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There's been some pretty positive results with the Sasem device. See this thread in the AVS Forums (pretty much THE place for HomeTheatre knowledge) if you're interested in grabbing one. Be forewarned hoever, the AVS forums are as much a timesink as /.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=373490&highlight=sasem/

JA

I fully understand that for other people, other solutions are more appropriate, but I really prefer a dedicated ReplayTV unit right now, especially for the consistency and reliability, not to mention the cool remote, though I may roll my own when I eventually move to HD (there are no Replay HD or Replay+DVD offerings announced, and Tivo's HD is too encumbered out of the box for my needs).

Not to beat a not-dead-yet horse, but ReplayTV recently dumped a lot of their 5040 units for $50 each, or $30 with a special coupon code (the latter seems to have been a mistake that they cancelled quickly). These are previous-generation models that can transfer shows to other Replay units of the same 50xx model line, something Tivo has not been able to do natively, before, and which is unfortunately dropped in the 55xx line. The 50xx line also has the controversial commercial advance feature, which was dropped on the 55xx line for legal reasons(it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but is nice when it works). With lifetime activation at $299 (or monthly fees that now vary depending on number of units), that means RTV is still a platform worth comparing against. Especially when you consider third-party tools like DVArchive (java-based!) that exploit the XML interface of the units to copy programs off for safekeeping and later streaming, without any hacking of the box or transcoding of the native .mpgs or weird versions of mplayer, unlike Tivos, again.

Oh, one more thing: people outside the US have managed to set up their legitimately-subscribed ReplayTVs with another tool called WIRNS (which you can find in AVSForum, to scrape local show listings. I mention this because, even if ReplayTV as a company dies, owners will still have alternatives to keep their schedules from going dark. And a lot of owners are also joining Poopli, a website with the objective of making transfers between Replays easier.

(No, I don't work for anybody making or selling these, nor do I own any of these websites. I'm just an owner of a 50xx that I've bumped up to 200GB with a simple patch-and-swap, very much like a Tivo owner would do. Before I bought my box, I had almost given up on tv entirely. Now, I'm looking forward to my next hard drive upgrade. And I really regret not buying another unit on sale).

You will be able to order a DVD and have it appear sometime later on the Tivo.

I already enjoy this slow pseudo-VOD service with TV shows (and whatever DVDs people have stored on their RTVs) using ReplayTV and Poopli. It's like Napster for video.

Plasma TV's will only last around five years.

False.

During that time the brightness will continue to decline.

True.

The following paper has a graph demonstrating the decline.

The graph (on page 6) does illustrate the decline in brightness of some Planar product at some point in time. It is not indicative of current plasma technology.

Modern plasma panels have half-brightness times as high as 30,000 hours. In addition, your eye measures brightness logarithmically-- similarly to the measure by which your ears hears sound. 1/2 measured brightness is not the same as 1/2 perceived brightness.

AVS Forum is a great source for information and real world experience from owners of nearly every panel out there.

Tivo has a much lower initial investment, looks better, easier to use, and takes a whole 10 minutes to setup.

That is a good point about the electricity usage, but Tivo's networking and DRM-crippled "HMO" content distribution leaves something to be desired. Go with ReplayTV/DVArchive and you'll be much happier when you get smoother cross-platform networking and uncrippled content sharing right out of the box.

Soon TiVo users will be able to share DRM'd dongle enabled shows

ReplayTV fans have been sharing shows across LANs, WANs, and between all (Java-enabled) platforms for years. We didn't have to wait for permission from the FCC. Check out Poopli. And my ReplayTV disk server is also my complete MAME ROMs and HTPC server. Snap!

Or... you could just buy an ethernet-ready, autoconfiguring ReplayTV for around $400 (lifetime) or less from eBay, boot up the free software Java-based DVArchive (works on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/Xp, Linux, Mac OSX 10.2.3 or later, Solaris, etc), and schedule, share, and distribute your content over your LAN or across the Internet at will. In this context, the ReplayTV box works like as a really very loosely coupled capture device with its own extensive on-board command set that can be driven remotely by the DVArchive program, either at a console or using a web browser. And unlike the Tivo's inferior HMO option, the DVArchive system costs nothing and is unemcumbered by DRM. Some select ReplayTV models even feature automatic commercial skipping (using associated XML content metatags) and let you download content from a library of several tens of thousands of shows stored on a wide distributed ReplayTV network. More info here or here.

Or... you could just buy an ethernet-ready, autoconfiguring ReplayTV for around $400 (lifetime) or less from eBay, boot up the free software Java-based DVArchive (works on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/Xp, Linux, Mac OSX 10.2.3 or later, Solaris, etc), and schedule, share, and distribute your content over your LAN or across the Internet at will. In this context, the ReplayTV box works like as a really very loosely coupled capture device with its own extensive on-board command set that can be driven remotely by the DVArchive program, either at a console or using a web browser. And unlike the Tivo's inferior HMO option, the DVArchive system costs nothing and is unemcumbered by DRM. Some select ReplayTV models even feature automatic commercial skipping (using associated XML content metatags) and let you download content from a library of several tens of thousands of shows stored on a wide distributed ReplayTV network. More info here or here.

A recent FCC regulation requires all cable companies to provide a Firewire-enabled cable box to any customer who asks. Macosxhints and avsforum have some pages on this and how to hook your Mac up to record TV (and even HDTV) with nothing but a Firewire cable, the set top box (or TV with firewire) and some free software.

See this page or this page for more information.

AVS Forum is a very large forum dedicated solely to audio video systems. They have a separate sub forum dedicated to HTPCs. While this particular question appears to have been answered elsewhere in this thread, in general, you'll get more helpful advice for A/V related questions from AVS forum than you will from slashdot.

AVS Forum is a very large forum dedicated solely to audio video systems. They have a separate sub forum dedicated to HTPCs. While this particular question appears to have been answered elsewhere in this thread, in general, you'll get more helpful advice for A/V related questions from AVS forum than you will from slashdot.

Scanning through the avsforum thread, FusionHDTV III Gold QAM Impressions seems to indicate success with the product. The AC links to a bogus site which only appears legitimate, doesn't offer up his name on avsforum to verify his claim of unspecified "threats", and blasts the product with further unverified claims of nonfunctionality. The parent post looks either trollish or astroturfish more than offering helpful advice. JMO though. --M

The site we all care about is avsforum, not avsforum(s).com. As for the claims of "threats" and such made by the AC, well it doesn't pass my BS meter. Good call. --M

URL below for the Linux drivers of the australian Fusion 3 DVB-T card. There is is another guy working on Fusion 3 QAM drivers.
Australian Fusion 3 DVB-T http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~chrisp/DVICO-Linux/
Fusion 3 QAM http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=4b 61d124b991cf13fdca49dfd8dac73b&threadid=421385

Those in the know like to build our own Home Theater Computer (HTPC) with similiar components for much cheaper, by learning information from AVSFORUM, which is kind of a HTPC geek's forum:

AVSFORUM Home Theater Computers Forum
(Claimed to be the world's biggest Home Theater Computers forum - over 100,000 posts)

That might be great for CRT-based rear-projection TV's, but what about RPTV's that use a single light source, such as the ones with DLP, LCD and LCOS elements? I think these have to be calibrated quite a bit differently....

The ISF folks should know how to calibrate those, as well. Call a local calibrator and ask, if you don't know. Alternatively, check out the forums at Home Theater Spot or AVS Forum.

The major networks only will be airing "Highlights" of the upcoming political conventions in the US.

The biggest problem right now with the HDTV stand-alone recorder boxes and computer HDTV tuners is that they cannot record from digital cable. Digital Cable uses QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) which means that it generates 4 bits out of one baud for encoding HDTV channels. Cracking that is the holy grail of HDTV recording and there are many users out there willing to put up lots of cash as an incentive for this happen. The point is over-the-air (OTA) HDTV is unencrypted and can be recorded for the time being using both stand-alone and computer equipment. Both satellite-based and digital cable-based HDTV use either QAM64 or QAM256 which cannot be tuned well by any equipment out today. There was a Dish 5000 reciever that could be hacked to output HDTV digital streams over firewire but the modulation on the network has changed so the box cannot decrypt the streams anymore for output. I would suggest waiting for the time being.

To qualify the above statement, DViCO makes the Fusion HDTV QAM PCI card for desktops which unofficially claims to tune QAM256 but it still has problems with QAM64. Link A simple seach at the AVS Forums should provide more information on current issues with the card. Lastly, for you laptop PC owners out there, Sasem makes a USB HDTV tuner which claims to tune QAM but is really only useful for OTA HDTV at the moment. Link ATI will be releasing an HDTV card soon but I am not aware if it has any QAM tuning abilities.

Check out
AVS Forum - Mac HD PVR

and

Some interesting software

If you have a cable box with a firewire port (most HD cable boxes have them, and if yours does not then you can get one from the cable company as there is a law saying that it must be available to you - at least that's what I have been told and the cable company agreed)... Anyway, it works pretty well.. Have fun.

This will be great when something like iTunes for video becomes available.

"iTunes for Video" has been available for many years and it's called Media Center. Version 10 these days. Plays well with ArchosAV and ReplayTV. You can even get an iTunes/iPod maxi/mini skin to make you feel right at home...

This will be great when something like iTunes for video becomes available.

"iTunes for Video" has been available for many years and it's called Media Center. Version 10 these days. Plays well with ArchosAV and ReplayTV. You can even get an iTunes/iPod maxi/mini skin to make you feel right at home...

I RTFA, and followed the link, but didn't see the details mentioned.

That's fair, my information comes from sources other than the article. There have been quite a few threads on this over at AVS Forum, including first-hand reports from people who saw it at Infocomm.

I suspect that the screen will be required to match the bandpass of the dichroic filter which are placed in front of the projector lamp.

Actually, no, the screen will have to be far more restrictive than the dichroics used in projectors, which have nice wide bandpass characteristics. The screen, in contrast, is tuned rather precisely to the spikes present in common projector bulb spectra.

If your projector does not use the same filter frequencies as the screen is designed to reflect, you will end up with color shifts in your output image (not enough red/green/blue, depending on your particular projecors setup).

You are absolutely correct! This screen must actually be designed for the specific type of bulb used. I could be wrong, but I believe the screen being demoed now is designed for a Xenon bulb. More common and less expensive are UHP bulbs; they would need to design a different screen material for this.

Also note that small color shifts induced by this technique can be corrected for by calibration. This can affect the projector's contrast ratio slightly (in either direction, actually) but it shouldn't be too severe.

Fluorescent lighting could really screw these things up, and you might see a red, green, or blue colored screen depending on the phosphor wavelengths.

Right. This may have been the problem that Sony was having with one of the demo sites.

The technology here is in the screen, not the projector. In particular, the screen absorbs most light, with the exception of the primary bands illuminated by the projector's bulb.

Any projector with the same type of bulb---and in home theater nowadays, there are only two main types (Xenon and UHP), will work with this setup. And Sony could conceivably make a similar screen for the other bulb type too.

There have been so many dupe threads over at AVS Forum (by far the best place to go to discuss anything home theater) that it is getting a bit irritating.

This is a great thread on how to get it working.

I've been reading up on the user-experience with the F3-QAM on AVS Forum and so far it looks like the software supplied with the cards is terrible. How has it been for you? It seems it's also sensitive to the cable provider to which the card is connected. Until I start reading lots of postings from happy Fusion customers, I'm not about to drop 200 bucks on one of their cards.

I did, however, send a request to newegg to stock the card because I figured I'd might be willing to try the card out through them since they're reasonable about RMAs.

Regardless of what people say, if you can't literally see the transmitter from your location you are going to need some sort of antenna hardware above and beyond bunny ears...

I learned 6502 assembly in the 1980's on a Commodore 64. I even have it all imported into my system, into a few D64's full of software I wrote myself - to run in an emulator for old time's sake. (Gee, hard to believe that some of the programs are almost 20 years old now.)

I had a lot of the habits that you describe, and I now program simply in C++ for either Linux or XP.

However, I had run into some performance issues with certain critical loops that were executed millions of times, such as a loop that iterates through pixels in image processing, and I wanted to view the disassembly of it. I understood enough assembly to be able to optimize a tight loop in a plain C code routine, and verified that the assembly was just as good as handcoded non-MMX assembly. (Some compilers do an amazing job now) The only way to improve the performance further in my case, would have to have written MMX/SSE/SSE2 for this 0.05% of a computer program, but even so, I deemed it not to be still worth the effort.

Now, if you are talking about realtime video filters, such as deinterlacing and sharpening (think Adobe Photoshop style plugins executed 50 or 60 times per second for every interlaced video field at 60 Hz for NTSC, 50 Hz for PAL), you still need matrix math operations such as MMX/SSE/SSE2 assembly language if you want to do lots of video enhancement realtime on a live video source.

One example program is the open-source dScaler project - dScaler Realtime Video Processor . You can do REALTIME sharpening filters, denoising filters, motion-compensated deinterlace filters, 3D-like chroma filters, diagonal-jaggie removal filters, etc, all the above simultaneously, on a LIVE real-time video source from a cheap $30 PCI TV tuner card, on today's high end Pentium 4 and Athlon systems. All this would not be possible without assembly language. Now, they are talking about adding realtime HDTV enhancement (1080 interlaced -> 1080 progressive). Run your cable/satellite/DVD box connected to your home theater PC running dScaler, and hook the home theater PC to your HDTV, and the live homemade "upconversions-on-the-fly" you are seeing are shockingly better looking than the bad quality upconvered video you watch on TV; (Important: Don't use S-Video output, connect the VGA output directly to the TV using a component-output adaptor. It's 6 times sharper than S-Video. For more information, see AVSFORUM's Home Theater Computers Forum section for more information about getting HDTV-quality video out of your computer to your HDTV television, especially if the HDTV television does not have a native VGA input.)

(For watching live realtime videoprocessed video, I don't recommend a $30 TV tuner card, the power users like to get more expensive cards such as approx-$250 PDI Deluxe card, which is a Conextant 23882-compatible card that actually has a Y-Pr-Pb component input for computers! Supposedly better analog signal-to-noise ratio, better A/D converter electronics, better power filtering.)

The point is that you don't need assembly language most of the time, but there definitely sure are times that it's exeedingly, absolutely critical.

I wish Replay would make one of these portables to leverage their PVRs. It is a logical extension. Simply put the portable on the network and download the programs you already regularly record on your PVR.

You can already do this. Copy the files from the RTV with DVArchive. Process through ReVUE. Transcode down to Archos format. Copy over to the Archos. Here's someone who does RTV->Archos regularly.

Here is a recent summary of keyboard-and-mouse-in-one units for HTPCs. I can summarize it for you in a few sentences, though: None of the Bluetooth keyboards are suitable for home theater use (too big or no integrated trackball). The few otherwise usable HTPC keyboards use either IR or a proprietary RF scheme, both of which have either range or line-of-sight limitations

Your link.

Got it?

But my screen is 117" diag made by Carada, and the image is generated by a Sony HS-20 Front Projector. You can get a very good Panasonic AE500 for about $1750 these days, and over at AVS Forum there are plans for cheap wall mounted screens using materials available from Home Depot. With a $200 STB, and cheap sound system you could get away with having a full home theater with a +100" diag screen for less than $2500 easy. And yeah, it's worth it! :) JMO... --M

I replaced both my and my wife's cases with Antec Sonatas a few weeks ago (we have both of them in the "office" section of our master bedroom at the moment). Quick summary: Nice Case! and quiet too!

In a bedroom in the woods, my machine is almost silent; the remaining noise it almost totally due to a slightly whiney WD 120GB 8-mb-cache drive. My video card (an NVidia GeForce 3 Ti-200) fan is either dead (possible) or is temp-aware. In any case I don't have a problem with it. My chipset fan is dead. After switching to the Sonata case, I found my old CPU fan was (a) hitting it's cage, and (b) noisy as a vacuum. I switched to a ThermalTake Volcano II+ (rebadged as Mad something, bought at CompUsa for ~$35) and that did the trick; I could barely tell the system was on other than the drive whine.

My wife's had a quieter CPU fan to start, but it's now the loudest thing in her system. Her motherboard/CPU are due for replacement, so we'll be rebuilding her machine with an ear to noise.

Even without that, we find the ReplayTV in the bedroom louder than both our PC's - and it's meant for use in A/V racks. Of course, on AVSForum there are a number of threads on how to quiet a ReplayTV even more....

Like others have said AVS Forum is the best place to research. We recently finished our basement and I decided on the InFocus 5700. It's not true HD resolution, but HD does look awesome on it. I also looked at the Infocus 4800 (similar to the X1), but I saw rainbows with it's slower color wheel.

The most important thing is to see each of the major technologies (DLP, LCD, LCOS, CRT) to decide if the tradeoffs of each will be a problem for you.

The X1 has been usurped by the new Optoma ThemeScene H30. Less rainbows, quieter, greater contrast ratio and produces a very film-like image. Cost is around 1000 (GB Pounds) - projector central lists a price of $1400 (US).
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?thre adid=351894
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?thre adid=127171&perpage=15&pagenumber=1
http://www.projectorcentral.com/part_opinions.cfm? part_id=2235
http://www.themescene.tv/Newsite/H30-Main.htm

From MikeD on avforums.com:

Having completed the fabrication of a steel mount the H30 was duly screwed to the ceiling and a good quality composite and a SCART/VGA cable were connected. Incidentally while on the subject of ceiling mounting, the 3mm mounting holes in the base of the H30 look pretty inadequate for supporting 1100 of projector from the ceiling. I took the precaution of drilling a hole in the ceiling mount base plate to accommodate an additional 6mm bolt; this was then screwed into the tripod-mounting hole for additional security.

Anyway having lined it all up some friends came around to help set it up and see how it performed. One is the proud owner of an AE300 and the other a high end Sony CRT projector that he has installed in a dedicated room with matt black walls to reduce light reflection.

Having quickly tweaked the basic settings on the H30 we darkened the room and put on The Scorpion King, we sat there in utter amazement; the picture quality was truly awesome.

We then put on Armageddon, as we tend to use it, as a reference disc as it contains a good variety of differing scenes, again the picture quality was amazing.

The H30 uses the Pixelworks deinterlacing and scaling chip as opposed to the popular and unquestionably competent Faroudja DCDI, this was my only reservation about the projector prior to purchasing.

Not anymore, the picture was very sharp and had an extremely pleasing film like quality with few artefacts even in fast moving scenes and panned shots.

The black level was incredible far better than anything I have ever seen before south of CRT. I had the masking lens attached which I think I read somewhere increases the contrast ratio to around 2500:1 by reducing unwanted light. Projectors cant project black, correct me if Im wrong but my belief is that to get true black the pixels in the chip are in effect switched off and black is in fact displayed as absence of light. This is one of the reasons why you tend to get a more pleasing picture the darker the room. Most projectors are unable to switch the pixels off completely but it is considered that DLP technology is slightly better at it than LCD particularly on budget home theatre projectors such as the H30. We also found that detail in dark scenes was outstanding, certainly better than we had expected.

Screen door was good and fan noise acceptable, light spill was also not too bad with just a small amount on the ceiling about a foot or so in front of the projector. None of us noticed significant rainbow even though we did try very hard to see them particularly on high contrast fast moving scenes.

We only used eco-mode, as the brightness was more than adequate for a light controlled room and less light tends to give better blacks and contrast anyway, eco mode also has the added benefit of bumping the expected lamp life up from 2000 to 3000 hours. I was actually quite surprised by the projectors brightness, we eventually put this down to the H30s six segment (RGBRGB) colour wheel and the fact

Did everyone see this thread?. Thats the most replies I have seen (and in 3 months too) of any forum I have ever visited. That Optoma H30 must be hot shit..

As another poster mentioned, the best place to go is the AVSForum. However, here is a quick breakdown of your options.

I would not suggest rolling a DIY projector, you will get much higher quality image from a basic manufactured unit. Entry level is around $1000 at the moment, a couple thousand for a native HD unit. (You can find cheaper stuff in the used market).

There are four primary technologies being used in frong projecttion right now:

LCD - Cheap, but generally considered a good value. Lower contrast and more screendoor than other technologies, but can still look pretty good. You can get a nice 1280x720 (720p) LCD projector for about $2000. Check out the Panasonic AE500 or the Sanyo Z2. Sony's HS20 is also nice for a little more money. Lesser expensive LCDs are available but generally throw relatively poor images (IMHO).

DLP - Very popular right now. Generally provides a better picture than LCD. Limited to 720p for now. A true 16x9 HD DLP projector will run you more than an LCD. Probably looking at at around $4000 minimum to over $10000. The BenQ 8700 is a GREAT value at the moment. Lower priced DLPs are also available, all the way to $999 for the InFocus X1. These lower priced DLPs are generally not high-def and most 4x3, instead of 16x9. Use of an anamorphic lense can turn them into native 16x9 projectors, but adds cost and complexity.

DLPs have the best contrast of current consumer projectors by a good margin. One thing to be carful of is that a some of people see rainbows or get headaches when watching DLPs. This is less of an issue on newer models with a faster color wheel, but may be an issue on less expensive models. Check out brands like BenQ, InFocus, NEC, Marantz, Dwin, Sim2 for good DLP projectors.

LCOS - This is the technology of choice for JVC. It has lower contrast than DLP but throws a smoother image due to its higher fill-factor. Its often described as very "film-like". Can support higher resolutions than DLP for now. A lot of the current LCOS projectors are large and not very user friendly. There are some more players entering the LCOS market, including Sony, with a native 1080p device, but it quite expensive. I'm not quite as up-to-date on LCOS projectors as DLP and LCD, but its worth a look.

CRT - The grandaddy of projection. CRT can throw a wonderful image, altough digitals are catching up quickly. Manufacturers aren't really making them anymore so most are found in the used market. They are big, HEAVY, and require lot s of maintenence. They are also generally dimmer than digitals.

NEC has one of the best home theater projectors in the sub 10's of thousand dollar range the HT1000. It has been replaced by the HT1100.

This projector has been on the top of most folks most recommended list for the past year or so. You can look it up on the avs forums.

They listed for 4995 originally (and that was a blow out price for the performance of the projector). But it is currently being phased out, and can be purchased at really good prices but they are extremely limited. Many home theater providers are out of them, but they can still be had... You can get one for 2625 at triocomputers.com, which was a good enough deal I just bought one.

But... The 1100 is out, and can be purchased in the 3800 dollar range and has a few nice features, but also has a 200 dollar upgrade for an anamorphic lens (which goes for 1100-1800 bucks ordinarally). This allows you to show a wide screen display, but still use all of the pixels in the projector. This results in about a 20% improvment in brightness, better sharpness, and much less visibility of individual pixels.

But the HT1000, is a more than satisfactory projector, indeed it is one of the best home theater projectors available in the below 10k price range, and at 2625 is a steal.

In particular, check out their "Digital Projectors - Under $3500 USD MSRP" forum.
This site is really good. I used to have an old Microtek MVP 700s. It was not so good. The contrast was bad. The color was off, and it had loud fans. I went to the under 3500 forum and read up on the posts. Tons of people were raving about how great the InFocus X1 was. I researched it, and ended up buying one for about $800. It's fantastic! Looks great, nice and bright, quite quiet...

Get thee over to http://www.avsforum.com and you'll find your answers.

In theory, it's a perfect idea. However, watching a video stream on my 17" CRT just isn't the same as watching a soccer game on a widescreen TV.

Wait until you poor backward Europeans get HDTV soccer.. (aren't you guys supposed to call it football?) It's so lifelike it will set off an epidemic of living room hooliganism.

We're already getting the UEFA Cup in HD over here.

For anyone who hangs out at the excellent Audio/Video forum

The problem with non-movable bass, is that if you have sound nulls, you can't really do much about it.

The new DCT-6200 HDTV cable boxes have firewire outputs. Some people over at AVSforum have been able to record from the 1394 interface on Mac & Linux boxen. A few have even gotten it to work with Windows.

I just got a 6200 this week; I'd planned on putting togther a Shuttle box to capture the 1394 output, but I might try the Asus box now; I've used many Asus boards in the past, and have been very happy with them.

Hey,

Check out the AV Science forums. They have one dedicated to just this. There are lots of pointers and lots of people who will help.

AVS Home Theater PC(HTPC) Forum

kiwi

Read the HTPC topic on the AVS Forum. You can learn all about this topic, in exhaustive detail.

Not. People with high end projectors use something like one of the deinterlacers from Faroudja. The video output from a PC doesn't begin to approach the limits of a high-end projector system.

There's a Canadian satellite company that's carrying the East and West coast feeds for the major US networks, in Hi-Def. If you go to the AVS forums, you can get their information. There are a number of resellers for that service here in the US.

The people that are using it have good things to say. Equipment is the same as Dish network.

Hell.. DirecTV has HDTV Pron!

More info here!

In this case, though, the subject of the article initially went with a ReplayTV (see additional comments below) and then throughout the page himself asks the question "Why didn't we just get TiVo?" That certainly would have been the obvious choice for someone dissatisfied with ReplayTV and without the requisite computer savvy to do a PC PVR.

On ReplayTV: The initial setup CAN be daunting, especially setting up the channels. For example, I had to wade through all of the satellite channels (the ones I could have but don't) in order to get down to the channels I actually have (this was even worse when ReplayTV was adjusting to satellite broadcasts of local channels). That being said, the instructions to do this are right there in the manual and they're fairly simple. Even if he couldn't translate the manual himself, visting AVSForum and asking a question there would have likely resulted in finding the problem and fixing it.

This is one of the weirder project pages I've ever read. This is someone to whom price was initially a big deal, yet he springs for a wireless bridge to do networking instead of running a much cheaper length of cable. He apparently wanted ease of use (evidenced by not solving the ReplayTV problem), yet went immediately to Linux for a solution. TiVo (I own ReplayTV but give TiVo its "props") could have been dropped in at any point and provided the desired functionality, by his own admission for a better price.

You are looking for Gerry, the developer of DVarchive. If you want to get in touch with him, I recommend heading over to the ReplayTV section of the AVSforum. He posts regularly there with updates on the newest DVarchive versions.

While he gives the program away, I seem to remember him preffering to keep the code to himself. Couldn't hurt to ask...

... is found at AVS Forums. Although, to be fair, you may want to try Remote Central for this as well. AVS Forum posters would refer you to there pretty quickly anyway.

All of that said, probably the best remote control is out of your price range -- the MX-500 (or the MX-700, which I have and prefer) is about $100 (the 700 is about $170). It's a button remote w/ a small LCD screen that can be programmed with text entries of what the related LCD buttons do. Most of the remote control buttons are marked though. I've had several universal remotes (Marantz RC-1000, Pronto TSU-1000, and MX-700) and the MX series is by far the best. The MX-700's center joystick is a bit wonky (which my wife dislikes), but it's not bad. I've heard that the MX-500 and MX-800 joystick is better.

For your price range, your best bet is a JP1 compatible remote. I'm not familiar with the range of remotes available, so look at either of the above sites, or the JP1 Home Page.