Reports by Consumers

Our requirements were simple. We want HD and we want a DVR/PVR (Digital Video Recorder.) We just can't live without "Tivo"-like functionality. We don't want too much TV now, and we hate the idea of "appointment TV." I don't know when Will and Grace is on, and I don't care. We watch TV when we want to, not when it's on.

Over the past couple of years, the satellite and cable industry decided to abandon Tivo and pursue their own ventures. They took a lot of business from Tivo by offering their own DVR units with dual tuners and system packages with the DVR service included at no charge (or less than $10 a month in some cases). With no dual tuner support, I too began to question my loyalty to Tivo.

Not a lot else going on. I am making better use of my “premium channels” and recording some of those shows you think about watching, but don’t get around to, now that I have a DVR. Shows like Medium, Charmed, Simpsons, Family Guy, Earl, Office, Geek, Supernatural, fill in the gaps when I’m bored. I’m also recording some shows that I didn’t watch, like Enterprise, when it was first on. Of course, I’m so busy this week that the two new DVDs I bought (”Transporter 2″ and “The Constant Gardener”) have yet to be inserted into the DVD player. I have a feeling that hard drive will fill up and I’ll realize that it isn’t all that important to watch television after all. My God! What crazy talk!

For me, probably the biggest news from the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas is the announcement from TiVo of their Series 3 High Definition PVR. While this is not the first PVR / DVR to record HD programming it is the first from the brand leader, TiVo. Quick specs rundown: it’s supposed to have 6 tuners in it (2 ATSC, 2 NTSC and 2 CableCard Tuners), it will support external SATA storage and be able to playback MPEG4 content. What I think it’s missing is support (via line in and IR Blaster) for existing DISH or DirectTV receivers and it will still record shows in MPEG2 (what’s wrong with space saving MPEG4?). However, with the addition al suppor for playing back MPEG4 content (via PC) and if it does support all the current TiVO online / HME integrations, it should be a rockin’ set-top-box! It’s definatley the nicest looking TiVo box yet, it has a display on the front telling you what it’s currently recording, and the famous peanut remote is now backlight.

Looking to add some video surveillance to your home or work environment? Check out the review of the Swann DVR4-Net Four Camera Digital Recording System over at Gear Live. The kit gives you a DVR system which can record from up to four video camera sources. The DVR has a 250 GB capacity which can record up to one year of video at the lowest resolution and at 1 frame per second. The verdict?

NBC has an ingenious plan for DVR owners… Sneak a 30-minute segment of their new fall lineup onto your box without asking for your consent… Sneaky executives…

There’s my dilemma. It may seem silly to some of you, but if you have a PVR/DVR of some sort, you know that you just can’t go back to watching TV without one. While I don’t know exactly how I should feel about it, Kelli and I do watch a lot of TV, so this is important to us. I need to find the best combination of stability/functionality/quality. And no, I will not just buy/rent a dedicated DVR. I do not like being restricted by such devices. I much prefer being able to move shows over to my laptop to watch later, or being able to burn them on DVD for friends, etc. Anyone see something obvious among my options that I may have missed? Any opinions on what I should or shouldn’t do?

After spending a few hours tweaking and tuning things, I finally had the system ready to go. So I ripped out all the electronic components from my entertainment center and dropped in the media PC. I hooked up my WinTV USB2 external TV tuner with DVR support (integrates seamlessly with Media Center Edition). I added the RF receiver for the SnapStream FireFly remote I purchased (Amazon...overnight). This is a sweet piece of hardware. Not only does it control all the MCE features without line of sight (thanks to RF), but it also has a cool mouse emulation mode. Not something I'll use all the time, but nice for the occasional mouse click. What I really like about it is that all the button macros are configurable by editing an XML file. Very well-engineered hardware, intuitive software and extremely usable.

So much for that wonderful DirecTV HD service Mike had. Yesterday we returned the HD DVR with Tivo after only having it for two days. There were two main reasons. The first was that we found out DirecTV will soon be stopping their support of Tivo. Yeah, you will still be able to use Tivo, but DirecTV won't be offering upgrades to their DVR boxes. This means Mike had a Tivo that wouldn't get the promised wireless networking upgrades or anything like that now that DirecTV is launching their own DVR service. The big strike though was the announcement...

Tentatively called the 'PocketDish', this portable DVR will be able to record shows from your TV satellite service as well as store other audio and video content.

As part of their “Microsoft-Free Home” series, ExtremeTech put together a particularly interesting how-to on building your own Linux-based HTPC, complete with DVR capability. For the non acronym-savvy in the audience, what the really means is building a computer that you can use for home entertainment, movies, music, the works, based on Linux, and that has the same capabilities as your Tivo or ReplayTV. Sound hot? I thought so too-all for free, and all based on Linux. So if you were thinking about dabbling in Linux for one reason or another, this is probably a great project to get you started.

I’m still waiting for this product to be available for purchase. But while waiting, I discovered a nice review at CNet of the Logitech Harmony 880 universal mega remote control.

Today, anyone with a PC or blackberry can blog their way into the content production arena. TIVO/DVR's and RSS are just two of the technologies that consumers are beginning to harness in a big way to choose and grab the content they wish to consume. That Simpson's episode? I TIVO'd it last week and then watched it on my laptop on a cross-country plane ride. That Maureen Dowd article? My RSS Reader grabbed the article for me AND 12 bloggers' commentaries on it ... providing some nice reading on my blackberry.

Then I found out last week that Comcast has launched their dual-tuner, HDTV-compatible DVR in my local area. So I got some more info on it, and they were offering it for what I thought was a reasonable price ($9.95/month, when the HDTV tuner alone would have cost $4.95/month). I picked it up on Thursday of last week, and absolutely LOVE it! It's pretty handy to have digital-quality recordings of all my favorite shows.

There are plenty of tutorials out there about building your own DVR. The problem is most of them use top of the line equipment which can cost you an arm and a leg. Makezine.com has a great step-by-step tutorial that uses hardware and software you may already have. Th tutorial starts by saying:

This is a really good tutorial for those looking to build their first DVR.

Ad Age . Consultancy firm Accenture which claims on demand and ad skipping will cost the television industry $27 billion over the next five years. Additionally, the company reports 70 percent of DVR users already skip ads and that DVR penetration will hit 40 percent by 2009.

It all about me(TV). ipTV, P2P, PVR/DVR's, and VOD

Someday, ads will find their way into (or around) video on demand (VOD) or internet protocol television (IPTV) or digital video recorders (DVR). These non-linear television vehicles are also equipped to provide targeted advertising. One question is this: will advertisers use the context of the video to guess at who is watching or will it be necessary to use a demographic profile of the viewer to determine which ad is relevant?

This is an idea that transcends VOD, IPTV, or the DVR. In fact, even for digital cable today it would not surprise me if Comcast and Time Warner Cable started selling commercials to the set top box instead of to the show. In that way, no matter what each viewer’s tastes are or what mood they are in that night, the targeted message would still be shown.

Today we stopped out at the local Comcast office and traded in one of our digital cable boxes for the new DVR capable box. Got it all hooked up and activated in just a few minutes and have been happily pausing, rewinding and recording live TV all afternoon!

There are certainly things Tivo can do that this box from Motorola doesn't, but for $9.95 a month without having to buy a box up front, it's not a bad deal at all. I'm figuring this is our way to ease into DVR, after 6 months to a year of this we'll be ready to upgrade to the newest Tivo offering to get all the extra features.

Which stand alone DVR should you buy? Neither, says Stephen Speicher.

There have been a couple of improvements with the Motorola 6412 HD PVR in the past couple of weeks. First off, Mediacom updated the software. The horribly ugly interface from 1991 is gone and replaced with a much more polished looking UI. It still can’t match Tivo’s UI, but at least it doesn’t hurt to look at it anymore.

Second, last night I discovered they had activated the 2nd tuner. So now I can record and watch something else at the same time, which my Tivo could never do.

My father-in-law, Tom, is considering a PVR and I told him to check out what his cable company had to offer first. As much as I love Tivo, they aren’t keeping up with the marketplace.

After finding no real reviews on the Elgato EyeTV 500, an HDTV DVR, I thought that I would write up my own review of this excellent product.

Yes you need a DVR. We have one and it just broke and now I am lost!!!! They are sending me a new one though. Somehow my disc in the hard drive got scratched on its own. Very peculiar.

Sorry, building a DVR is not difficult, as the cable companies have shown. They don't even have to resemble good, they just have to timeshift and people will accept them. The crappiness of cable company DVR's has hardly driven TiVo sales.

Yeah, well, Apple isn't exactly suffering from a lack of brand identity. And, in this case, I'm not sure that buying the brand name that has come to mean “recording something with a DVR” would really be such a coup.

What I want to do here is put things in context, from my standpoint of course. In understanding the advantages and disadvantages of both products (and many other available already) you need to consider its origins and target audience. MythTV originated on the web, as an open source project which many highly technical people have committed their time, effort and knowledge. There's no formal organization -as far as I know- and thus not clear liability in case there are violations of patents or copyrights. Who can the networks or the studios sue if...