OT: Tivo

[haygood at myway.com (Brian Haygood)]

I looked into Tivo recently.  I'm told that you can increase the capacity by swapping the hard drive for a bigger IDE drive.  The units are free because the monthly subscription to Tivo is expensive.  In most areas you can get a better deal by renting the equipment and service from your cable or satellite provider.  Usually its like $5 or $10 per month instead of Tivo's $20, and you don't own the equipment, which will no doubt be outdated in a year or two no matter what you get.  



Also, you can only watch recorded things on sets that are hooked up to the Tivo's output, or to another Tivo in the house.  This is the same with the cable company stuff, but often you can get more than one recorder/player from them, whereas you would have to buy more Tivo's to share the stuff.  The rebates might not let you get two Tivo's for free.  For us it wouldn't be a problem.  



Personally, I have used an ATI all-in-wonder video card with great success.  I get free program guides from Guide+ that I can click to record, just like the Tivo stuff.  No monthly fee at all.  I have run the cable output (you could use the component output, if you prefer, or the S-video, etc.) to my big screen which is just on the other side of the wall from my desktop.  It is great and much cheaper.  Runs on a 1.7Ghz machine that is about 6 years old now.  Hard drive space is cheap, and I plan to throw a cheap DVD player in the computer at some point (like $50 or less) so I can save stuff.  That would also let me watch it on any computer or DVD player, so its more flexible than Tivo or others, if you don't mind recording stuff.  It also came with video editing software that I've used with great success on home video stuff (Ulead Video Studio).  I don't know how any of this has changed since I bought my card, but it is surely hard to beat it.  Like the Tivo3, many computer 
video cards have dual tuners and can record two things at once.



Brian





 --- On Thu 12/14, Chris Bennett < scirocco16vr32@gmail.com > wrote:

From: Chris Bennett [mailto: scirocco16vr32@gmail.com]

To: scirocco-l@scirocco.org

Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:15:52 -0500

Subject: OT: Tivo



Anyone have a Tivo and modded that puppy?  I am seeing TIVO's for free<br>after rebate all over the place... Version 2's apparently the 3's are<br>HD and like 700 bones.<br><br><br><br>-- <br>80 Scirocco Callaway Indiana Red<br>87 Scirocco 16v Tornado Red<br>04 R32 Reflex Silver<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Scirocco-l mailing list<br>Scirocco-l@scirocco.org<br>http://neubayern.net/mailman/listinfo/scirocco-l<br>

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