I just went to BestBuy’s site to find a DVR.
All they have involves the Tivo service. I am not a TV-aholic. I don’t need every episode of a show I like scoured for across the channels. I do not wish to pay for a service to think for me. I want what amounts to an old fashioned VCR that I program that uses a hard-drive instead of tape.
Do these things exist?
You can get a writeable DVD drive that is meant to be attached to your TV. You program it just like you would do with a VCR except you’re writing to a DVD, not a tape. Best Buy has a whole shelf of these kinds of recorders.
Not what I’m looking for. I’m not interested in recording onto a DVD, just a harddrive.
Imagine a dumbed down Tivo box, where the user just picks channels and times to record; with no info about programming content.
That’s what I want.
If you have cable, check with them. We get our HD DVR through them for $5 a month.
You’re missing the point. I don’t want any monthly fee/services involved. I want to own the device preferably costing less than $200.
You mean like this one that is never available, but Amazon seems to always offer it? Unless it’s tied to a subscription service, you may be out of luck because big media doesn’t want you to have one.
Why not go for a computer version, such as these or these ?
How about a media center PC? Not under $200, but I think that’s what you’re looking for. It sounds like what you’re after is a DVR with no guide data (that’s what the fee is for). At school, we have a DVD burner with an internal hard drive. It can record from a DVD or OTA, like a VCR. It was about $1000 several years ago. I’m sure they’re less expensive now. Ours is made by Panasonic.
I had a Sharp HR300U which worked well, but the UI was a bit cumbersome: CNET: Product reviews, advice, how-tos and the latest news
Sorry. It wasn’t clear from your OP - all I took from it was that you didn’t want an extra service, not that you didn’t want a monthly fee at all.
These people may be able to help you - I don’t have time at the moment to hunt through it.
If you have an old PC sitting around, you might consider getting a tuner card – most of the current ones will tune analog cable channels & un-encrypted QAM (i.e. your cable’s local HD channels). These cards usually come with Windows-capable DVR software.
If you’re comfortable with Linux, there’s always MythTV – it should do what you want, plus give you Tivo-like functionality using free TV listing services. It supports most of the tuner cards out there.
Finally, if you have a FireWire-equipped Mac running OS X and a FireWire equipped cable box, you can use the digital VHS software from the Apple FireWire SDK (a free download from Apple). Combine this software with a bit of scripting (to enable timed recording), and you’ve got a basic DVHS unit.
I went for the full Monty, putting together a Windows Media Center PC with 750GB of disk, multiple tuners (NTSC/ATSC/QAM), & DVD recorder. The cost is well north of $200, however.
Yep, if you want to hard-drive it with no fees, get a tuner card for your PC. I don’t know if all cards work with all PCs though, or if all PCs have the software already or if you have to buy something in particular. But a decent computer store (like MicroCenter, not a Best Buy) should be able to tell you.
There are loads of the sort of devices the OP wants available in the UK, I am surprised they are hard to get in the US. They tend either to be part of a terrestrial digital receiver (not a subscription service) or combined with a DVD recorder so you can archive stuff you want to keep. SKY satellite tv also has one available tied to their service.
That’s because no-one here uses terrestrial digital receivers.
ETA: … because TVs here almost all have inbuilt digital receivers, and terrestrial signals are broadcast in analogue until 2009, IIRC.
But that is just the way they are marketed here - there is no need to tie one technology with another.
Buy a TiVo and don’t use the service.
Terrestrial signals are broadcast in both analog and digital right now. In Feb 2009, by law all broadcast of TV signals will be digital.
Beginning with the series 2 models, Tivos require that you subscribe to the associated service. However, a used Series 1 would seem to meet the OP’s stated requirements.
How do you tell it what to record without the service?
There is a “manually record by time or channel” option that you can use to schedule recordings by giving a channel number, a time, and a duration. You also give it a repeat option, e.g. one-time-only, weekly, mon-fri.
Even the more recent Tivos have that option, but beginning with the series 2, Tivo made changes to ensure that it wouldn’t work unless you were a subscriber. However, since they had marketed the Series 1 model as not requiring the service, they’ve continued to support unsubscribed series 1 boxes.
One annoyance with an unsubscribed series 1 box, though, is that you still have to let it dial in to one of the service centers periodically. It will synchronize its clock, lookup its account number and discover that it’s not subscribed, and disconnect. But since there’s no interface for setting the time on the unit, if you don’t dial in every once in a while, the clock will eventually become inaccurate.
This is why I never got Tivo in the first place. My entertainment center room was deliberately set up to have no phone hookup - I don’t like being disturbed during viewing.
I was so sure that there would have been a market for this. I guess too many of you out there were the flashing 12:00 types that couldn’t program your own devices (many of my family members included).
I guess I’m going to be very unhappy in this brave new tapeless world. :mad: