep a program guide along with season passes, etc. Why would anyone pay TIVO $10 a month to record shows on a piece of hardware you had to buy first? What am I missing ?
Apparently you have never used TiVo or its season passes. Apparently not. What are season passes and why would I be willing to pay $10 a month after I purchased their recorder ?
Season passes allow you to set the recording of a program and then it will record every airing of that program without you doing anything else. If you only want new episodes you set that option and it will not record reruns. No matter what day or time it comes on, you don't have to worry about forgetting to record it. The cable and satellite DVRs have a similar function.
Well worth the $10 a month, knowing I'm not going to miss a favorite program when I forget to schedule the recording.
We've had two until we went with Directv and their DVRs. It used to require a telephone line to get the programming guide. I believe there are other ways it can be done now.
TIVO
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Monty-Rob
Sioux Falls, SD
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How does TIVO work in an RV?
I thought you needed a phone line?
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Caddywhompus
Southeast WI
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Or for the real geeks out there...
http://www.mythtv.org/
I used to run Tivos as well, (and contrary to one of the above posts, Tivos have been networkable since series II, and series I units can be modded) but I got sick and tired of the monthly rates, which is $12 a month PER tivo. Since I wanted to ultimately have about 5 of them around the house, the $60/month bill was out of the question.
I have basic cable, but I'm too cheap to pay for the HD package, so my 4 analog tuners record SD cable, and the single HD tuner records OTA from my roof antenna. All the recordings appear on the screen as though they came from the same source, no need to change anything to see OTA vs. Cable. I could easily drop cable & connect my SD tuners to converter boxes instead of cable boxes if I chose. Or I could pay for the HD service from my cable company, and connect my HD cable box to the backend via firewire and record HD just as easy. It's a really flexible system, and free from many of the rules and blocked features most of the mainstream offerings suffer from.
The only cost is a $25/year subscription to "Schedules Direct" to get my guide data. Since everything else about the system is free open source, they have to charge this tiny fee to pay for the data from the sources so they can provide it to the users.
So I built a MythTV system out of old office computers I bought on eBay. Originally I started about 3 years back, but have upgraded several times since. My current system has a "Backend" (MythTV lingo for server) that does all the recording. It has 4 standard def analog tuners, and one HD digital tuner. It has 2TB of recording space, plus another 2TB of external storage. Everywhere else in the house there are tiny Compaq business PCs (called Frontends) that handle the task of playing the recordings from the backend. Since all the hard work is done on the backend, (it's a powerful server with lots of noisy hard drives and fans) the frontends require very little power and can run nearly silent.
The MythTV system does everything Tivo did, plus much more. Some of the very nice features you get over Tivo (besides saving $60 a month) include the ability to automatically detect commerical breaks and flag them ahead of time, so when you play back a show the commercials skip seamlessly without you every touching a remote. You can also run post-recording jobs on your shows to transcode them for iPod, Flash...etc. And last, the MythWeb piece of MythTV allows you to not only schedule recordings and view your system from any internet spot, you can actually watch them in a flash window just like YouTube videos.
Oh, and for the Windows junkies out there, I tried Media Center and it sucks. Sorry, but it's wrapped up in so much Digital Rights Management that it's just about useless (to me). The Linux MythTV solution works 1000% better and is rock-solid stable. Ask me how many times my system has been plagued with viruses and spyware?  Additionally, Windows PCs require much more expensive and powerful hardware to accomplish the same thing, simply because Windows itself hogs so much. So comparison, my Backend "server" is actually only an Athlon 3000 with only 2GB of RAM, and the frontends are Pentium III 1.4 Ghz machines with only 512MB of RAM each. Media Center wouldn't even run on this hardware, at least not smoothly.
If anyone is interested in playing with MythTV, I personally recommend the MythDora distribution. It's free (like all Linux distros), but more important it's the most polished and stable one out there in my opinion. I've been running it for over 3 years, although from time to time I experiment with one of the others just for comparison, and MythDora always comes out ahead for me.
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az99
N.Y.
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jim isham wrote:accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:A regular ole TIVO will do the job nicely and is available at most big box electronic stores. There is a monthly subscription rate or a lifetime subscription. As I recall, the monthly rate is less than $10 and allows the unit to keep a program guide along with season passes, etc. Why would anyone pay TIVO $10 a month to record shows on a piece of hardware you had to buy first? What am I missing ?
Apparently you have never used TiVo or its season passes. Apparently not. What are season passes and why would I be willing to pay $10 a month after I purchased their recorder ?
Season passes allow you to set the recording of a program and then it will record every airing of that program without you doing anything else. If you only want new episodes you set that option and it will not record reruns. No matter what day or time it comes on, you don't have to worry about forgetting to record it. The cable and satellite DVRs have a similar function.
Well worth the $10 a month, knowing I'm not going to miss a favorite program when I forget to schedule the recording.
We've had two until we went with Directv and their DVRs. It used to require a telephone line to get the programming guide. I believe there are other ways it can be done now.
TIVO I just looked at your link and see it is $12.95 per month after you buy their $499 hardware. I guess I am just cheap, but $12.95 per month so I don't miss a favorite show seems excessive. No wonder the cable companies don't feel bad charging $100 per month for the programming.
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Bucky Badger
Madison, WI
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Joined: 11/05/2007
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az99 wrote:jim isham wrote:accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:az99 wrote:accsys wrote:A regular ole TIVO will do the job nicely and is available at most big box electronic stores. There is a monthly subscription rate or a lifetime subscription. As I recall, the monthly rate is less than $10 and allows the unit to keep a program guide along with season passes, etc. Why would anyone pay TIVO $10 a month to record shows on a piece of hardware you had to buy first? What am I missing ?
Apparently you have never used TiVo or its season passes. Apparently not. What are season passes and why would I be willing to pay $10 a month after I purchased their recorder ?
Season passes allow you to set the recording of a program and then it will record every airing of that program without you doing anything else. If you only want new episodes you set that option and it will not record reruns. No matter what day or time it comes on, you don't have to worry about forgetting to record it. The cable and satellite DVRs have a similar function.
Well worth the $10 a month, knowing I'm not going to miss a favorite program when I forget to schedule the recording.
We've had two until we went with Directv and their DVRs. It used to require a telephone line to get the programming guide. I believe there are other ways it can be done now.
TIVO I just looked at your link and see it is $12.95 per month after you buy their $499 hardware. I guess I am just cheap, but $12.95 per month so I don't miss a favorite show seems excessive. No wonder the cable companies don't feel bad charging $100 per month for the programming.
It's obvious you are a TIVO hater, Good for you. Some people really like their TV shows..I'm one of them I have 2 direct tv DVRs... BTW, you don't NEED THE 499 box, there is a cheaper one
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