Comments | hometheater: Need some Tivo advice

chainmaile in hometheater

Need some Tivo advice

Apr 07, 2005 21:08

I'm looking to get a PVR, Tivo or some other system, and need some advice. I don't want to have to pay the monthly fee to Tivo, so I'm planning on manaully setting recording times, unless there in some other legal way (alternate servers, etc ( Read more... )

Comments 6

bafmodads April 8 2005, 05:49:28 UTC

Not to be an ass... but ( ... )

chainmaile May 30 2005, 17:52:09 UTC

Thanks for the response. Actually, I'm not too cheap to pay the monthly fee, I just don't like the idea of the reoccuring bill. I'm still thinking of picking up a Tivo with a lifetime subscription for the extra $300. I'm actually ready to finish setting up the HTPC here (I might be picking up 512M of Ram today) but I'm still looking for a tuner card that will allow you to record HDTV from a cable source, versus OTA sources.

jbouwens April 8 2005, 07:51:43 UTC

so a HTPC could be used for other purposes at the same time.

Any slightly decent HTPC is perfectly capable of recording a show and playing back a previously recorded show (or DVD or somesuch) at the same time.

The only thing an HTPC can't do (As long as it only has a single tuner anyway) is recording a show and watching live tv on a different channel at the same time.

caminatr April 8 2005, 07:54:40 UTC

If you have or want to go satellite, the dish network dvr is AWESOME!!!

cozmo April 8 2005, 20:06:01 UTC

Look into a Windows Media Center PC. AFAIK there are no subscription charges and it can do what you want. They aren't cheap compared to an appliance type device, but you can add tuners, an HD tuner in the future, burn stuff to dvd, etc.

OR if you're willing to lose the burning feature you might want to look at comcast's DVR offering. I've had it for a couple weeks now and it seems pretty good to me. It has a dual tuner and a 120g hard drive. It is $10/month which includes HDTV support.

inmostlight April 8 2005, 21:52:32 UTC

I have a ReplayTV PVR and I love it. While it sadly doesn't record HD, otherwise it's great and cheaper than tivo ($9.95/mo). It does have SP-DIF out for audio, but doesn't actually record in 5.1 or have SP-DIF in. I also got one of the pre-lawsuit versions that'll automatically skip commercials, share files over the internet, etc ( ... )