Tivo or Tuner Card

[ciaccia23]

Hey Ya'll I am trying to decide between a tivo or a tuner card. I know tivo is releasing their series 3 dvr's mid to late this year which has dual tuner capabilities but I am not sure I could wait that long.

Here is what I want to do, I have a time warner cable dvr box, I want to transfer shows off that using real time through the tuner card into my computer, so I can edit commercials and then store the videos to create full seasons of shows that sometimes never go to DVD.

The only problem I am having is whether getting a tuner card will allow me to do what I want. Actually I was wrong, I have another problem. I want a tuner card that will give me the best quality possible.

Now if I were to wait for the series 3 tivo, or actually purchase two series 2 tivos I could transfer videos from the tivo directly to my computer and convert that way and transfer from tivo box to tivo box. Has anyone does this?

I figured it would be about 570 for 2 years with 2 tivo boxes or 24 a month, I am paying around 14 a month for 2 time warner cable dvr's, not including road runner or my cable service in general. So its more expensive for the 1st 2 years but is it worth it in the long run to have the ability to just transfer wirelessly?

I figured I'd ask ya'll to see if anyone had any thoughts?

Thanks
Mike

[bits]

I record/capture TV shows directly to my HDD, cut commercials and then view them on my wide screen TV at a later date using a networked Media Player. Shows I want to keep I then burn to DVD or transfer to another HDD. I have been using this setup for the last 3-4 months and have been quite happy with it.

My setup is as follows;
PC: 2.53GHz/XP Home/1GB/Dedicated internal 250GB HDD, my PC is on the opposite end of the house from my TV
Capture Card: Hauppauge PVR250 - been using this for about 18months and it works well, quality is good cost $100
Video Card: El Cheapo
Media Player: IO Data Linkplayer2, LAN cable (video file formats include DivX, WMV, WMVHD, DivXHD, HD ts, mpeg, DV avi) cost $250
Video Source: CableTV, Motorola DCT6200
TV: 50" Sony Grand Wega LCD projection
Other: USB-UIRT infared transmitter for changing channels on my cablebox cost $50
Software: BeyondTV (I use this for the scheduling of the TV shows, it works flawlessly with the USB-UIRT.), Videoredo for cutting commercials

A few years ago I transferred family VHS and 8mm to DVD and recently transferred these to HDD so that we can watch them with just a few clicks from the remote.

What I like about this setup is that there is no intermediate step of transferring video to a PC for commercial removal. My wife, who is not a techie, uses this all the time. We watch what we want when we want with out commercials.

[reboot]

bypovr.com
You can do so much more with a PVR than a tivo, and it's easier without having to do all the file transfer, and burn tons of disks.

[lennyt]

With Tivo you are going to pay a monthly charge of $13-14.

[kkmike]

Now if I were to wait for the series 3 tivo, or actually purchase two series 2 tivos I could transfer videos from the tivo directly to my computer and convert that way and transfer from tivo box to tivo box. Has anyone does this?

The TiVo's that come with the cable service will not allow transfering of programs to PC. Only the stand alone TiVo's will and those are only single tuner and no better quality than using a capture card on your pc because it too converts to analog.

Now the TiVo's that work with DirecTV are hackable so transfer to PC can be done, and the quality is excellent because the video remains digital, no analog conversion happens.

[mats.hogberg]

If you want to use it as a hitech VCR: TiVo. It you want to edit: Capture card.

/Mats

[FulciLives]

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 is a popular TV Tuner card that works great as a PVR plus it captures direct to MPEG-2 DVD format.

They also make a USB 2.0 external version that works pretty much the same as the 250 model (which is PCI). There is also a 350 version that is PCI like the 250 but the 350 adds a TV out function (which only works with MPEG-1/MPEG-2 video but you get better TV quality using it than you do using a computer's graphics card TV out).

Avoid the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 as it has a lot of bugs that have yet to be fixed (it is the newest of the 4).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[edDV]

Hey Ya'll I am trying to decide between a tivo or a tuner card. I know tivo is releasing their series 3 dvr's mid to late this year which has dual tuner capabilities but I am not sure I could wait that long.

Here is what I want to do, I have a time warner cable dvr box, I want to transfer shows off that using real time through the tuner card into my computer, so I can edit commercials and then store the videos to create full seasons of shows that sometimes never go to DVD.
....

Thanks
Mike

I'm failing to see the value add of the Tivo if you are using the Time Warner DVR for scheduled recording. The Scientific Atlanta 8300 and 8300HD are the best of the cable DVRs I've seen. They allow you to dub to "vcr" while watching and recording other channels.

These devices only output analog (S-Video+audio). Over Christmas I helped friends and relatives hook several of these DVRs to standalone DVD recorders for long term storage.

Some preferred the computer route using the Hauppage PVR MPeg2 encoders for delux capture, editing and authoring.

What value do you expect from the Tivo?

[mikiem]

My understanding is that the cable dvr's, depending on firmware installed by your cable company, can allow a file transfer from the box's hard drive to your PC's via firewire. There are posts about it & tools if you google.

If you've already got the box & firewire, simplest thing to do I'd think is give it a try.

On the downside, last I looked the software methods were a bit un-developed, don't know if your cable company makes/made needed firmware update available, & much (most?) HD content is saved at D1.