HD PVRs?
 

After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a HD PVR
or HD based Hard Drive recorder. I have a few ReplayTV units, but they
can't recorder the HD signal even though my channel guide has them
available. I'm currently satisfied with my OTA antenna. I've only seen the
Tivo based HD PVRs, but I'm looking for other options.

TIA

HD PVRs?
 

Joseph Wind wrote:
After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a
HD PVR
or HD based Hard Drive recorder. I have a few ReplayTV units, but
they
can't recorder the HD signal even though my channel guide has them
available. I'm currently satisfied with my OTA antenna. I've only
seen the
Tivo based HD PVRs, but I'm looking for other options.

TIA

My HD recorder is an Athlon PC with an ATI HDTV Wonder. It gets used
for time shifting and TiVo like use. Tonight it will record 2 hours of
Fox and then CSI Miami. We will start viewing CSI about 20 minutes late
(though it must start on time obviously) so that I can skip the
commercials.

The ATI card is ATSC only. The DVICO fusion card can do QAM which is HD
on cable but ONLY the channels in the clear -- CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX and
maybe PBS. That varies from system to system.

There are others and you will certainly find folks here using many
variations successfully.

IMO, it should be a fairly fast machine and dedicate it to this task. I
read a lot of changing drivers for games and such that causes problems
for the TV functions. Figure $500 give or take.

GG

HD PVRs?
 

"G-squared" wrote in message
oups.com...
Joseph Wind wrote:
After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a
HD PVR
or HD based Hard Drive recorder. I have a few ReplayTV units, but
they
can't recorder the HD signal even though my channel guide has them
available. I'm currently satisfied with my OTA antenna. I've only
seen the
Tivo based HD PVRs, but I'm looking for other options.

TIA

My HD recorder is an Athlon PC with an ATI HDTV Wonder. It gets used
for time shifting and TiVo like use. Tonight it will record 2 hours of
Fox and then CSI Miami. We will start viewing CSI about 20 minutes late
(though it must start on time obviously) so that I can skip the
commercials.

The ATI card is ATSC only. The DVICO fusion card can do QAM which is HD
on cable but ONLY the channels in the clear -- CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX and
maybe PBS. That varies from system to system.

There are others and you will certainly find folks here using many
variations successfully.

IMO, it should be a fairly fast machine and dedicate it to this task. I
read a lot of changing drivers for games and such that causes problems
for the TV functions. Figure $500 give or take.

GG

Thanks for the response. Originally I wanted to hook up a PC to my Plasma,
but since I got a smoking deal on this 42" Panasonic Plasma, I could not
pass it up. I thought it had a VGA input, but after taking it out of the
box it only had HDMI. I'm still considering building a PC with an ATI card
that has a HMDI so I can hook it up the Plasma, but that might take while.
I was hoping to get the functionality of my ReplayTV in a HD version soon.
I do like the PC approach of PVRs, and it's worth looking into. I just want
a guide to scan the channels, just in case the station moves the program to
a different time.

BTW how do you control the PC? is there like a IR remote that I can use?

Thanks again!

HD PVRs?
 

"Joseph Wind" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a HD PVR
or HD based Hard Drive recorder.

I've been quite pleased with my Sony HDD250.
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/mod...?mdl=DHGHDD250 It includes
three types of tuners (NTSC, ATSC, QAM) although only one can be used at a
time. It has electronic program guide -- the free TV Guide one that is
carried by many cable systems.
--
Gerry

HD PVRs?
 

"G-squared" wrote in message
oups.com...
Joseph Wind wrote:
After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a
HD PVR
or HD based Hard Drive recorder. I have a few ReplayTV units, but
they
can't recorder the HD signal even though my channel guide has them
available. I'm currently satisfied with my OTA antenna. I've only
seen the
Tivo based HD PVRs, but I'm looking for other options.

TIA

My HD recorder is an Athlon PC with an ATI HDTV Wonder. It gets used
for time shifting and TiVo like use. Tonight it will record 2 hours of
Fox and then CSI Miami. We will start viewing CSI about 20 minutes late
(though it must start on time obviously) so that I can skip the
commercials.

The ATI card is ATSC only. The DVICO fusion card can do QAM which is HD
on cable but ONLY the channels in the clear -- CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX and
maybe PBS. That varies from system to system.

I pay like $5 a month for a dual-tuner HD PVR from my cable company. I can
record anything with it. Using a PC for this seems to limiting.

Steve

HD PVRs?
 

"Gerry Wheeler" wrote in message
ink.net...
"Joseph Wind" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a HD
PVR or HD based Hard Drive recorder.

I've been quite pleased with my Sony HDD250.
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/mod...?mdl=DHGHDD250 It includes
three types of tuners (NTSC, ATSC, QAM) although only one can be used at a
time. It has electronic program guide -- the free TV Guide one that is
carried by many cable systems.
--
Gerry


A while back I ran across this Sony DVR that had multiple tuners and hard
drives, sort of like UltimateTV times 4. If only it were not a prototype.

BTW how much is this Sony DVR? and what is the recording capacity?

HD PVRs?
 

"Joseph Wind" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
BTW how much is this Sony DVR? and what is the recording capacity?

The price seems to be coming down. In fact, I'm not certain they're making
it any more. I bought mine at Best Buy last year for about $450. Check eBay
to see what they're going for there. The HDD250 has one drive. There's an
HDD500 model with twin drives. The single drive is enough to record about 40
hours of HD material; more (much more) if you're recording SD. There are
several quality levels to set for the recording (I presume they're actually
different compression levels).
--
Gerry

HD PVRs?
 

G-Squared wrote
My HD recorder is an Athlon PC with an ATI HDTV Wonder. It gets used
for time shifting and TiVo like use. Tonight it will record 2 hours of
Fox and then CSI Miami. We will start viewing CSI about 20 minutes late
(though it must start on time obviously) so that I can skip the
commercials.

The ATI card is ATSC only. The DVICO fusion card can do QAM which is HD
on cable but ONLY the channels in the clear -- CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX and
maybe PBS. That varies from system to system.

There are others and you will certainly find folks here using many
variations successfully.

IMO, it should be a fairly fast machine and dedicate it to this task. I
read a lot of changing drivers for games and such that causes problems
for the TV functions. Figure $500 give or take.

GG

Thanks for the response. Originally I wanted to hook up a PC to my Plasma,
but since I got a smoking deal on this 42" Panasonic Plasma, I could not
pass it up. I thought it had a VGA input, but after taking it out of the
box it only had HDMI. I'm still considering building a PC with an ATI card
that has a HMDI so I can hook it up the Plasma, but that might take while.
I was hoping to get the functionality of my ReplayTV in a HD version soon.
I do like the PC approach of PVRs, and it's worth looking into. I just want
a guide to scan the channels, just in case the station moves the program to
a different time.

BTW how do you control the PC? is there like a IR remote that I can use?

Thanks again!

The HDTV Wonder comes with an RF (not IR) remote. The receiver is a
little USB dongle. The Fusion card also comes with a remote though I
don't know if it's IR or RF. Being a TV nerd, I program the records
myself. During my lunch break I check Yahoo TV listings to see what's
on later.

The machine runs WinXP Pro SP2, .NET framework, DirectX 9.0c and ATI
MMC9.13 with ATI CCC6.1 video drivers. I've had the best luck when
using the video driver released at the same time as the
MultiMediaCenter software.

GG

HD PVRs?
 

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 22:20:19 +0000, Joseph Wind wrote:

After getting my new 42" Panasonic Plasma HDTV, I'm no in need of a HD PVR
or HD based Hard Drive recorder. I have a few ReplayTV units, but they
can't recorder the HD signal even though my channel guide has them
available. I'm currently satisfied with my OTA antenna. I've only seen
the Tivo based HD PVRs, but I'm looking for other options.

You won't find anything better than MythTV. You won't find anything
cheaper than MythTV. I've got 4 HDTV tuners in my server and can record up
to 4 shows at once, while watching recordings on 3 sets networked
together. You can get HDTV tuners that work great for OTA for $25 each.
See the last line of my sig. I've dumped my Tivos and vcrs alltogether. I
can't say enough about how versitle MythTV is. Want help building one. Go
to alt.video.ptv.mythtv.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

HD PVRs?
 

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:56:00 -0700, G-squared wrote:

IMO, it should be a fairly fast machine and dedicate it to this task. I
read a lot of changing drivers for games and such that causes problems for
the TV functions. Figure $500 give or take.

For $500 I can build a 4 HDTV tuner server system using MythTV and have
enough left over to build another frontend machine. Using $25 HDTV cards.
An My server sure isn't dedicated. It runs web, ftp, and news servers too.
And is also my general usage machine. if you want a dedicated HDTV MythTV
server, you can probably get by with a 486. recording 4 shows at once only
uses about 6% of my A64 3000+ cpu. HDTV signals don't need encoding like
NTSC sugnals do.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm