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Originally Posted by dumb&dumber
Does anybody have any information on receivers which record that you dont have to go through a pay service like TiVo? Come on, someone must know how to digitally record without paying a monthly service. It doesnt seem right to have to pay when you can record on a regular VCR without paying? Thanks for any help.
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Besides getting a dedicated PVR receiver, there are a couple other relatively inexpensive options.
(1) Get an OLD TIVO. With an old Series 1 TIVO, you don't have to subscribe to use it as a VCR. You won't get the Guide, but I never use that anyway, and you won't get the TIVO recording things on it's own, trying to figure out what you like, but to me that's a GOOD thing. The last time I checked, the newer TIVOs pretty much had to be used with a subscription, but the old Series 1 TIVOs don't. The problem with this, is that I have to go through an extra A/D....D/A conversion. Although I don't notice much degradation on a SD TV.
(2) get a
Twinhan 1020a (I think the newer model cards are the same, but the Starbox is NOT the same). With a PCI card like this, you can record direct to your computer. This is recording the digital DVB stream directly, so you don't get the extra A/D conversions.
I use TIVO for things that I don't intend to save, but when possible, I use the Twinhan for recording things that I want to archive. Having installed an FTP server on my TIVO, I can extract recordings to my computer, however these are in .ty format. I can play .ty files directly on my computer, and often I can convert them to .mpg files to play on my computer, but the conversion to .mpg doesn't always work, so I often have to re-load the .ty files back onto the TIVO in order to watch them again.
I have found that recording from the Twinhan and playing on my TIVO through my Roku (in SD) is superior to viewing a DVB broadcast directly on one of my STBs.
EDIT: I just remembered a 3rd option. I also have an RCA DRS7000. I don't think these are still sold new, but you might find one on EBAY. These were supposed to be something like a TIVO. They aren't nearly as user friendly as a TIVO, but they have a couple advantages. First, they have better video quality than a TIVO, and second, although the Guide only seems to work on the RF input, the Guide is free. It actually picks it up off the channels you are receiving. It picks up the time too. My only problem with it is that I use it so seldom that it loses it's guide between uses, and it takes quite a while for it to pick up the info. But it does a nice job recording, and has the free guide for local channels. Not sure about what it would do with RF cable with more than just local channels. Basically, I think that if the info is in the signal, it will pick it up. If I just leave it tuned to one of the local channels, it picks up the Guide info for ALL of the local channels I receive. Kind of a neat gadget, but I find the TIVO so much more user friendly that I almost never use it.
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