OT: Alternatives to Tivo?

[Brian Cluff]

Go for a MythTV system.  You can base it off of any old Pentium 4 class 
machine or better that you might have lying around already, and you can 
slave your main system to other system that you can put in other rooms, 
as well as watch shows on your other computers.

The one major piece of advice that I can give is to go with the most 
compatible, easy to setup, capture devices that you can get.   If you do 
that, you can just pop in a Mythbuntu CD and have a working MythTV 
system withing 20 minutes with no special setup what-so-ever.

You will need to purchase guide service, but it's only $20 a year, and 
worth every cent... They do give you a free week of service to get 
everything going and make sure that you will want to continue to use the 
service.  After that you just give them $20 once a year (they only allow 
1 year max)

If you are only worried about capturing over the air high definition 
and/or basic cable service, I would recommend the Silicon Stardust 
HDhomerun device.  It's about the easiest device to setup in mythTV and 
will allow you to capture 2 channels at once in hi-def.  Otherwise most 
cards made by hauppage, that are compatible, are plug and play these 
days, but make sure it is one of the compatible ones first.

If you want to capture high definition through a cable or satellite box 
so that you can still get to your premium channels, you will need the 
HDPVR by hauppage, it pretty much the only thing I have seem that can 
capture a hi-def signal that doesn't come over the air.  You might need 
an hdmi to componet converter depending on your cable/satellite box's 
output.  You might also want to go that direction anyway since the MPAA 
is trying to get them to turn on selective output, so the component 
outputs wouldn't work for you all the time.

My system has 1-HDhomerun device for local, over the air, channels and 
3-hauppage PVR-150s for satellite channels.  This allows me to grab up 
to 5 channels at once.  I then have a small computer in every room that 
I want to watch TV.  It's been purring along like that since about 
2005ish.  I just throw new hard drives in the system every couple of 
years to both increase space and make sure they don't get too old and 
tired so that they fail taking all my shows with them.

Brian Cluff

On 08/25/2010 02:54 PM, joe at actionline.com wrote:
>
> Our Tivo box seems to have an intermittent problem, so I'm thinking of
> making a change (also to get rid of the annoying monthly fee).
>
> One promising option might be moxi (moxi.com) although it is expensive
> ($599) but does the same HD recording (and more than Tivo) with no monthly
> fee.
>
> Any other suggestions?  I don't think I have the saavy to set up (nor
> woulc my wife use) a computer with an HD TV card.
>
> I'm surprised that there don't seem to be more competitors for this
> business yet.
>
>
>
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