Where can I buy an external digital tuner for my analog VCR?

On Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, at 09:45:36h -0400, Pete Cresswell expounded:

I think Elmo Shagnasty nailed it:
get a PC running Windows Media Center.

Why not Myth TV?

http://www.mythtv.ORG/

Open source and no need to buy a licence from Micro$loth Corporation.

On Tue, 1 May 2012 14:34:07 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller
wrote:

On Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, at 09:45:36h -0400, Pete Cresswell expounded:

I think Elmo Shagnasty nailed it:
get a PC running Windows Media Center.

Why not Myth TV?

http://www.mythtv.ORG/

Open source and no need to buy a licence from Micro$loth Corporation.

That would be the way that I would go but doesn't Myth TV require a
certain amount of technical knowledge? That's not something that
everyone has or wants to deal with when at home.

Al 2048 wrote (in part):

If the VCR can record only via the DTA, then the VCR can record only
the channel to which the DTA's tuner is set. If I want the VCR to
record channel 2 from 3 PM to 4 PM, and then channel 5 from 4 PM to 5
PM, then I would have to do the following:

at 3 PM, I would have to set the DTA tuner to channel 2

then, at 4 PM, I would have to change the DTA tuner to channel 5

I can NOT leave the house and expect the VCR to record one channel,
and the *subsequently* a different channel.

Some VCRs can control a cable box using an IR Blaster to emulate the
STB's remote control. Check your VCR's manual to see if it can do
that.

Del Mibbler

Per J G Miller:
By the time I get through Charlie Rose, the evening news, and
maybe a couple TED presentations my grey matter is about dried
up.

Time for re-runs of "Roseanne" or "Sanford and Sun" then?

My re-run taste (or lack thereof?) goes more to Benny Hill...
--
Pete Cresswell

Per J G Miller:
Why not Myth TV?

http://www.mythtv.ORG/

Open source and no need to buy a licence from Micro$loth Corporation.

Myth was my first choice when I was getting in to this.

But I could not make it work. Spent a couple months on it and
it was like a part-time job - except the pay was lousy.

Finally abandoned it for a now-defunct product called "SageTV"
and never looked back.

In retrospect, I think most of my problems were around SQL
Anywhere's security.

In fairness to MythTV, there are others who have been using it
for years with no problems at all.

But $100 for Sage got me my life back....
--
Pete Cresswell

In article , "Jim Wilkins" wrote:

"GMAN" wrote in message
...
In article , T. Keating
wrote:

Their are a number of DVD/VCR combo recorders with a DTV tuner still
on the market. You just have to google for them..

But the digital tuner in them are for OTA digital only

The Hauppauge 950 USB tuner on my DTV recording PC accepts OTA and QAM
(FIOS), not cable, but they list this:
http://store.hauppauge.com/hardware2...wintv-dcr-2650



We are talking VCR/DVD settop recorders,not PC cards.I own a Hauppage and yes
they are nice but not the same.

"GMAN" wrote

The Hauppauge 950 USB tuner on my DTV recording PC accepts OTA and
QAM
(FIOS), not cable, but they list this:
http://store.hauppauge.com/hardware2...wintv-dcr-2650

We are talking VCR/DVD settop recorders,not PC cards.I own a
Hauppage and yes
they are nice but not the same.

We are talking about DTV adapters or replacements for a VCR, and a PC
running Media Center, Myth, Sage etc is a very good if power-hungry
alternative, without a monthly fee. An older PC you already have may
be fine, mine is from 2005.

I still have two VCRs on DTV converters arranged so I can record two
channels and watch a third, but why archive degraded versions when the
PC captures the full HDTV resolution perfectly?

jsw

On Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, at 11:15:52h -0400, Shawn wrote:

That would be the way that I would go but doesn't Myth TV require a
certain amount of technical knowledge?

Apparently it is not anywhere near as bad as it used to be in
setting up and getting working.

However, there is something much simpler if you just want to
record shows which recently came to my attention, thanks to
Dr Sian Mountbatten, and so tried out and that is tvheadend.

So long as you can know the frequencies and parameters for
each multiplex (which you can find by using w_scan in -x mode)
then it is all a very simple web interface.

https://www.lonelycoder.COM/tvheadend/

Furthermore the recordings it makes are x.264 (I think) encoded
in mkv container so these are smaller than raw MPEG-2 transport stream
recordings which can be an issue if you are doing lots of recording.

On Monday, April 30, 2012 1:33:20 AM UTC-5, Al 2048 wrote:
Hello.

I live in a Chicago suburb. My cable company, Comcast, has migrated to
an all-digital signal. Before this migration, I had channels 2, 2.1
(CBS), 5, 5.1 (NBC), 7, 7.1 (ABC), etc. After the migration, the
analog channels (2, 5, 7) disappeared.

Why is this a problem? Well, my VCR is an analog VCR, and my VCR's
tuner can detect only the analog channels (2, 5, 7). The tuner can not
detect the digital channels (2.1, 5.1, 7.1).

If I use the Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) supplied by Comcast, then
I can still use the VCR to record. However, I can not record one
channel while watching a different channel.

So, I want to get rid of the DTA and to have a VCR that can record
digital channels. That means that I have to buy a VCR with a digital
tuner or an external digital tuner for my current analog VCR.

So, can someone please tell me where I can buy an external tuner? Are
external tuners even made anymore?

Thanks for any information.

Regards,

Alex K.

Theres been a lot of discussion of many ways to approach your problem. For me, *IF* you only care about clear QAM channels (locals that don't require a Cable Company box), then the simplest solution might be to replace the VCR with a DVD recorder with a QAM tuner. I've used them for OTA for years. My experience is that re-recordable DVD Media can be problematic, but once-recordable media has never failed me. I buy single use DVD+R or DVD-R for under $0.25 each. Using the DVD Recorder is almost identical to using a VCR.

Dan (Woj...)

Per (PeteCresswell):
In something over two years, I've had one die on the NAS box very
soon after Day-1 and had one DOA - but no other failures.

Oops... Shoulda' kept my mouth shut.

A few hours after that post, my XP box started having *really*
long XP splash screens.

Looked at MyComputer and one of the TV drives was missing.

Yanked it, put it into one of those USB/toaster type wrappers and
it just kept clicking and clicking....

This will be the second Seagate Barracuda that has gone South on
me.

Ran down to the local 'puter store, brought home a WD 2-TB for
$125 and am recovering to it now.

Two terabytes for $125? !!!.... Not one, but *two*.... !

When I bought my first MacIntosh way back in the early eighties,
I paid $800 extra for a 20-megabyte hard drive.

That was about $1,700 in 2011 dollars.

1 TB = 1,048,576 MB.

2 TB = 2,097,152 MB

2,097,152/20 = 104,857 times the storage.

$125/$1,700 = .074 of the price.

25 years, over a hundred thousand times the storage for less than
10 percent of the price....

Sheesh!

--
Pete Cresswell