Drop, charge, and lose the cords
Home audio & video: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs?
- 3/7/08 11:37 AM
JVC DVD/HDD Video Recorder/VCR
by mspday - 3/8/08 9:11 AM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have the above Model DR-MX1S and it records on VHS, DVD or DVR. It has an 80 hr hard drive. I can watch a program while recording on either DVR & VHS or DVD & VHS. I am very happy with it and have had it for a few years. It is not tied to a subscription. Anything I record on the hard drive can be dubbed to a DVD or VHS. Unfortunately, last year when I decided to get another unit to put on a different TV, I was unable to locate one. I think the subscription services have bought out the models to insure they can maintain control. I am worried about what will happen when this unit wears out and I use it every day.
ATSC
by haf canadian - 3/8/08 4:01 PM In reply to: JVC DVD/HDD Video Recorder/VCR by mspdayIf you are getting programs off-air (antenna), you likely will have to get a "box" for your recorder, since it probably is NTSC tuner only (analog), and won't be able to receive ATSC (digital) broadcasting.
BitTorrent
by bean_mrbean - 3/8/08 9:29 AM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I get them from certain BitTorrent websites that track all new episodes of most popular TV shows, even some less popular ones...
Yes in the legal grey area, but if I had a DVR or Tivo, I dont see how it is any different. The best part is the commercials are always edited out!
Viva BitTorrent!
Tivo
by eternity21 - 3/8/08 9:31 AM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I really LOVE my TiVo. I have four of them so that I can network them and never miss a show and watch them in any room I want.
Cable Provider Has a Video On Demand service
by sjd_3_9 - 3/8/08 9:32 AM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
With time shifting and our cable providers video on demand service I rarely miss any programs. I tend to purchase DVD collections of shows that I would watch when they come out the following year.
My wife will watch a show in time shifting on cable or watch her reality show on the cable companies video on demand channel for an additional fee.
I am thinking TIVO is the next step as it is now available in Canada...
TiVo
by Jeshimon - 3/8/08 9:42 AM In reply to: Cable Provider Has a Video On Demand service by sjd_3_9TiVo has changed the way we watch TV, we can gather entire seasons and watch them in order or watch the episodes at our leisure, I wish more thumbs were shown on premiers of new series. For those that don't know, some networks show green thumbs on the adds for shows, you press the thumbs up on the remote and TiVo schedules it for recording, very nice.
DVR from Time Warner Cable
by Keith in Albany - 3/8/08 9:46 AM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Use this primarily for time-shifting rather than archiving. Process is simple, straight-forward, and intuitive. Consider myself fortunate to live in a city served by Time-Warner, as opposed to some of the other cable companies I've experienced. Cable-box-with-DVR lets me record one show while watching another or record two different shows at same time while I'm away from home. On the rare occasions I want to archive, I just dub from cable box DVR to stand-alone VCR/DVR unit, a $140 el cheapo from Circuit City.
I use a replay RV - no monthly subscription
by Paul Kimelman - 3/8/08 10:58 AM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It is a shame that TiVo "won" (losing more money than Replay by just giving it away and then hoping to recoup with monthly charges). Replay was a better system from the start, had ethernet connectivity early on, and you could buy with no monthly payments. My unit is great, but I hate to think what happens if it ever dies.
TiVo is a rip off (why should I pay that kind of money for their "service" - just reformatting guides already available on the internet). Its funny to think that they used Linux (open source) which implied they were somehow more "open", but in fact they have always been very closed. I am really surprised no DVD player/recorder vendor has caught on to how cheap this would be to add (HDs are cheap, the channel listings are easily available on the internet, so use an ethernet/WiFi connector only vs. phone, they have a tuner already, and you have an attractive device worth replacing your current DVD player/recorder for).
Using a Satellite or Cable one means paying that company for the service and it will not work if you change service. Worth it if only if you have their premium (expensive) package anyway, since the add-on cost is low/free.
BeyondTV is best
by AzDragonLord - 3/8/08 1:19 PM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use a dedicated PC running BeyondTV for recording TV shows and I use MediaPortal for the front-end/DVD watching. I have 3 ASTC tuners for simultaneous recordings and and it also controls the cable set-top-box for recording channels above 100. I have one 300GB hard-drive for TV recording only and a separate 500GB drive for playing ripped DVDs. BeyondTV has it's own remote, but it all works well with my Harmony 880 remote also!
I looked at BeyondTV...
by Jeshimon - 3/8/08 2:06 PM In reply to: BeyondTV is best by AzDragonLordIt read to me like the system requirements to be able to record 2 HD programs and watch a third cost far more than TiVo3 and subscription service for 3 years. I may have missread things, but all in all I have no regrets. Much as I'd like to own the PC that could do it, I'd sit here hating the fact it was tied up in the evening when I could be using it for other things.
I too do not want my PC tied up doing what my DVR should be.
by dcalhoun38581 - 3/8/08 2:42 PM In reply to: I looked at BeyondTV... by JeshimonI'm glad to see someone else feels as I do about keeping a PC and DVR as two distinctly different and separate things. I just wish I could find a GOOD DVR that has a digital tuner, full HD capability and backward compatible with SD, an HDD to for review before burning what I want to keep to DVD media, inputs I can connect a VCR to for dubbing to HDD or DVD, antenna pass-through (so I can watch something on TV while recording something else on the DVR), etc, etc.
I suspect that the vast majority of units that people have posted about, most of which are a couple years old, have Analog tuners that will be useless in less than one year. Also, I'm finding a LOT of really bad reviews on nearly every one of them! Some folks have good luck, but most seem very dissatisfied.
I took the tuner out of my media center PC...
by Jeshimon - 3/8/08 3:06 PM In reply to: I too do not want my PC tied up doing what my DVR should be. by dcalhoun38581My TiVo collects the programming and I store what I want to keep on my WHS. Windows home server gets me almost as much as TiVo. If I decide it is worth keeping long term I could edit out the commercials and burn it to DVD. I bought a DVDr/VCR combo to connect to the TiVo but I never use it for archiving, it is just an expensive player. I just copy it up to my WHS and leave it there for now, I am still deciding what to with full seasons and movies from there. When the file edit bug in WHS is fixed I'll get serious about doing something.
My wife gets the TiVo and WHS combination. I get very little grief when it is time to add a drive to the WHS, she has even stopped asking 'how much did that cost'.
You can still use the PC as a PC while recording or watching
by Morisot - 3/12/08 4:43 AM In reply to: I looked at BeyondTV... by JeshimonI have an HP Media Center PC and that is where I record TV programs with Windows Media Center. I can click on a program in the free guide, program specific times and stations, or just click the red button in the system tray to record. I have multiple programs recorded to my hard drive.
It's like picture-in-picture. I can watch a program, work on a newsletter or edit photos and IM all at the same time -- and the system doesn't bog-down at all.
The computer came with a built-in tuner. If I want, I could hookup cable also and record in the background and watch another program at the same time.
M.
panasonic DVR75
by haf canadian - 3/8/08 3:39 PM In reply to: Poll: How do you record your favorite TV programs? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Like the questioner, I am too busy to keep up with the advances in technology, and rely on C-NET reviewers to assist me when I know my old methods and equipment no longer suffice.
18 months ago or so I bought a Panasonic combination recorder (VHS and DVD). With it I can record or play either VHS or DVD formats, and use one "joystick" button to copy from one to the other. It has a hard drive on to which I can record many hours of TV programming while watching something else, and it has a commercial advance feature so I can skip them during playback, though, unlike my old VCR, it doesn't skip them all with one click of the button... just one at a time, which is annoying (not as annoying as the commercials, though). It also has free TV Guide, and you can just select a future program (I use the Search feature to find it alphabetically in TVG) then tell it you want that program recorded. Simple, except the alphabetical search with the remote joystick can be clumsy. It isn't TiVO, I guess, but it's free.
You can copy camcorder video directly from the camera to either VHS, DVD disk, or the harddrive, and it comes with a DVD-RAM disk too, though I've never messed with that and don't know what the advantage is to it (yet). I put a mini-DVD disk from my Sony camcorder in the Panasonic's DVD drive, copied it readily to the harddrive, replaced the mini with a full-sized DVD-R or DVD+RW, and copied what was originally on the mini from the harddrive to the big DVD disk. You can then either leave the video on the harddrive for future viewing or delete it. The harddrive seems big enough to hold lots of recordings, so I left my video on it so I don't have to insert the DVD to see it. I maintain harddrive space by erasing watched TV recordings regularly - you just have to be careful during the erasure process that you don't inadvertantly erase your home video.
The hassle with copying home video is the confusing DVD video formats (a real pain), because you can't copy all formats, so you have to be sure you set the camcorder to the correct format before you shoot the video in the first place. If you use miniDV tape in your camcorder, you won't have this issue. And I don't know if this is true with all TV DVD players or not (it is with mine), but if you put digital images from a still camera on a CD or DVD and it has text with each image, as seen on your computer, that text doesn't appear with the images when played in the DVD player. So if you are sending a disk of family digital pictures to a relative, for example, and they have a DVD player but not a computer, they'll be able to see the images, just not the identifying text you may have burned to the disk originally with your computer. Bummer.
I mentioned the confusing DVD recording formats; adding to this issue is the complex and bewildering Panasonic owner's manual. It is thick, cumbersome, and difficult to navigate for a neophyte. It has to be detailed because of its many capabilities, but I found it hard to understand in certain areas, especially about the formats and what I can and can't do with my camcorder videos. But I've found camera and video electronics owner's manuals to be clumsy to navigate from all popular manufacturers the last 10-15 years, including Sony and Canon.
The only other problem with my relatively young model, and I consider it a serious blunder by Panasonic and myself, is that it only has an NTSC tuner. It can receive analog broadcasts only. Next February, I will have to have a digital receiver box just for the DVD recorder. We've known this was coming and should have known better. Panasonic should have included an ATSC (digital) tuner, given the short time frame they knew existed at that point before mandated digital would arrive and make my unit obsolete as a TV receiver. I reckon I just assumed that such a modern device would be digital-capable. It wasn't as far as the tuner went! I checked at Best Buy last month and they had only one unit of similar purpose in the store, but made by a brand I wouldn't buy. It did have an ATSC tuner (with less than a year to go I would hope so).
I can say, despite the problems, that we do get a lot of use from our DMR EH75V, and, all things considered, including past good experience with Panasonic reliability, I would recommend any similar updated model. It just takes some patience thoroughly cramming the manual and learning by usage. It sure is nice not having to set TV program recording times like with our old VCRs, or looking up VCR+ codes in a TV Guide magazine; and no more expensive TVG subscription! Just look up the program onscreen, select it with the remote, then click record; it records the entire show to the harddrive. You can click on single or weekly recordings of a regular show, piece of cake. If you look around or check Panasonic or their retailers online you can likely find a combo unit similar to mine with an ATSC tuner. Check C-NET reviews of course.
If you are going HD soon, than you need to be thinking in terms of Blue-Ray capability also, I suppose, now that the other HD DVD format has been junked. Will they never let us rest? Cheez. I can't keep up with the tech changes, and as a retired fixed-income baby-boomer I certainly can't afford to buy new equipment every couple of years.
Dishnetwork.....................3 yrs no probs
by slimsss2 - 3/8/08 3:51 PM In reply to: panasonic DVR75 by haf canadianWith 100 hrs of record time and hooked up for two rooms it has worked great for 3 yrs now..I don't like the fee schedule/programs ya have to have with the package at all,,,, but that is another story.
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
