TiVo questions
Sep. 27th, 2006 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurSo here's a question to the TiVo users in the audience (I know there are a bunch of you out there):
I've got a Panasonic DVR that I'm quite happy with -- the UI suits me, it's got a big hard drive, it makes it trivially easy to burn stuff to DVD, and it doesn't attempt to be smarter than I am. It has only one drawback, but that's a *big* drawback: it only deals with two-digit channel numbers. Given that my cable actually has tons of channels beyond 99 (including all of the premium stations), that's a real limitation on what I can record. This is particularly an issue as I contemplate the second season of Rome, which is going to happen eventually.
So I'm idly curious about whether a TiVo would do better. Specifically, while I think I'd leave the Panasonic in place, I'm thinking of replacing the seldom-used VCR with a TiVo. That would allow me to hard-drive multiple shows at once, which is occasionally necessary. I think it would be worth it *if* it deals with the things that the Panasonic doesn't.
So the questions are:
1) Does TiVo deal properly with three-digit channels? (I suspect the answer is yes.)
2) Will a TiVo control my cable box? This is nearly as important, because the premium channels have to go through the cable box to get decrypted. The VCR (and, indeed, the Panasonic) has a "cable mouse" attachment that will change the channels on the cable box when needed -- does the TiVo have something similar? (This, I'm less sure about.)
Information about these questions (or suggestions of alternative ways I could configure a system that does what I want, including some device other than a TiVo) is solicited from unimind...
I've got a Panasonic DVR that I'm quite happy with -- the UI suits me, it's got a big hard drive, it makes it trivially easy to burn stuff to DVD, and it doesn't attempt to be smarter than I am. It has only one drawback, but that's a *big* drawback: it only deals with two-digit channel numbers. Given that my cable actually has tons of channels beyond 99 (including all of the premium stations), that's a real limitation on what I can record. This is particularly an issue as I contemplate the second season of Rome, which is going to happen eventually.
So I'm idly curious about whether a TiVo would do better. Specifically, while I think I'd leave the Panasonic in place, I'm thinking of replacing the seldom-used VCR with a TiVo. That would allow me to hard-drive multiple shows at once, which is occasionally necessary. I think it would be worth it *if* it deals with the things that the Panasonic doesn't.
So the questions are:
1) Does TiVo deal properly with three-digit channels? (I suspect the answer is yes.)
2) Will a TiVo control my cable box? This is nearly as important, because the premium channels have to go through the cable box to get decrypted. The VCR (and, indeed, the Panasonic) has a "cable mouse" attachment that will change the channels on the cable box when needed -- does the TiVo have something similar? (This, I'm less sure about.)
Information about these questions (or suggestions of alternative ways I could configure a system that does what I want, including some device other than a TiVo) is solicited from unimind...
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-29 02:27 pm (UTC)The part that sounded like it might be important to you is that with a media pc, there's a way to set things up so that you can automatically remove commercials (I'll send the link from home) before burning to DVD or whatnot. That sounds like it may be an important feature to you. The article said that it takes about 40 minutes to run through an hour long program, but you could set it to run while doing housework.
If streaming from your computer is important (I don't know), the magazine said that it's better to go with a media pc (to do it with TiVo requires that your computer be on ANYWAY, and you can't do it from a cable company's box).
I've been doing research on streaming media from your computer for my parents (they now have two HD TVs larger than 50" and Mom is sitting on the floor hooking her digital video camera to the front of the tv!), and personally, I'm favoring Buffalo's setup (an external RAID storage hooked to the network and media box hooked to the tv). For my parents, it's a good option so that the videos don't get LOST in a harddrive failure (home movies of my sister's baby), but if you're mostly recording from TV it may not be an issue.
There's some interesting options for streaming TV from your main box to other tvs (so if you drop $800 on a TiVo, you don't have to do it for every tv), but they still cost in the $hundreds range. I still consider the cable box (in my case, a pair of them) to be the most economical way to go, and my house is already wired with cat5 cable (making some options easier/cheaper). Shows that I'm not sure which TV I'll watch them on (like Mythbusters, which is cool in HD, but we tend to watch more at night as we're getting ready for bed) just get recorded on both DVRs.
I'm just rambling...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-30 04:24 am (UTC)Actually, less than you might think. Bear in mind, this is the house that recorded 1200 VHS videotapes off the air, and the vast majority of those are ads-intact. So I'm really, really used to just skimming forward through the ads.
That said, the ability to burn DVDs at all matters to us, and the Comcast box won't do that. So we need to decide how much we care.
The interesting thing about the Comcast approach, though, is that it's zero-commitment. We can do it now, use it for a year or two, and change our minds after that without feeling like we've wasted any money. That's appealing...