![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's looking like, barring sudden medical/dental expense, I should be able to get ahead enough financially that I can buy a new TV in the next month or so (I'm researching that separately), and that also means lifting one of the last barriers to replacing my VCR with a DVR. Since I've never had a DVR before, I figured I'd ask here (among other places) for advice.
My cable company offers a DVR as part of their digital tier, but I've talked to some people locally who tried that, and they were dissatisfied, so I'm holding that in reserve as an "at least it won't involve hassle" option if I can't find a way to do things the way I'd prefer. (ETA: Also, while Dish's DVR option looks nice, my apartment doesn't really have the means to mount a south-facing dish.)
I'm not interested in building a DVR into my computer...I use a Mac in large part because I'm not a hardware OR software geek. However, a fairly "off the rack"-usable program to let my Mac control a DVR would be okay.
One of the big things that has kept me from switching to a DVR is I don't want to add yet another monthly expense. I want to buy a machine that will do things, and be done paying for it at the time of initial purchase. I don't want to have to subscribe to a separate service just to get the thing to work. I just want to be able to tell it, "record cable channel 49 at 8PM until 10PM this Friday" and have it DO that. (I have enough trouble keeping up with my existing programming, I don't need a system that can scour the entire listings and record other things I might be interested in, so I don't mind having a "dumb" DVR that has no idea what channel 49 is.)
The only thing I really want out of a DVR that a VCR can't do is simultaneous recording. Higher recording quality and going longer before needing to "change tapes" (delete things from memory) are nice add-ons, but I have low-def eyes and a 6-8 hour tape memory is something I've lived with for 17 years, I can put up with it for longer. Having it able to listen to instructions from my computer would also be nice (i.e. in case a station changes its schedule, something like Yahoo listings could automatically change the recording time), but again it's something I can live without. I really only need to upgrade for the simple fact that VCR tapes are phasing out, and I don't want to have to troll eBay for blank tapes in a couple of years. :)
So, in a nutshell, what I'd really like is something that works like a bank of VCRs. Records the channels I tell it to, when I tell it to, without needing to look online to some parent service for guidance (not even a free one, as those can vanish and leave me in the lurch...I want full manual control). Allow me to locate particular events (i.e. list by date, time, channel) and play them back on my television (I don't like watching shows on my computer for idiosyncratic reasons). Record at least two things at once from existing cable signal. If I can provide a local parent service on my desktop without having to program it from scratch or install a bunch of libraries, that'd be a nice plus.
If I can't find something at least comes close to meeting my preferences, I'll just buy a second VCR, they're cheap. Maybe by the time VCRs stop being available it'd be easier to get a manual DVR...or it'll be impossible to get cable without a company-supplied DVR (I can certainly see them going that route). Or the whole DVR transitional tech will have been replaced by a true on-demand system. Whatever.
I like the operating paradigm of the VCR, I'd just like to cherry-pick a few of the features of the DVR. I don't like the standard operating paradigm of consumer-level DVRs.
My cable company offers a DVR as part of their digital tier, but I've talked to some people locally who tried that, and they were dissatisfied, so I'm holding that in reserve as an "at least it won't involve hassle" option if I can't find a way to do things the way I'd prefer. (ETA: Also, while Dish's DVR option looks nice, my apartment doesn't really have the means to mount a south-facing dish.)
I'm not interested in building a DVR into my computer...I use a Mac in large part because I'm not a hardware OR software geek. However, a fairly "off the rack"-usable program to let my Mac control a DVR would be okay.
One of the big things that has kept me from switching to a DVR is I don't want to add yet another monthly expense. I want to buy a machine that will do things, and be done paying for it at the time of initial purchase. I don't want to have to subscribe to a separate service just to get the thing to work. I just want to be able to tell it, "record cable channel 49 at 8PM until 10PM this Friday" and have it DO that. (I have enough trouble keeping up with my existing programming, I don't need a system that can scour the entire listings and record other things I might be interested in, so I don't mind having a "dumb" DVR that has no idea what channel 49 is.)
The only thing I really want out of a DVR that a VCR can't do is simultaneous recording. Higher recording quality and going longer before needing to "change tapes" (delete things from memory) are nice add-ons, but I have low-def eyes and a 6-8 hour tape memory is something I've lived with for 17 years, I can put up with it for longer. Having it able to listen to instructions from my computer would also be nice (i.e. in case a station changes its schedule, something like Yahoo listings could automatically change the recording time), but again it's something I can live without. I really only need to upgrade for the simple fact that VCR tapes are phasing out, and I don't want to have to troll eBay for blank tapes in a couple of years. :)
So, in a nutshell, what I'd really like is something that works like a bank of VCRs. Records the channels I tell it to, when I tell it to, without needing to look online to some parent service for guidance (not even a free one, as those can vanish and leave me in the lurch...I want full manual control). Allow me to locate particular events (i.e. list by date, time, channel) and play them back on my television (I don't like watching shows on my computer for idiosyncratic reasons). Record at least two things at once from existing cable signal. If I can provide a local parent service on my desktop without having to program it from scratch or install a bunch of libraries, that'd be a nice plus.
If I can't find something at least comes close to meeting my preferences, I'll just buy a second VCR, they're cheap. Maybe by the time VCRs stop being available it'd be easier to get a manual DVR...or it'll be impossible to get cable without a company-supplied DVR (I can certainly see them going that route). Or the whole DVR transitional tech will have been replaced by a true on-demand system. Whatever.
I like the operating paradigm of the VCR, I'd just like to cherry-pick a few of the features of the DVR. I don't like the standard operating paradigm of consumer-level DVRs.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
I use the Comcast version and pay about $7.95 a month for it.
What it does is, you can be just browsing through the Guide and decide, "Hey, I want to record that upcoming show for later", hit a button and you're off to the races.
They have a search engine where you can enter the first five letters of a show's title to look up, find the next airing of that show and set up a recording that way.
You can also set a Series Recording. For example, I love Poker After Dark, but it airs at 2:05am Tuesday-Saturday morning. Not really conductive to watching. So I set a series recording to get all episodes (but I take it off when they're in reruns). You can customize this, as well. Say you want The Simpsons, but you only want the old episodes in Syndication and not the Newer ones on Fox. If they're on separate channels, there's a setting for 'This Channel Only'. You can also tweak the recording times (One minute early, two minutes late, etc.) in case the channel or network wants to monkey around with the schedule to thwart DVR'ers.
It's also great for the fact that I live on the West Coast. If a game starts at 8pm on the East Coast, that's 5pm here in the Pacific Time Zone. I work till 5, then have to commute home. So with the DVR, I can set it to start recording, get home at 5:30-ish, call up the recording and start watching the game, skipping commercials, halftime, etc. along the way and eventually even catch up to the live feed. (The Comcast remote doesn't have a standard button for this, but there's a hack out there where you can program the remote to 'Fast Forward 30 seconds' to quickly zip past commercials.)
One disadvantage is that it doesn't time delay. This actually happened a few months ago: I wanted a new episode of the World Series of Poker on ESPN. Unfortunately, earlier in the day, Brett Favre decided he wanted to come out of retirement again, and held his press conference to announce his signing with the Vikings. So they aired it live and and delayed everything that was scheduled, so I got the last 20 minutes of the previously-scheduled show, and then missed the last 20 minutes of the WSOP.
Another peeve of mine: My local station that airs Jeopardy! They air the regular first-run episode at 6:30, but they also air several-years-old reruns at 3:30. I don't want that and there's no way to tell Comcast's DVR box (made by Motorola) "I only want the 6:30 episodes, dammit!"
But, on the whole, the DVR is a godsend.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject