TiVo or DVR...

[Mole 0]

I just got DVR on Comcast last week. It only cost ten bucks a month and it is defiently worth the price.

 

Does anyone else have it?

[Placebo Effect 0]

I plan on getting TiVo just in time for the Fall 2004 season. From all reports, with the amount of TV I want to/do watch, it'll be great.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

I've had DVR since 2001. It honestly smokes Tivo as it's a lot easier to set up. I need to get a DVD drive to hook up to my DVR when I have the money.

[griffinmills 0]

I've had both and currently own a HDVR2 integrated Direct TV Tivo.

 

Over two years ago I had a Dish Network DVR. It was really neat and I loved using it in conjunction with my VCR for offloading/archiving my favorite shows. I kept reading up on the comparisons between my PVR500 and the Tivo's that were out at the time and, even with my "owner loyalty" I was kinda bummed out that Tivo looked better. Regardless the PVR500 was a very good tool.

 

About 8 months into owning it I had to move and couldn't take the PVR with me. In that market I would have been insane to stick with a Dish PVR as they still didn't have dual tuner (record two shows at once) the price was very uncompetitive ($300 - $350+ compared to DirecTivo $199) and DirecTV was offering one year commitment plans that beat out Dish at that time. Not to mention the simple curiosity of trying the other satelite company. This was in late January 2003.

 

Having switched from one to the other in less than a week I remember these things.

1. The DirecTivo was way faster in all ways, changing channels, starting/stopping recordings etc and general menus and use.

2. My old PVR500 was basically a VCR, the Tivo had all kinds of crazy seeming gewgaws and features.

So basically the Tivo was everthing the PVR500 was plus it was faster had dual tuners and a bunch of features I came to appreciate (season pass and keyword recordings etc.) Plus there was a whole huge community of people upgrading and hacking their Tivo's out there that I never found while I was stuck with Dish Network DVRs.

 

I guess I'm saying there is no way I would recommend, based on DVR alone, Dish over Direct. If you weren't getting a DVR then it's got to be either Dish (for that warm fuzzy "supporting the home grown underdog" feeling) or Cable. Really, even then, it is Cable all the way if available as it is generally cheaper and more user friendly (can split the signal yourself for as many VCRs as you want etc.)

 

Although if we are talking about some kind of non-satelite, non-tivo DVR then I've no idea or experience with that. I don't see how any non-tivo DVR could really be "better" outside of any subjective capacity let alone "smoke" it. I doubt I would choose a standalone DVR over my integrated DirecTivo at any rate. :-)

[Mole 0]

It is a DVR with my digital cable, so it bascially like what you have for dish.

[sfaJack 0]

TimeWarner is beginning testing of DVRs in my market this month so perhaps I'll have to check it out.

 

A question, because I am technology-ignorant about this: if I were to record something onto the DVR and later wanted to put it on a DVD, what would be involved with that? Would I need a regular stand-alone DVD-R or are the DVRs capable of doing this themselves?

[Kaertos 0]

If DVD Recorders work anything like my VCR (and I am guessing they almost have to) it is simplicity itself to record from the DVR. In my case, i just start watching whatever it is I want to tape and hit the record button.

 

Now, I know for a fact that there are ports on my DVR that are currently unused, one of which is a firewire port and another is a USB port. I am hoping that at some point in the future these will be enabled.

[OldSchoolWrestling 0]

I was looking into getting Tivo through Directv about a month ago but everything I read said I would have to have 2 lines coming in in order to watch one show but record another. This is the first I have heard of a dual tuner. Can someone tell me more about that?

[Styles 0]

I have a Comcast DVR, and I honestly don't know how I lived without it. Just remembering to set it is the only difficult part. Watching sports games are a breeze, as I can start at the beginning while the game is still going on live and skip through the commercials. Not to mention to luxury of pausing live tv...

[Jobber of the Week 0]

ReplayTV.

 

While I don't need to explain to any DVR owners why the technology rocks, my Mom uses it for evil, unfortunately. Recording everything she's ever wanted to see and then lounging in front of the TV for hours never getting anything done. It got so bad we turned off DirecTV. =/

[griffinmills 0]

I was looking into getting Tivo through Directv about a month ago but everything I read said I would have to have 2 lines coming in in order to watch one show but record another. This is the first I have heard of a dual tuner. Can someone tell me more about that?

Dual tuner DirectTivo's have been around for quite a while but they have always required a second line and I don't see this ever changing. Every satelite dish is capable of putting out 2 lines without any additional equipment though.

 

If you want a Direct TV integrated Tivo unit that can record(watch) two things at once and playback a third you will always need two lines. This is not as bad as it may seem, why? Because they will not charge you for the additonal line at installation nor will they charge you for it monthly. Direct TV charges per Receiver specifically, not per line. Most of their installation packages wont cost you anything for up to at least four lines and I recently (January actually) had the guy throw in 2 spare lines while he was here and it only cost me some politeness and a cold beer.

 

I've seen posts on usenet of people bragging that they've gotten dual tuner HDVR2 Tivo's for as little as $59 after mail in rebates. They probably also had to get a year of service or new installation etc but even without they are incredibly cheap and you will own it personally (whether that is an advantage or not is up to you, comcast DVR's are rental only ATM.) Remember that with integrated DirecTivo you pay $4.99 a month for "Tivo Service" that you must subscribe to. Hope that covers everything. Basically you will always have to have two cables running to your DirecTivo if you want the dual tuner capability but it doesn't cost you anything other than the physical space they consume in your home.

 

As for exporting, for Tivo specifically this is a ranges from "stupid simple" to "moderately hard" depending on what you want to do. Any analog "capture card" can be used to grab from any DVR sorce, this is "stupid simple." If you want to do what the Tivo comunity calls "digital extraction" this can be done but it is not the easiest of tasks. Your best bet for digital extraction is to buy your Tivo pre-hacked with FTP and Telnet enabled or buy and upgrade HD that has these features enabled and add/replace your existing drive. From there you need to disable copy protection on the recordings and install an FTP that can see the partition they are stored on. Finally pick the suite of tivo editing tools you like and start making DVDs and VCDs. Are there some pitfalls here? Yeah, picking the copy protect solution that best suits you can be hard and if you aren't going to go with pre-hacked or a new HD there are lots of trials to be had hacking your Tivo.

 

For me I bought an upgrade HD and kept the old one pristine as a backup. From there I already had a compatible USB ethernet adapter so I through that in, Tivo saw it and quickly converted over automatically. I chose to simply disable any further copy protection on recordings meaning anything I already had was a lost cause, no big deal. From there I installed a few different FTP programs for extracting videos but ended up using "Tserver" with "TyTool" which basically allows me to FTP the files from the Tivo directly to TY(one of 3 nearly identical tivo movie formats) or MPEG2. From there TyTool can also VobMux the files (DVD format) for you to use with other DVD authoring tools, OR it can make a simple DVD menus and save them as apropriate IFO Files and Dirs for use with Nero etc. Every week I export and make a DVD of the Adult Swim block plus The Simpsons/Futurama/King of the Hill block for a friend of mine in the Navy. Using the GOP editor in TyTool I can edit out the commercials and whittle all six hours of those shows down to one DVD generally with a bit of room to spare (half hour or so, sometimes throw in an MXC.) This all takes about 2 or 2.5 hours of exporting the files (they are huge 4+ gig files) and about 10-20 minutes of editing, menu making and IFO writing.

 

Sorry for the huge post, for details on TIVO extraction etc go to www.dealdatabase.com forum and start reading. Seriously though, read before posting there or they will skin you alive.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

ReplayTV.

 

While I don't need to explain to any DVR owners why the technology rocks, my Mom uses it for evil, unfortunately. Recording everything she's ever wanted to see and then lounging in front of the TV for hours never getting anything done. It got so bad we turned off DirecTV. =/

If you ever watch the ScreenSavers they had a method for installing a new hard drive in one of those where you could get about 150 hrs. of recording.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

ReplayTV.

 

While I don't need to explain to any DVR owners why the technology rocks, my Mom uses it for evil, unfortunately. Recording everything she's ever wanted to see and then lounging in front of the TV for hours never getting anything done. It got so bad we turned off DirecTV. =/

What the hell? Who turned it off? That made me think:

 

 

Dad: Hey (insert name) can you please start dinner?

 

Mom: No I'm watching this show.

 

Dad: Arrgh! (Calls company to cancel DirecTv)

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

That is kind of odd. While I watch more shows because of it, I think my total viewing time has gone down as I skip commercials and on news shows, etc., I can FF through segments I don't care about. I can usually off an hour news program in 25-35 minutes.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Problem is that my mom records 60-90 minutes each day of just her morning shows alone. She also has a problem staying awake while watching TV in the evening and usually watches a show 2 or 3 times.

 

This was a dual-tuner DirecTivo, though. We've now moved to cable because of the internet connection (not very nuts about cable TV, but oh well) and a one-tuner ReplayTV, which is great (better guide than non-DirecTV Tivo as well, with a grid and everything) until you get an HDTV and find all but the most expensive DVRs aren't going to work. Heh.

[OldSchoolWrestling 0]

How does Tivo work when a show doesn't start on time? Sometimes if a game is on, the show will start and end at a weird time. Does it catch all this?

[griffinmills 0]

That is kind of odd. While I watch more shows because of it, I think my total viewing time has gone down as I skip commercials and on news shows, etc., I can FF through segments I don't care about. I can usually off an hour news program in 25-35 minutes.

I second this experience. While I probably have more TV set to record than previous to owning a Tivo I tend to watch stuff like Smackdown in under 30 minutes. Another good example is Iron Chef which can be chopped WAY down without re-watching all the filler every episode.

[griffinmills 0]

How does Tivo work when a show doesn't start on time? Sometimes if a game is on, the show will start and end at a weird time. Does it catch all this?

If there is proper advanced notice to the Tivo service it will catch it. Although a recent example of something my Tivo couldn't deal with would be Raw a few episodes back that was about 22 minutes OT. Although I do have my timer set to grab an additional 20 minutes of any Raw showing. I still missed the ending of the matches but I got to see most of it, for what it's worth.

 

You can set your Tivo to grab anything with a keyword, title, actor... all kinds of stuff but I never use this myself. That would probably help greatly to avoid missing a program.

[Styles 0]

I always set my shows to run for 2 hours after the registered end time, like sports games (especially if theres extra innings/overtime), you can never be too sure.