Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: Advice needed for an all-in-one DVR that can burn DVDs

I like you shuddered at the thought of bucking up $12.95 a month for a TIVO membership, but after 5 years of sampling other devices I am actually doing it. About 5 years ago, I bought an WinHD 180 Video Card and Beyond TV. BeyondTV was great for the most part. You have ready access to the file rips as they are stored on your local drive and are not encrypted, so you can create highlight reels and even rip content to discs (I ripped the SuperBowl on a disc for a friend of mine who was a Colts fan after they won the Superbowl). However, the problem with BeyondTV is capturing HD is done OTA and I had huge problems capturing quality OTA feeds consistently and there is nothing worse than realizing halfway through a recording that your antenna was positioned wrongly: nonstop program studdering and the same person who told you not to pay a monthly fee will be frowning on your ability to provide quality recordings! There are tuners which can capture HD content via component, but they are priced near $1k making them a nonoption for me at least. The other thing to consider is BTV is a system hog. Unless you have at least a dual core CPU, BTV will monopolize your system cpu during recordings. Total Cost(this is back 5 years ago so it has probably changed) is around $70 BTV + $25 OTA antenna + $80 HD tuner +25 BTV disc burning software=$200.

About a year ago, I switched from DirectTV to cable (boohoo!....I moved to Manhattan!) and probably the only good thing about my cable company is that they supplied an HD DVR at no cost and I must rank it above BTV. It is free, a whole lot more convenient and alot less can go wrong. However, the drive is small (20 hours I think) and it is a bit on the dumb DVR side (ie it will record the same episode multiple times even if I tell it "First Run Only").

So now after 5 years, I am getting ready to join the TIVO community and recommend the same for you...you probably will jump over to the TIVO side anyway after a couple of years so I will save you time and money. What I am looking forward to from TIVO (I'm in the middle of moving again) is larger hard drive capability, much smarter recording options, and a whole TIVO community filled with plenty of people who can provide nifty tips for maximizing my DVR experience.

All in all, I would say buck up for the monthly fee and buy yourself a regular video card to burn your vhs tapes to dvd. I just used BTV to convert my VHS to disc, but pretty much all tuners come with software to do recording with. If you absolutely refuse to give TIVO a shot, I would recommend a DVR from a cable company. If you have satellite and not cable, then I would say go with Beyond TV: just make sure your cpu is at least dual core and do some research on a good OTA antenna...because a bad one (I had 2 different ones) can be a pain in the butt!

great post!

It's true that Tivo lacks DVD play/burn capability; in all other respects, the new & affordable HD box leads the pack. I recently upgraded from generic DVRs to a pair of TIVOs. A single multi-stream cable card [for each box] gives me dual tuner capability in high def. The card costs $1.50/month, where I was paying $13 for the cable box/DVR. And not only is there much more storage, but I can simply plug in an eSATA drive for unlimited [say, another terabyte] storage, all managed through the TIVO interface. I don't think there's an easier solution. The facts that the TIVOs talk to each other--& to my PC--with a self-configuring $30 network card, & that I can freely move programming between them or watch remotely, is a nice bonus. At a street price of $250, with the indisputed best user interface, it's a steal.

Capacity: absolutely--the Tivo HD has an eSATA port on the back. Plug in your drive & manage the expanded storage seamlessly via usual Tivo interface [I haven't done this yet but have seen screenshots; apparently you can't even tell there's a separate drive...you're just able to store more stuff.]

Monthly fee: The $13 fee I eliminated is the cable co charge for decoder box with DVR; the cable card to serve the Tivo's 2 tuners is $1.50. I still pay 1 monthly Tivo fee [I was able to convert my lifetime subscription on the other], but it's just $7 because it's my 2nd box & because I pay per year. Net cost is less than i was paying cable co, & both features & performance far superior.

Yes--Tivo HD means HDTV. eSATA is, I believe, the newest & best format for hard drives. No monthly charge for service on the 1st box because it's a "legacy" lifetime account. You slipped 2 decimals on the tuner question--it's 1 dollar & 50 cents per month for a multi-stream cable card, which is how the Tivo's twin tuners get supplied with HD signal from the cable co.

I have used TiVo for many years, through several models. I find it works well. I hae always bought the fixed-price subscription for program info and found it to be well worth it. Some of my favorite programs are switched among time slots weekly and it tracks these changes almost flawlessly. I have found the TiVo software that engages your PC over a LAN to burn DVDs to be very unreliable and take a really long time, so I wouldn't recommend it.

I have the impression that the quality of testing that TiVo does on its software has gone steadily down hill. About once every nine months a new release comes via the subscription service and it usually significanly improves the usefullness of the product. However for the last several updates each has come with a flaw that constitutes a major annoyance and I know now from experience that it does no good for the community to complain. TiVo won't fix it until the next software release.

The annoyance in the most recent release is that when the TiVo has to switch Cable box to a new channel the new show goes through about a minute or two of freezes and starts before it settles down to play the show.

I had a desire and a need to record my old home video VHS tapes to DVDs before they faded away completely. I did quite a bit of searching to get what information I could on the EASIEST way to do this, since I have a ton of home movies to convert. I found a Toshiba D-R400 on sale for $100 (it's now about $120+) and snatched it up right away. Best investment I've made in a looooong time. Now, 4 weeks later, all of my movies are safely stored on DVD, plus very episode of "In Treatment" from HBO is recorded for sharing with my HBO-less friends. The Toshiba D-R400 doesn;t have a lot of bells and whistles, but for the prioce and the ease of transfer, you just can't beat it.

I bought the same setup thinking I could just copy my VHS to DVD but the Movie industry has stopped Us from doing that, even though we own the darn tape. there is a device ( actually there are several makes ) that you can hook up to your computer to allow you to copy your VHS to your harddrive, then if you have a DVD Burner you can record your vhs movie to dvd. Thats the only way I have found to do this operation with a VCR/DVD/and PC setup. If you happen to find a better or even a different way to do this please let me know. ( jeffrey-rogers@sbcglobal.net ).

While you may have purchased a movie on video, DVD etc... you do NOT own the content. Just as with computer programs, you are authorized to use the content but do not own the content.

It continues to amaze me that people fail to grasp this concept and continue to feel that their purchase of a cd or dvd or video tape gives them the right to copy, post or otherwise use the content in ways contrary to the users agreement(s)

The DRM laws passed make it a crime to defeat anti-copy schemes in the media, which means, working around the schemes used to prevent dubbing tapes is a violation of that law, which means you have laws in conflict on this. I go with the supreme court on this, but you need to be cognizant that DRM is a very big deal with some companies.
So if you can figure out how to turn off macrovision in your devices, you are forbidden from doing so by the DRM laws. To read more about turning off macrovision in your specific device, just so you don't accidently do it, I suggest google searches because apparently some very bad people have figured out how to do it on many home sets using hidden commands in the devices.

Including bypassing DRM schemes, if necessary...

There is another way to transfer VHS to DVD it does require a PC. You can also transfer from a Camcorder. It is a device called a Dazzle, put out by Pinnacle and is really quite simple to use, inputs via USB.

The Dazzle video capture device was made by Pinnacle Systems. It is an RCA-to-USB type capture device that really works well. You can try the local Best Buy or even Best Buy.com but better results might be had looking on eBay.

Actually, there is a device that is not normally available on stores, but can be found on the internet. It is called a video stabilizer and it connects between the video output of your source VHS and the video input of your DVD recorder. To prevent copying, the manufacturers induce an intentional wobble in the output of pre-recorded VHS tapes. That wobble is what the DVD recorder detects and then prevents the recording. The problem that I had with this is that most of my recorded VHS tapes are around 25 years old and, due to deterioration, many of them had unintentional wobble which also set off the "recording prohibited" function on my DVD recorder. I was extremely annoyed whenever I would get a "recording prohibited" error when trying to copy my own camcorder recordings. So I bought a video stabilizer and now, not only was I able to finally copy all of my camcorder tapes, I was also able to back up every pre-recorded tape I owned, and many of them were also badly deteriorated.