We watch relatively little through our cable box, so it’s not really worth it to spend the $180 or so per year to rent their DVR. But every once in a while something comes out that we want to see and not wait for it to be released on the Internet (or see if it will at all).
Remember when you could buy a VCR and set of tapes for under fifty bucks and be done with it? Seems quaint, but did anything replace it? Is there a basic DVR out there to buy that doesn’t require an annual subscription to be useful? If it helps, we’ve got a PC in the room and I don’t mind spending on a specialized card or HDD. Or do I run into the same issues when trying to use a PC to replace the cable box entirely?
If you use windows media center (free with windows vista and 7), the guide comes free with the program, so there’s no additional subscription costs there. Also, you don’t necessarily need another hard drive if your system already has a second drive with plenty of space (100+ GB).
You’ve got two options for putting a tv tuner in your PC:
Get a cablecard compatible tuner that can decrypt the cable signal on it’s own (you’ll also need to rent a cable card for it). These tend to be rather pricey ($200+)
Get a standard tuner card and an IR attachment (that lets it tell the cable box what to do).
I use the second option myself, and it works fine for me. I love recording stuff on my pc. I’ve even got it set up to automatically skip commercials.
A friend is looking to buy a new TV, and noticed that most models had USB ports and SD card slots. While I’m pretty sure that means they can read thumbdrives and SD cards with video, stills and/or music, I see no reason why they couldn’t record whatever you are watching on the screen as well, direct to a card or thumbdrive. If so, that sounds like a very simple solution (as long as you are in the market for a new TV). Anyone know if consumer-grade TVs have that capability yet?
Right now, the cable and PC HDMI outs go to a receiver with HDMI switching (it then sends the signal to the TV). If I instead connect the cable’s HDMI output to the PC, does the card allow the signal to just pass through? As in, do I set the receiver to PC, start Media Center, and whatever we tune the cable box to will show up on the TV? And if we want to record something, we can just tell Media Center to jump through whatever hoops it needs to?
I’m not too sure how it would work with HDMI cables as I use simple coax cable in my setup, but I don’t think your setup would get the results you want. Video capture and tv tuner cards only receive video. They’re not equipped with a pass-through like VCR’s and such.
In my setup, I connect the cable box to a splitter. One branch from the splitter goes to my PC, the other to my TV.
However, odds are, if your cable box has an hdmi output, it has a few other outputs as well. You could probably just use one of those to go to the PC, and leave the HDMI running to your tv. If that doesn’t work, you should be able to find an HDMI splitter at any decent electronics store for $30-50.
@Musical: the requirements for playing data from a usb stick are much lower than the requirements for recording a video feed to a usb stick. At the very least capturing the feed would required some sort of encoder, which most tv’s probably don’t have.
I’ve seen people recommend some Magnavox DVR/DVD recorders. Here’s WalMart’s selection.
Usual warnings: I’ve never used one of these. No programming data provided. Figure out carefully how you can integrate channel changing with your cable/satellite/OTA setup.
I actually still do use my VCR to record TV shows. Unfortunately, the switch to digital TV has limited its usefulness. It’ll still record whatever input you give it, but it can’t tune/select channels, so you can’t program it ahead of time to record from more than one channel.
the Magnavox DVD recorders can record to a hard disk or DVD. if you want to time shift then record to the HD and erase. you can later record to DVD if you want to keep it.
I’m old enough to have used VCRs, and DVRs are infinitely easier and better. Mine is integrated with my satellite box, so I don’t know about separate subscription fees. One advantage is that it follows a possibly moving program around, and won’t cut off if the program runs long. Whether it is worth it is up to you. We have laptops which spend a lot of time in sleep or moving around, so they are not an option.
Google tv tuners for PC - i use the “pctv hd pro stick, 801e” that i got for around $80, but there are many others and as cheap as $30. You can record the input to your PC. If you use it with a coax cable, you can only pick up the analog channels, like up to 100 or so. I use a splitter to select either straight cable or the s-video output from my cable box. The latter is how i can record anything i subscribe to, like a vcr - just not in HD (which i dont care about).
Something you might like about a dvr box is other than recording and storing 100 hours of video - its recording up to an hour of whatever is on screen, so you can rewind and play something back on the fly, as well as pausing to go to the bathroom, etc. I use the dvr’s rewind feature very often now, like when i miss what someone said thats important. I can play it back and find out what i missed or if i heard it correctly or not - or rewind and pause on something i need to write down, like an address or phone number. Its such a habit now that i miss it alot when watching tv on a set without that control feature.
The other unhearalded bonus of a dvr is you can go do other things while your program is on, then join the show 20 min later and rewind to the beginning. Then, fast forward at every commercial break to cut out commercials. I love those control features alot more than its ability to record programs.
If you really want to keep it simple I would suggest you go with a DVR/DVD-R disc burner mentioned above. The DVR part of it acts as a large ‘buffer’ for several hours worth of material so that you can pick & choose what you want to burn permanently onto DVD. This is very useful for DVD-Rs because, unlike VCR’s tape, DVD disc burning is not conducive to frequent and/or short stops & starts. Unlike full-fledged DVRs (like TiVos etc.) they don’t require a subscription. Be aware however that because TV is now 100% digital there will be some things that you will not be able to burn to a DVD-R disc if the network doesn’t want to let you.
You might be able to still get just a DVD-R burner (without the DVR hard disk buffer). These essentially started to replace VCRs about 10 years ago. They’re cheaper (under $100) but they’re becoming scarce (having been replaced with the DVR/DVD-R units). They too won’t record programing that is restricted not to be.
Another thing: Without the unit being integrated into your cable box you may have to set the channel manually! You’ll be able to schedule a day & time but you’ll have to make sure to leave the cable box on the desired channel. Some DVR/DVD-R recorders will include an IR ‘wand’ that you put in front of your cable box so it can change the channel as well.
I have an older Philips DVR with a 160 GB hard drive. Recording off the air in HD is a snap as it has an ATSC DTV tuner. Recording analog content from cable just takes a cable splitter before the cable box.
Recording digital content, such as HD channels, from Charter cable requires connecting the cable box to the DVR so you can only record what is coming out of the cable box.
BTW: The DVR is a great way to convert VHS tapes to digital content. Just connect a VCR to the DVR through the video jacks or even coax cable. Record to the DVR’s hard drive. Then you can edit it before burning to a DVD. This works well for home video tapes. For most prerecorded content, you need a ‘digital video stabilizer’ between the VCR and DVR. The stabilizer is a cheap device that strips off the copy protection from the tape.
I’m in the UK and i picked up a cheap supermarket TV (about £100) came with DVD player Digital tuner and USB recording, I plugged in a USB stick and latterly a SATA hard drive rescued from a “I spilled a cup of coffee” lap top i had off a friend. The Adapter to make the SATA plug into USB is cheap and easy …
There’s no technical reason why a TV can’t record to a USB thumbdrive or a SD card. The signal is already there; what I’m asking is for the relatively minor software to process the signal and store it in a conventional manner like all computers do. Incredibly simple solution to recording audio/video.
There are TVs with built-in VHS recorders. Why not a SD card recorder, especially if the socket is already there?
For that matter, does a recorder exist, equivalent to a VHS or DVD recorder, that takes the same, standard, composite video signal as those devices do and writes to a thumbdrive or memory card without needing the intermediate of a PC? That would be easy to plug in to any TV and quite compatible with today’s storage devices. Replace your VHS with one of these.
I think the problem is that modern equipment doesn’t use composite anymore, it’s all HDMI. And to really record HDMI you need a device that can understand compression… if you tried to store the entire HDMI data-stream without compressing it in some way, you’d fill up your entire storage before it grabbed a single 22-minute episode.
When you’re buying something like that Hauppauge box I linked to in the last post, what you’re really buying is a device that can do H.264 (or equivalent) compression in near-realtime so the data can be practically stored. That’s not yet cheap.