Seriously, I’m not interested in subscribing to a service like Tivo.
I know what shows I want to watch and I know how to program a recorder. I just don’t want to hassle with the VCR tapes.
I was completely floored when I tried to shop for one on line but couldn’t find anything.
Am I the only person on the planet who wants one?
(I’m pissed because I just realized my VCR didn’t record Boston legal the other night because the VCR ate the tape!)
I could have sworn I saw an off-brand DVD recorder (yes, not just a player but a recorder) at Wal-mart the other day for—I don’t remember how much, but it was under $60. Can’t find it on line, though. Maybe such things go in and out of stock enough that stores like Wal-mart don’t sell them through their websites? You might have to get yourself down to some physical stores and look around.
Look at your local electronics store for DVD recorders. You can find quite a good selection between $100 - $200. Not quite like a DVR because you have to record on DVD rather than hard disk, but it’s a huge step up from VHS recording.
ETA: I need to learn to type quicker.
Basically, cable and satellite companies don’t want you to have them. Tivo is bad enough in their minds. If you want a DVR, they want you to pay for one from them. I don’t know if there’s actual legislation/lobbying going on to stop random electronics manufacturers from making them, but since there are plenty of people willing to pay for either the subscription service from Tivo, or paying to rent one from their TV providers, they might think there’s not a market.
The “easiest” way to do this is get a PC, put a video capture card in there, and get one of several DVR software programs.
Manual Timer recording? How 20th century.
Just kidding. They exist, but expensive if someone isn’t getting a monthly service fee out of you.
This one’s HD though. There might be non-HD options out there too.
Yeah, but it’s only good for one recording (per disc) right?
That could be costly for me.
This would cost a lot, but my mom just got a new computer with Windows Media Center and a TV tuner. Just hook up the cable into the computer, and bam you can watch TV on your computer (or hook computer to a TV) and record shows. I have it set to record House and The Office every week.
Hell no. I have a Toshiba (I think) that I picked up at Best Buy. I can record to the harddrive, then burn whatever I want (some restrictions apply) to DVD.
It works exactly like a VCR in that I set my timers for whatever I want, but it records to an internal HDD. I can edit shows (delete commercial breaks), make playlists, save stuff as long as I want and burn it later.
I’m very happy with it.
Sure you can get generic hard-disk recorders. My GF’s parents have one. Just do a web search for “hard disk recorder” and you’ll find dozens of them.
Here’s the first one I found, with links to several (UK) retailers. It has a 160GB capacity and costs about £150, and you can burn hard copies onto DVD too.
I’m puzzled as to where you looked that you couldn’t find them. They’re everywhere over here.
Another alternative is MythTV - which is pretty simple to install in Ubuntu Linux (and other distributions).
You mean like this one? —> http://www.tacp.com/dvr/product.asp?model=rd-xs55
I notice when I select the “where to buy” button, it’s not listed.
Also, IIRC, we’ve had a thread or two on the topic of copyright, DRM and DMCA, and that Toshiba(?) installed firmware updates to prevent their DVRs from being used the way VCRs are used to record/time-shift commercial TV programming.
What restrictions?
I’ve never used one myself, but if you used DVD±RW discs instead of just DVD±R, wouldn’t you be able to re-use them over and over just as you would with VHS tapes?
Good luck finding one. I looked for a long time and couldn’t find one. You can sometimes find them for analog TV but not for digital. I had a DVD recorder for a couple of years, but that required me to have cable. They are also a bit slow to start up and record and using the same disk over and over does start to look bad and sometimes the disks go bad.
Over the summer I finally broke down and bought an HP with a digital tuner in it. Took a month or so to get everything working, but now I record all of my shows in digital with no problems. I ended up paying a good 7-800 for the whole thing though.
You can get away with cheaper, but I wanted most of it put together for me. If you’re going to do it do not get a slim line case. I did that and it caused me no end of problems with getting a good video card. Most everything else was pretty easy. You will also want to make sure the drivers are up to date, I have Vista Premium, but the drivers were old and the picture sucked until I allowed windows to update. It was a pain in the ass for a month or so, but now it’s worth it. They do need to have someone put out a low cost one, and I’m sure they will in a year or so.
I always thought the reason you paid more for a TIVO unit or Cable/Satellite DVR is because there had to be a way for the unit to sync up to an on-screen schedule of shows. That’s part of the attraction right? Scroll through the schedule, select shows to record with a press of a button, set it to record a show whenever it’s on, season pass, etc.
Without the DVR syncing up with an on-screen schedule your left with a glorified VCR where you have to manually set recording stop and start times.
Yeah, but those are DVRs for digital over-the-air TV, which are easier to make because you just dump the video straight to disk, no need for any MPEG encoding. And in the States, as I understand it, digital over-the-air TV is mostly (exclusively?) HDTV, whereas here it’s standard definition. HDTV DVRs are trickier to make. You need a huge hard disk for one thing.
[ETA] Apologies, I think the one you linked to might not be a Freeview (digital TV) PVR.
I just built a Vista based DVR (pdf) and I love it. It has a tv guide that I flip through and pick what I want to record and two tuners (1 HD and 1 analog) so I can watch one show and record another.
My S.O. has a $30 tuner card in her computer, she uses it all the time. Yes, you have to set it like an old fashion VCR but she has no problems with that.
Yep.
Also, if you use a DVD+RW you can use the A—>B erase option on some recorders to delete blocks of program (read: commercials).
I often like to record two 1-hour episodes of House onto a DVD at two-hour speed, use the A—>B erase option to get rid of commercials, make an exact copy onto a DVD+R (write-once disc) using my computer, then erase and re-use the DVD+RW.
I’m pretty sure you can use a TiVo box to manually record shows, without paying the subscription fee. Without the subscription, you don’t get the TV schedule, so you can’t select your shows by name or description, but you can set it to manually record a certain channel at a certain time for a certain duration without a problem. You also still have the ability to pause/rewind live shows.