Basic TIVO questions.....

[John Prophet]

Ok, I know google will tell all, but you guys do it with more style!


Basically what is the deal with TIVO type functionality on comps? Is there a good primer out there?

What are the capabilities? Let's say I have a nice big screen TV and cable. What do I need computer-wise to record straight from the cable TV? In other words I wanna sit there watching cable TV and be able to hit a record button on a remote and be recording onto my hard drive.

Is that strictly a function of a video card or is it software or is it both? I suppose it would have to be both because naturally I would need a video card with a tv IN and tv OUT.

So if I have a big screen tv and a tv tuner card is it then just a matter of software to record cable tv?

What about commercial skipping etc?

How hard would this be to implement in a typical case of peeps having a nice big screen in the living room with cable hooked straight to the tv....isnt it then just a case of the cable plugging into the tv in on the comp, then going from the tv out to the tv itself?

If all the tv functions are going thru the comp is that as reliable as just going straight to the tv? In other words if someone pays me $1000 to get em setup with a hard drive tv recorder setup, are they gonna be calling me po'ed cuz of this crash or that?



Just a bunch of basic questions.

Thanks, JP

[Bill in SD, CA]

Tivo to the computer needs to be hard wired in and if you want to watch what's playing, it needs to be routed to the TV as well. No commercial skipping unless you edit the recording.

It's not as cracked up as you want it to be, but it is great.

Bill

[John Prophet]

hmm, I just ran across this at newegg....has about 250 reviews saying it is killer..and replaces tivo and is easy to setup and use...and has remote etc.

And about 60$ shipped, lol.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...122-132&DEPA=1

JP

[John Prophet]

ok, let me continue my brainstorming a bit.

Say I have this video card mentioned above..or similar card...and I record a tv show...or maybe the superbowl....ok, what format does it record in?

Which leads to the next question, say I have a DVD burner...and I have recorded the superbowl...can I then burn the superbowl onto DVD's and take em to a set top DVD player and play em?

I am phrasing these questions as if I know nothing about it.....("as if" hehe)

Thanks, JP

[VHockey86]

I use a Leadtek winfast TV2000 XP deluxe pci card and I love it. I have my satelite receiever going to my VCR/DVD Combo and a spliter on the output of that to my TV and CPU.

I can have the TV running on a windows in my desktop, as my desktop background, or full screen. Comes with a remote control where like you said, can just press a button to record. You can record with whatever codec you want, I use a divx codec with Mpeg layer III audio compression.

Remote also has button for PVR functions to "time shift", aka you can rewind/fast forward live TV (takes up temporary hard drive space).

As for your burning questions, you could burn a VCD with a cd-rw (kinda crappy quality, 80MIN on 700MB cd) that will play in a dvd player, or with a DVD player you could burn with DV format (155 mins on 4.7GIG DVD)

[John Prophet]

You mention DivX codecs etc.....do you just use the software that came with the video card? Or did you have to download some other codecs/software?

cool deal...too bad i dont even have cable tv, lol.

I want to know all this to be able to sell systems, lol. I will have to experiment on my families cable setups.

I do think it would be cool to have stuff like superbowl or other stuff on DVD. Im not even going to imagine the copyright issues involved.

Thanks, JP

[Bill in SD, CA]

TIVO has an option to record to a VCR so whatever format that is I would think is the format going to your computer. Then I assume that you can convert to DVD from there.

Bill

[VHockey86]

As long as you're not tryign to sell any of the things you record from TV i dont think there'd ever be any fuss over copyrights.

Thnk about it, if it was that bad, recording functions of VCRs would illegal

The DIVX codecs I downloaded, however the card comes with quite a few. It has some Mpeg-4 codecs that come along that seem to be pretty nice too (note that it does not encode an actualmpeg-4 format (*.mp4), but will be compression for AVI).