Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 2, 2008 Members Share Posted May 2, 2008 Hey, I literally know *nothing* about hard drive recorders for television...so much so that I wasn't really clear as to what they were called. DVR? PVR? What I am looking for is a replacement for my wheezy old VCR, which is no longer recording. I'd like to get something that is EASY TO PROGRAM and USE. If there are any features that you feel are important/essential, lay 'em on me. I'd prefer to keep this under about $300, but am flexible. I have Time-Warner cable, a five-year old Sony DVD player, and an old Panasonic 27" CRT TV from 1998 (but plan on getting some sort of LCD flat-screen TV in the six months to a year). These are a couple of random links that I've found so far: http://www.coastalvideosecurity.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=SSCR-DVR-80 http://reviews.cnet.com/4323-6531_7-6509123.html Thank you very much!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 2, 2008 Members Share Posted May 2, 2008 I know TW is a funky cable company but I'd bet you they offer an integrated cable box/DVR and that may very well be the way to go, since, if you were to buy a TiVo or such, you'd have to pay for the listing service anyway and it would be a much bigger hassle. My cable company (pretty clueless themselves) has DVR's typically for about $10 extra a month. When I started with mine, one of my friends bought a TiVo 'cheap' on some rebate. I figured that *I* was ahead ecomically until about 2 years and 8 months out -- at which time the cost of her TiVo and the $5 or so a month she had to pay would put her ahead. IIRC, she had to buy a new TiVo about 6 months after that, anyhow. But she was about $30 'ahead' at that point. With re those links, out of those units I'd lean hard toward Panasonic. (I'd eschew the VCR but I've found set-top DVD-recorder is a wonderful thing.) My own set top DVD-recorder is a Panasonic. I consider it a brilliant consumer device. A couple things I'd change. But for a $165 device several years ago, I consider it one of my best consumer purchases, ever. And it has burned almost two thousand movies on over a thousand disks ("VCR-doctrine" personal fair use, just so we're clear). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vbrook Posted May 2, 2008 Members Share Posted May 2, 2008 The DVRs that the cable companies supplies, I agree, are often the best way to go, as the DVR service is better integrated with the rest of the cable services. Makes it less hassling, and if you have problems, you have someone to go to. That said, I no longer have one of these. In my area, there is "On Demand" cable, and it more of less covers what I like to watch. I go to an "On Demand" screen, select the program I want to watch and press play. There's no extra fee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 3, 2008 Members Share Posted May 3, 2008 No extra fee? Wow. Obviously your cable company isn't from around these parts... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vbrook Posted May 3, 2008 Members Share Posted May 3, 2008 Comcast. And I don't really like them, but, yep, no extra fee. I would really like the Verizon Fios, from what I've read about it, but not available round here yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 3, 2008 Members Share Posted May 3, 2008 One of my pals got Verizon FIOS and has been having a lot of issues. He had Verizon DSL before so you'd think he'd be used to them. I had Verizon DSL and -- while I'm not crazy about my cable company (Charter -- but they are the best cable company I've had... but how much is that really saying? ) I have to say that my cable internet service, while not cheap, is far superior to the horrible on-again-off-again DSL service I got from Verizon. (They tried, don't get me wrong. I spent hours on the phone with their service people. I had a major, complete outage almost every Sunday for a while -- and it would last for hours if not most of the day. If I didn't call them, it would stay out. In fairness, I was about 13,000 feet from the switching facility and the max was, I think, about 17,000 feet. But, anyhow, it sucked. I kissed Verizon good-bye when I sold my old house and I haven't missed them once.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 3, 2008 Author Members Share Posted May 3, 2008 Time-Warner offers DVR, but it's $16.50 a month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 3, 2008 Members Share Posted May 3, 2008 Yow. One thing I've found is that cable companies willl charge you as much as they think they can get away with. Ask around and I'll be you have friends and neighbors with same cable co who are getting lower rates. My cable bill kept going up until my combined internet and 'extended basic' cable was $135 a month! I called them up and said I had to cancel and they said, how about we lower it to $96 for the same service. I said OK but a few months later it went back up. I had friends who were paying $65 for what I got from the same company so I called them back up and said what gives? They said, well we can't give you that but we can give you 2-13 and the net for $70. But we can get TCM back in there with basic extended basic (?) for $90. And this time they committed to it for a year. They're all slime, of course. Monopolies... There's no reason for this kind of monopoly but the municipalities get too many quasi-legal kickbacks for locking us up this way. And then taxing us to death on our cable on top of it. I should add that almost every evening sometime between 5:30 and 7:30, my cable 'net goes out for a few minutes. I find it really irritating but it's usually back in five minutes or so. But it ticks me off. (Just happened, so it is fresh on my mind.) Maybe most folks don't hardly notice but I'm usually streaming music so I notice. The cable company claims they have no idea why. This is not a choke-up (usually) but a complete outage. Sometimes I get a dribble, a few Kbps, barely enough to stream in a little text. And the cable company acts like they've never heard of such a thing. That's one thing, at least all those fresh masters degreed phone workers they had at Verizon back around the turn of the century were quite voluble -- they never knew the answer but they didn't mind talking about. Sometimes at great lenghth. I don't think they were too into their job. The collapse of the net boom made for some very overqualified phone support people for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deanmass Posted May 4, 2008 Members Share Posted May 4, 2008 I have a Replay TV. They are now out of business, but, I bought the lifetime script, so until the hardware fails, I can record. If I were to start right now, I would get an ElGato EyeTV, and an Apple TV. Use the ElGato to record what you want, suck them into iTunes, and sync to the apple tv ( this is generally all automated after setup..). The other option, which I have not done, is the MythTV Linux build, but this is said to be very tweaky. TiVo's are awesome but they are more expensive now, and the company is always on the edge of going under. I hate comcast. I would go with out rather than give them a nickel ( or more) . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members doug osborne Posted May 5, 2008 Members Share Posted May 5, 2008 The TWC boxes, Motorola or Scientific Atlanta depending on your neighborhood, both work. In my neighborhood, all DVRs are HD, so I get all of the extra free HD channels - locals, HD-NET, MHD, etc. They look great even on my analog TV. Except for sporting events, I never watch anything live. I have had five boxes, all Motorola - four of them broke - so the rental price seems like a good deal. You can't buy these at retail in the US, and mine would have been in the shop half of the time. Two tuners and a 160 GB hard drive, so you can watch one show while recording another (or watch a recorded show while recording two others). You could build a Home Theater PC - search HTPC on avsformums.com. Or you could buy a D-VHS or DVD Recorder. These will work, but won't work tightly with the digital cable (you'd have to use IR blasters to change channels on your cable system or TV to record from, etc.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted May 7, 2008 Members Share Posted May 7, 2008 Dish network supplies them for free. Its as easy as scrolling through the programs into the future time wise or up and down through the channels. When you find something you want to record just press one button and say yes and the timers set to record. I scroll through a weeks worth at a time and record shows I want to see. I do want to get a DVD recorder so I can burn a disk from the DVR to free up the hard drive plus can the VCR collection as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rabid Posted May 8, 2008 Members Share Posted May 8, 2008 I have a HD DVR from my cable company and two Tivo's. The TIVO's are more expensive per month but the interface is much, much better. I'm thinking about dropping back to a single Tivo and no box from the cable company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hard Truth Posted May 8, 2008 Members Share Posted May 8, 2008 I am happy with the Pioneer HD and DVD recorder I bought three years ago. It is easy to operate and program once I figured out some strange on-screen terms that are probably bad translations from Japanese. (for example, sometimes they use the word "erase" when it should say "delete.") The missing feature compared to other devices is the TV listing data available from Tivo and devices provided by the satellite and cable companies. The added feature, that those devices lack, is the ability to archive TV shows to DVDs with no quality loss. It also can record video to HD or DVD from any analog video source and firewire. Caveat:HD/digital TV is coming, so a standard def/analog device will be obsolete in a short while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members PantserMaroon Posted May 9, 2008 Members Share Posted May 9, 2008 a $70 computer and http://www.mythbuntu.org/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members indigo_dave Posted May 9, 2008 Members Share Posted May 9, 2008 I have DirectTV (satellite) and I'm not happy with their recent rate increases.I'm hoping that the internet will give them more competition in the future and drive prices down some. I've been watching old episodes of "Maverick" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" on the internet recently. For anyone interested: http://video.aol.com/video-category/maverick/103179 http://www.hulu.com/videos/search?query=Alfred+Hitchcock+Presents David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.