Death to Commercials!
Wow, it’s been a while since I actually _wanted_ to get off my but and share something with the ‘ol LJ, as opposed to feeling guilty about not updating in the last X weeks.
Anyways, for a while I’ve been making noises about getting a PVR / DVR. Long story short - a Tivo. I’d _love_ to have a Tivo. I want to give Tivo money. The problem is, Tivo isn’t in Canada, and Shaw’s equivalent product is for almost $1000, + you have to have digital cable. And it can’t skip commercials.
Thus I’ve done a little reading, and my old dell, which was already functioning as rather nifty media box already, got a little upgrade. I tried a TV-Tuner in the media box back at my parents, but that was a bit of a disaster - the quality was shit, there was no nice TV guide, and it never actually recorded audio. [I do have the all-but-empty 150 gig drive from said machine sitting idle in this dell here though]. Well, things have come a long way since then, and the new card [an ATI Theatatrix 550] installed like a dream, plugged into the cable, scanned the channels, and is otherwise working like a charm - high quality records / playback, with an excellent interface [more on that later], and it even records audio this time :P
For the interface, I went with a nifty little program off the ‘net [GB-PVR] which has some nice commercial killing options, and ties into a fairly comprehensive and free [with usage survey, but free] program grid subscription.
The result… Best TV experience ever. If you have a computer, and have $100, I strongly, recommend this. [though hard drive space might be a bit of an issue, but shit, a 200 gig drive is only about $100 too, and the total for this setup is still significantly less than an off the shelf PVR - ntm the big hard drive is only necessary if you want to que up a ton of shows].
Anyways, the DVR / PVR [whatever you want to call it] setup is _Great_. Simpson’s as a test run - set it to record, give it few minutes to buffer before watching while recording, and I can then view the show essentially commercial free… commercial comes, I skip foreword, and keep on watching [if you haven’t caught it already, I _hate_ commercials]. Daily show as another test - queue it up in the program grid, come back to watch the show without commercials at my leisure. Not that there is really much beyond these two options [sure, you can play your videos or pause ‘live TV’, but neither are really that big to me]. Still, picture if you will watching what YOU want to watch, when YOU want to watch it, without commercials, without the headache of the old style TV tuners, and a nifty remote that works eerily well.
… and you can still browse regular TV if you like. [on the significantly clearer, brighter, and more portable lcd monitor… which moves nicely onto the coffee table, thus being a bigger, better, and cleaner picture than the real TV ever gave… interesting how things all seem to come together like that].
Only flaw is that you can only record / view one channel at a time, though you can apparently stick in additional tuners and run them in series. Not sure if this will be an issue or not.
Anyways, for a while I’ve been making noises about getting a PVR / DVR. Long story short - a Tivo. I’d _love_ to have a Tivo. I want to give Tivo money. The problem is, Tivo isn’t in Canada, and Shaw’s equivalent product is for almost $1000, + you have to have digital cable. And it can’t skip commercials.
Thus I’ve done a little reading, and my old dell, which was already functioning as rather nifty media box already, got a little upgrade. I tried a TV-Tuner in the media box back at my parents, but that was a bit of a disaster - the quality was shit, there was no nice TV guide, and it never actually recorded audio. [I do have the all-but-empty 150 gig drive from said machine sitting idle in this dell here though]. Well, things have come a long way since then, and the new card [an ATI Theatatrix 550] installed like a dream, plugged into the cable, scanned the channels, and is otherwise working like a charm - high quality records / playback, with an excellent interface [more on that later], and it even records audio this time :P
For the interface, I went with a nifty little program off the ‘net [GB-PVR] which has some nice commercial killing options, and ties into a fairly comprehensive and free [with usage survey, but free] program grid subscription.
The result… Best TV experience ever. If you have a computer, and have $100, I strongly, recommend this. [though hard drive space might be a bit of an issue, but shit, a 200 gig drive is only about $100 too, and the total for this setup is still significantly less than an off the shelf PVR - ntm the big hard drive is only necessary if you want to que up a ton of shows].
Anyways, the DVR / PVR [whatever you want to call it] setup is _Great_. Simpson’s as a test run - set it to record, give it few minutes to buffer before watching while recording, and I can then view the show essentially commercial free… commercial comes, I skip foreword, and keep on watching [if you haven’t caught it already, I _hate_ commercials]. Daily show as another test - queue it up in the program grid, come back to watch the show without commercials at my leisure. Not that there is really much beyond these two options [sure, you can play your videos or pause ‘live TV’, but neither are really that big to me]. Still, picture if you will watching what YOU want to watch, when YOU want to watch it, without commercials, without the headache of the old style TV tuners, and a nifty remote that works eerily well.
… and you can still browse regular TV if you like. [on the significantly clearer, brighter, and more portable lcd monitor… which moves nicely onto the coffee table, thus being a bigger, better, and cleaner picture than the real TV ever gave… interesting how things all seem to come together like that].
Only flaw is that you can only record / view one channel at a time, though you can apparently stick in additional tuners and run them in series. Not sure if this will be an issue or not.