We live in what is essentially an apartment building. All the units come with a Comcast cable box for the TV. It’s a basic box with no recording ability. It seems like I should be able to buy a DVR and install it in place of the dumb terminal so I can record programs. Am I underthinking things? Do I need to actually have Xfinity bless this in some way or have to rent their DVR box?
You may need a CableCard. I need one to use my Tivo with FIOS. It’s not a big deal, but sometimes leads to minor technical complications.
Sounds like I’d maybe be in for less hassle to just rent the box from the company.
As noted, a TiVo with a CableCard should work with standard Comcast connections. But …
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Comcast has been really difficult with CableCards for several years. In some areas they don’t have an adequate supply of working ones but plenty of faulty ones. So you go in, get a card, take it home, try to pair it, it doesn’t work, spend time talking to their notoriously bad support folk (many of whom haven’t even heard of CableCards, let alone know how to debug them). I went thru this once. Ugh.
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TiVo is sinking. Streaming is where it’s at. At some point it will no longer be able to continue operations, esp. the programming data. At which point their DVRs will become boat anchors. This worries me a lot since I rely on two of them quite a lot. They’ve been trying to pivot to being a streaming device company but that’s unlikely to succeed. And even if it did, the DVR division is still in trouble. Back when ReplayTV (the real first DVR company) was sold and they tried to close down it’s schedule service, the new owners were forced to keep it going for a while. Eventually, people figured out how to set up home schedule servers that scrape sites to get the info and keep the things running for quite some time. (Digital OTA TV made it nearly impossible to keep going.) I did this myself. Not sure if TiVo would be forced to keep their servers going.
TiVo had been living off the patents they got many years ago. So all those cable company’s had been paying them royalties. But those fees have dropped off dramatically as the patents expired.
If you already have a TiVo, then go ahead and try it. Esp. if it’s a lifetime (or whatever they call it now) unit. But don’t buy a new one.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to overstate the potential problems. In the early days (10-20 years ago, it seemed that cable companies didn’t like people to hook up other stuff to their devices and not all techs were well trained on CableCard. But in recent years it’s been less of an issue.
Just yesterday I had to call Verizon because my CableCard wasn’t allowing me to see a channel they had added that I should have gotten. A few minutes going through the Tivo’s settings to find the CableCard details the tech needed and it was fixed.
You should be able to Google on Comcast, the STB model number, and your preferred DVR, and find out how they interface and people’s experience with the combo.
It may be possible to get rid of the STB completely.
I’ve connected a DVD/HD recorder to cable boxes. Of course you must set the timer on the recorder as well as the cable box. An advantage, you can watch recorded programs when the cable is out, unlike the cable DVRs.
YouTube TV is a good example of this (and is completely different from YouTube). It is just like having cable TV except it is 100% streaming. No need for a box in your home (beyond the router you use for your internet service). Costs are comparable to regular cable TV and they have a “DVR” which is basically you telling them what you want to stream later and you can. Also comes with local TV stations (at least for big markets…not sure about small, rural TV station). Local stations also means local sports teams can be watched without having to pay for the “NFL package” and their ilk.
The DVR is a little more feature rich too. Different family members can setup different accounts on the same subscription and then have their “own DVR” which helps sort out the kid’s shows from mom’s shows and dad’s shows.
Worth looking in to unless the OP gets “free” cable as part of the rental fee (although usually the “free” cable is the most basic package and cheap so using something like YouTube TV may not cost much more).
IIRC there are no contracts either so you can cancel any time and you can try for a week (or month?) for free.
Of course, this assumes you have a decent internet connection and no usage caps (or very high caps…depending on how much TV you watch).
I was pretty satisfied with my Charter (now Spectrum) DVR, except for the somewhat limited space. It has good rewind and fast forward, but I really liked the precise pause and the ability to do slow motion. We’ve gone to using streaming, using Hulu as the access point for local stations, and with their “DVR” setup. It’s clunky, has no slow motion, and is glitchy. At least it’s unlimited, which is how we ended up “recording” 287 episodes of Dateline in the two weeks. Oh my!