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http://www.orbitsat.com/Profile/suggest.htm

The guy has a suggestions box. I suggest we all send him our suggestions. ;-)

And yes, that is his picture on that page.

The guy has a suggestions box. I suggest we all send him our suggestions. ;-)

And yes, that is his picture on that page.

Before going to that retailer link in the article, make sure that your browser is locked up tight. They try to run an awful lot of VBscript and copy/paste to your clipboard. (Not sure what it all does, but I wouldn't trust them.)

Stand-alone TiVo:

• $149 recorder, then $12.95/month, or $299 lifetime subscription
• Home Media Option, which lets you share video and music to other rooms

• $39 recorder if new customer, $89.95 recorder if current customer(sometimes much less if you order over the phone), then $4.99/month(per household, not per receiver)
• Dual tuners, so you can record two shows at once
• Higher picture quality than the standalone, since it stores the video in the format which DirecTV broadcasts, rather than re-encoding a cable signal to MPEG2

Stand-alone TiVo:

• $149 recorder, then $12.95/month, or $299 lifetime subscription
• Home Media Option, which lets you share video and music to other rooms

• $39 recorder if new customer, $89.95 recorder if current customer(sometimes much less if you order over the phone), then $4.99/month(per household, not per receiver)
• Dual tuners, so you can record two shows at once
• Higher picture quality than the standalone, since it stores the video in the format which DirecTV broadcasts, rather than re-encoding a cable signal to MPEG2

I recently bought an XM receiver online for cheap. Here they sell one for $30, after mail-in rebate. May be tough to complete it before Dec 31, but it is a good deal:

Link to offer

No, I am not affiliated with these people in anyway, just happy with the deal I got.

Tor

callerid - my "upstairs" satellite receiver does this - very pleased with it so far.

I just ordered a DirecTivo from Orbitsat a week ago and it just arrived Friday. This was a series 1 model. Supposely they should have the series 2 in by now too. I don't know what retail stores carry them but you can get them if you look around.

We'd have to dedicate one to the Tivo, in order to be able to watch one show while recording another, which would be our major use.

You can watch one show and record another; they just both can't be live (with TiVo, you're almost never watching live TV). While the TiVo is obediently recording all the show you enjoy watching, you an sit down anytime and pick from its library of prerecorded programs. So, even if its currently recording one of your programs you can still watch T.V. The only time this setup fails is if you want to record two live programs at once.

To remedy this, you could always switch to DirectTV. There's a special running right now where you get free installation, a dish, and a 30 hour TiVo with two tuners (which allows you to record two programs while watching a third) all for $49.95. And if you want to be able to watch programs in two different rooms, you can buy a second box for $100.00 and set it up to record the same shows as the one in your living room. This is a pretty good deal considering DirecTV costs about the same as digital cable, and your getting all this equipment for less then half the price of a standalone TiVo.

Almost three years ago I bought this D-VHS recorder/sattillite reciever. We only got one D-VHS tape with it (it felt much higher quality than a standard VHS tape or even a S-VHS tape), and I quickly filled it up Southpark episodes (it was good at the time). Since the tape records the exact MPEG2 bitstream (or so it claims) going into the receiver, the picture quality on the tape was identical to what we saw. This also meant, however that when the sattilite lost its signal (due to tree branches blowing into the dish's line-of-sight), you would get the same annoying picture dropout (which is of course, expected). If it wasn't for me being able to get this for dirt cheap, I never would have bought it, but nevertheless I get a really good quality VCR with it.

Basically, my point is this is nothing new. It costs significantly less than a DVD burner, offers just as good picture quality (as long as your material is high quality), and allows you to have near-perfect digital duplicates of your source. If only the SCMS didn't hinder it's abilites, I think this would have been a good in-between step for people who want high-quaility copies without shelling out DVD-burner cash.

They have $49.95 new customer and $79 existing.

-chaezewhiz