We opted for a ReplayTV. From what I can tell it’s pretty cool but I haven’t had a chance to spend a lot of time with it. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to explore its features this weekend.
You are talking about a 50% to 75% increase in the price of a TiVo. They would have to put in another of their MPEG encoder chipsets as well as the second tuner. The current model TiVo with DirectTV has two tuners but that unit completely lacks the encoder chips as it writes the datastream from the satellites to the hard disk. That is why you have no OTA ability on the Tivo with DirectTV.
I have an ATI All in Wonder 9800 in my computer, and I love it. It records live TV, can rewind, fast forward, and all that jazz. The TV listings are free to download from the net, so no continuing fees to pay. I’d say the best part, though, is you can then copy the files off your computer onto a DVD if you have the burner, and save them forever, watching them on any DVD player you have.
Supposedly you can add a PCI all in wonder card to be able to record and watch a different chanel at the same time. The PCI card is only about $30 but I havent tried it yet
The All in Wonder card also has all sorts of hookups to input video into your computer so you can edit your home movies, or record VHS to DVD, but I havent played with those either…looks cool though.
OK, another question for you all.
If I want to record every Red Wings game that’s on, how do I do that? I’ve tried to set up Red Wings as a keyword, but I get all sorts of non-game stuff that way, too (ie, pre-game shows, sports highlight shows, etc.) Is there a way to say "Just record the actual games, not all the other crap?
I vaguely remember reading how to do this in the q&a section of one of their email newsletters. I think it was adding “at” or “vs.” to the search criteria (so you would match San Jose at Detroit; or Red Wings vs. Sharks). Unfortunately, this tip doesn’t seem to be archived at tivo.com, but if you look in the guide to see how sports entries are formatted, you should be able to make it work.
At CES, Tivo annouced that they would be rolling out a “TivoToGo” service late this year that would allow users to download programs from their Tivos to laptops and other portable media players, enable them to burn DVDs.
Details within the press release indicate the media files will be protected by some sort of DRM scheme, and proprietary software will be required for playback. This “feature” makes it unlikely that I’d subscribe/upgrade to this service, but was probably necessary for them to avoid being sued into oblivion.
What would be really cool is if there was a way to stream MPEGs from your computer to your TiVo, like you can do with MP3s now with the Home Media Option. Then I could buy a super big HD and rip all my favorite DVDs, and watch them on-demand. That would kick ass.
I just bought a TiVo this week and I’m loving it so far… except for the realization that a lot of the shows I like are on at the same time.
I don’t have a phone line, so I had to use the trick to set it up over ethernet. (I heard the trick wasn’t necessary on the newer boxes, but I guess it is.)
What you’re describing sounds like the DirecTV guide. Maybe Comcast does it differently in different markets.
I had AT&T digital cable a couple years ago before Comcast bought AT&T Broadband, and there was no preview screen on the guide. The left side had banner ads, and the right side showed half an hour’s worth of listings for a dozen channels at a time. My mom has Comcast digital cable in California (where it also used to be AT&T) and hers works the same way.
It’s nice not to have ads plastered all over the TiVo guide.
would this work: http://www.smarthome.com/7811.html one spliiting the cable from the wall, and one splitting the input maybe? Seen them without switches also, which would probably be better for the one going to the television. No clue if something like this would work, just thought of it when I read that line.
That should work. I have my cable running into a splitter, with one end going to TiVo and the other into my VCR, and then another cable running out from the VCR into the TV. In theory, I could record one show on TiVo, another on the VCR, and watch a third show with the TV’s tuner.