FW: OT: Tivo

[scirocco16vr32 at gmail.com (Chris Bennett)]

The old lady has been bugging me about one and the VCR died the other
day.  I have a media center laptop but it's really a pain in the ass
for scheduling because of the way the tuner card hooks up with the
digital cable.  I can do it but it's manual recording and not user
friendly for my wife or the kids... she was holding the baby recently
and Elise (the 15 month old) reached out and snagged a key on the
laptop's keyboard and ripped it loose, snapping the tiny hardware
pieces underneath.  I replaced the keyboard it was like 20 bucks and
the doc said it was only a mild aneuysm.  I love my kids and I want to
see them grow up so we are going to minimize the use of the laptop.

The option that I am looking at is the 160hour one Ver2, dual tuners,
mod-able from what I have seen on the net, and I was thinking the
wireless adapter to go with it as the TIVO site states you can stream
to any computer on the network.  Not to mention I don't have a phone
line handy.  I think the box itself is like $160, With two years
contract I pay $14.00 a month.

Now my question is WHY do you need a connection to the net/phone?  And
why am I paying monthly service?  Is there an additional fee--is it
per show like pay per view?   Is there a way around any of this?

Inquiring (read that: hacking) minds wanna know.

Brian, as far as the ATI all in wonder goes... the wife has banned the
desktop in the living room--besides I need it in the office.  Moreso
than that... I have had HORRIBLE experiences with ATI.  I keep
thinking that they fixed it and I waste my money everytime I buy one.
I will ONLY buy Nvidia.  Matter of fact I passed up a decent deal
recently on a laptop--first thing I asked was what kind of video
chipset does it have?  ATI... thanks anyway man...  I know there are
different things you can get 3rd party USB tuners that will do the
same thing but again I am trying to get away from having wife and kids
"peanut butter and jellying" up my laptop.  The other thing I have
found is that with the USB tuners I have had a few of those as well,
usb1.1 and 2.0, a couple of different manufacterers... that first off
you get what you pay for.  If you buy that generic 39.99 deal at
CompUSA it will behave like a cheap-ass tuner.  I have even paid a
couple hundred for some of them, Pinnacle I think was one of them...
but they have a crappy model as well and then goes up in price and
quality.  USB tuners--if you are going for any sort of quality you
have to encode it rather slowly (my laptop is a 3.6ghz hyperthreaded
P-4 with two gigs of ram) and even then you end up with some HUGE
files sometimes.  I have tried to encode on the fly but quality goes
to shit and sometimes even the audio goes out of sync.  Maybe Al's
beastie would zip through it but I suspect that the bottleneck has
more to do with USB.  Not hacking on your stuff man, (Bryan)but I have
had alot of expensive lessons on this.  Same for AMD.  Those things
don't like me either.

Chris



On 12/15/06, Patrick Bureau <patrick.bureau@gmail.com> wrote:
> I dunno where you got your information, but I guess I got lucky. As for tivo
> boxes you can buy one from Sam's for 2-300$ of the latest DVDR-tivo Self
> Burning units with 80hrs recording. I have Tivo (30 hrs), mind you I got it
> for free from my buddy that changed to Dish Network (this is a Dish TV tivo
> box). I pay for 2 satellite lines (like I would have 2 boxes) so 5.99 x2 =
> 11.98/month. And the tivo subsciption is 5.99/month so it costs me
> 17.97$/month to record... I have my S-cable connected to the tivo box and I
> bring my laptop over and I copy to vcr option and then burn it on DVD. The
> new units do that internally. Yes you can only watch the shows recorded on a
> tivo on the TV the tivo is connected to. Burn the show on dvd and watch them
> on other optonal hardware you may have (laptop/desktop/other dvd
> player+tv)...
>
> As for modding one... Do a google... Plenty a site explaining how to.
>
> ____
> Patrick Bureau,
> 85 VW Scirocco, 01 Jeep Cherokee, 05 Honda Reflex Sport WTB - DFW, Suzuki
> GS500E/F : http://tinyurl.com/ujc2h Reflex Blog :
> http://reflexscooter.blogspot.com/
>
>  --- 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.
>
>
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>


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