HD DVRs

[Tessian]

Does anyone have them? Cable company's, Tivo, something else??

I've been using BeyondTV for the last 3 years... built a PC from spare parts, threw in some tuners and I've loved it ever since... but it's becoming more and more apparent that cable companies are killing analog on their networks and my setup won't work for much longer without a lot more money and I can't do HD with this, so I'm looking at a replacement.

From what I can tell, Comcast's HD DVR sucks ass. I was looking at Tivo but $300 for the box and $12.95/month after that seems kinda steep. What's everyone else using for a DVR?

[Zeus]

Almost everything is available in HD torrents within an hour after airing. Would that be a viable alternative?

[Tessian]

Almost everything is available in HD torrents within an hour after airing. Would that be a viable alternative?

First of all, that's really inconvenient to have to go around and download all the torrents, plus now you're regulated to watching them on your PC... and yes I know there are ways around that too but now you're still complicating the process.

Second, you lose all the benefits of a DVR aside from the recording. No pausing, rewinding, etc of Live TV. Once you've lived for over 3 years with the ability to do all that you can't go back

[Lox]

My friends all have Verizon FIOS HD DVRs and they love them. I am headed to either DirecTv or Verizon FIOS HD soon.

FIOS is definitely pricey though.

[Shellie]

Yep, we have an HD DVR from the cable co. its a Motorola I believe. I couldnt imagine NOT having one now. The only problem we have is a command buffering issue sometimes where you'll hit pause, rewind, play, etc and it will just buffer all the commands and do them at all once.

When I'm at someone's house without one, I keep wanting to pause their tv, or rewind what was just said, etc. I loves it.

[Tessian]

My friends all have Verizon FIOS HD DVRs and they love them. I am headed to either DirecTv or Verizon FIOS HD soon.

FIOS is definitely pricey though.

My parents have FIOS and it's great, they don't have HD or DVR right now though. I get Comcast digital cable as part of my rent so I'm kinda stuck with it.

I like Tivo, but good god $300 for the mid-range tuner?? $600 if you want more hard drive space?? Thankfully you can just slap an external drive onto it and be fine...

[Zeus]

Almost everything is available in HD torrents within an hour after airing. Would that be a viable alternative?

First of all, that's really inconvenient to have to go around and download all the torrents, plus now you're regulated to watching them on your PC... and yes I know there are ways around that too but now you're still complicating the process.

Second, you lose all the benefits of a DVR aside from the recording. No pausing, rewinding, etc of Live TV. Once you've lived for over 3 years with the ability to do all that you can't go back

One site (TorrentBytes)+ Xbox 360 (which you have) = everything a DVR does (you can pause, rewind, etc.; I do it all the time)

If you don't like to do it through the 360, you can always get the Western Digital box that plays all formats onto your TV through RCA cables. There's one coming out shortly that even connects to your network and through an HDMI cable.

Hey, if DVR is they way you like it, I can understand that. My sis has it and she swears by it. All I'm saying is there are alternatives that are almost exactly the same if you decide the costs are prohibitive.

[Imakeholesinu]

I have the DirecTV HR22-100 DVR and it does the job right. It also has the ability to be hooked up to a network so you can download a media center on your PC and share your stuff out to the DVR like Music and Pictures. I also use the PS3 for that as well.

Now if I could only get these damn Keystone jacks to work, or maybe it's the switch I'm using.

[Zeus]

Barret, how the hell did you get TVersity to work with your PS3? For some odd reason, I got mine to work initially then it just stopped. I'm curious if it's due to one of the updates but it won't recognize my shared network at all now. The 360 does fine (I have the settings to Auto Detect on TVersity) but the PS3 just won't anymore

[Flip]

Why does comcasts HD DVR suck? Doesnt it do all the things a tivo would do? I wouldnt think there would be any difference at all.

[SineSwiper]

The DVR itself is great, but I hate the brand. Motorola couldn't engineer its way out of a paper bag.

Probably in the next few years, the FCC will mandate that all cable companies stop leasing out the proprietary DVRs in favor of cable card technology. Right now, they are already forced to accept CableCARD compatible TVs.

[Tessian]

Probably in the next few years, the FCC will mandate that all cable companies stop leasing out the proprietary DVRs in favor of cable card technology. Right now, they are already forced to accept CableCARD compatible TVs.

That is the FCC mandate, they have to make available and accept CableCARD compatible DVRs and cable boxes.

Why does comcasts HD DVR suck?

Google "Comcast HD DVR" and see what comes up, it's not flattering. The UI for a DVR is extremely important and it seems Comcast's DVR is pretty clunky to use. That, and you can't move content off the DVR (at least with Tivo you can move it to an external drive, PC, etc if it's not copy protected). I just couldn't find anyone saying nice things about it.

[Imakeholesinu]

Barret, how the hell did you get TVersity to work with your PS3? For some odd reason, I got mine to work initially then it just stopped. I'm curious if it's due to one of the updates but it won't recognize my shared network at all now. The 360 does fine (I have the settings to Auto Detect on TVersity) but the PS3 just won't anymore

I don't use TVersity. I use Nero's media home.

Also, if you can get it, I'd recommend getting AT&T's u-verse service. You can record 4 shows at a time on one DVR and all receivers in the house can watch anything on the DVR at any time.

[Mental]

Comcast's DVRs are large, bulky, unresponsive, electricity-guzzling, noisy machines that they charge you for the privilege of hosting each month. I do not recommend.

[SineSwiper]

That is the FCC mandate, they have to make available and accept CableCARD compatible DVRs and cable boxes.

Yeah, have to accept them, but not forced to stop the practice with leasing the old proprietary DVRs. This is similar to the DOCSIS migration 10 years ago. Back then, you couldn't buy your own cable modem, because everything was on a proprietary network.

Also, MCards aren't mandated to be available for all cable companies, so if you want a dual-tuner DVR, you're either forced to get two SCards, or lease their dual-tuner DVR.

Also, if you can get it, I'd recommend getting AT&T's u-verse service. You can record 4 shows at a time on one DVR and all receivers in the house can watch anything on the DVR at any time.

Ugh...quit recommending the Death Star. They can't even get enough bandwidth for their iPhones.

[Imakeholesinu]

Hey, I was impressed by their service when I had it and it blew my mom away when she got it as well for how cheap it was compared to cable.

It is available one block from me but not where I'm at, but AT&T keeps assuring me that they will have it in my area soon.

Believe me, I miss my 6MB. This is bs using 786kbps.

[Zeus]

Barret, how the hell did you get TVersity to work with your PS3? For some odd reason, I got mine to work initially then it just stopped. I'm curious if it's due to one of the updates but it won't recognize my shared network at all now. The 360 does fine (I have the settings to Auto Detect on TVersity) but the PS3 just won't anymore

I don't use TVersity. I use Nero's media home.

Also, if you can get it, I'd recommend getting AT&T's u-verse service. You can record 4 shows at a time on one DVR and all receivers in the house can watch anything on the DVR at any time.

We don't have AT&T up here :-)

Nero's media home? I assume it works like TVersity and converts on the fly, yes? Does it recognize mkv's and can you set it to automatically turn on subtitles?

[Tessian]

Comcast digital cable is included as part of my rent, so I'm kinda stuck with it.

It looks like Tivo's my only real option... I saw Moxi too which looked nice, but $800?! You've got to be kidding me.

Tivo's still a little pricey, but I guess over time I'll gain a lot.

$300 for the hardware ($265 on Amazon, or $200 for a refurbed off of Tivo.com)
$129 for a 1 year subscription
$8/month for HD channels with Comcast

From what I can tell online, Comcast does offer the Mcards, so I'd only need one and that'd be free. Still, $429 and then an extra $8/month is more expensive than my current price of nothing (except the money I paid for in tuners, Hard-drives, etc).

[Imakeholesinu]

Barret, how the hell did you get TVersity to work with your PS3? For some odd reason, I got mine to work initially then it just stopped. I'm curious if it's due to one of the updates but it won't recognize my shared network at all now. The 360 does fine (I have the settings to Auto Detect on TVersity) but the PS3 just won't anymore

I don't use TVersity. I use Nero's media home.

Also, if you can get it, I'd recommend getting AT&T's u-verse service. You can record 4 shows at a time on one DVR and all receivers in the house can watch anything on the DVR at any time.

We don't have AT&T up here :-)

Nero's media home? I assume it works like TVersity and converts on the fly, yes? Does it recognize mkv's and can you set it to automatically turn on subtitles?

It does do some conversion on the fly (but I'd recommend a pretty soild box to run on (dual core, 2GB ram, decent video, 100MB Full connection and even then every 5 minutes or so it would hiccup for about 2 seconds). It does not recognize mkv I don't believe, I'll check again when I get home but I think I needed to convert them myself before serving them up using media home. As far as the subtitle feature I don't think it made it into my version of Nero.