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Don't forget that Scientific Atlanta is now owned by Cisco, too. They make the infrastructure systems for cable companies. I think the Sci Atl home page tells you all you need to know about this study.

It says:
The Bandwidth Crunch
Squeeze More Performance
from Your Network or
Join the Move to 1 GHz

It's marketing for a Cisco business.

Check out the Scientific Atlanta (PDF) MCP 100. Cable Box + DVD Burner + DVR. Record to disk and burn to dvd from disk or live stream. Should hit market sometime next year. Played around with em at CES. Pretty nice actually.

In my area (central NC), Time Warner rents out the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR which is pretty crappy compared to a MythTV box, Tivo, and ReplayTV. The SA8300HD box is buggy and routinely misses programs that I've scheduled for recording for no apparent reason other than it just isn't in the mood at the time.

Also, when you're renting a box from your cable provider, they expect it to be returned in the same condition when you cancel your service. Hardly a hacker-friendly policy.

If you want some basic (but flaky) recording capabilities without the hassle of a VCR, get the Time Warner-offered box. If you want reliability, flexibility, and the ability to hack it, I think you're SOL for now.

Tivo is in big trouble anyway since all the major cable companies are coming out with their own DVR's with a pretty small monthly fee. This alone is probably enough to get rid of them in 5 years or so.

Then they go removing features and pretty much pissing off their loyal customer base, the only people they have to keep them going financially. I imagine cable companies will have the same issues with auto deleting pay per view, and no out of market sporting events, but if they never give you that in the first place it won't be so bad. In addition their hardware is going to work on their systems a lot better than adding on a Tivo to your existing cable system.

Bye bye Tivo.

With satellite or cable you will get dozens of absolutely pure channels - and you can't get them into your PVR.

I currently subscribe to the DVR service from Brighthouse here in Central Florida; which uses the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000. I have been blessed with the Passport software as opposed to the rather buggy SARA, and even though it may not have the advanced features TiVo has like being able to intuitively record programs (I don't really see the point anyway, I record what I want to watch) and searching for a show name by inputting the first few letters (currently I have to go through a whole list of shows in alphabetical orders and with 500 channels, it can get mighty long!) I love the box dearly and it's totally worth the extra $7 a month. However, it can be unstable at times, due to it's sensitivity with signal quality. If the cable company started offering TiVo itself for something like $15, I would definitely get it.

I can't help but wonder if that's the path TiVo themselves will have to take in order to survive. We'll see.

My brother has a TiVo. I readily admit that the search software on the TiVo is much better, but it doesn't have two tuners (the SA from my cable company does). We were stuck watching some stupid show his wife had set to record. From looking at their web site, it seems that TiVo doesn't offer any models with two tuners.

I considered building a MythTV box a couple of months ago, but when I started adding up what it'd cost I found I could get a DirecTivo for a lot less ($100 w contract). Though I would like some of the MythTv features such as the photo slideshows.

I haven't gotten the DirecTivo box yet. We have COX Digital Cable around here and they just started offering the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 which you rent for $15 a month). This box is absolutely HORRIBLE! It's features are beta...no, alpha quality.

For example, if you are watching a Live show that is being recorded, and you are watching say 15 minutes behind real time, when the show ends in real time the box will STOP playing from the delayed point you were watching and jump to the next show that is just beginning. Then if you wish to continue watching the show from the point you were at you must access the recorded show list, scroll through ALL of your recorded shows (no search of any kind), find the show that was just on, then you gotta FAST FORWARD to where you were. Oh yeah, you might as well go get a snack as there's only 3 fast forward speeds, slow (too fast for fine tuning), medium and fast (32x iirc, sounds fast but it's not fast enough when you want to get 3/4 of the way through a hour program in a hurry).

I'm ditching Cox for the DirecTivo very soon. Or I might reconsider MythTV again. Only thing is I REALLY like that you can record two shows at once with the DirecTivo, and to do that with MythTv I'd have to have two DirecTv boxes (or two cable boxes)

Anyway why am I posting this......Oh yeah. I was going to ask which capture card you are using. Guess I got a carried away. :p

-TMF

Tivo is not available here, but it seems more and more of the Digital Cable/Satellite providers are offering combo decoder-PVR boxes.

Good thing about this is they already know what channels you get, deal with all your listings. No calls, no updating, no programming.

I'm in Montreal, with Videotron, and they offer such a box for $650, plus $140 programming credit, that means a cheaper cable bill for eight months. So it costs $509, but there is no competition really, as this is the only Cable service in my area, other than the 5820 offered by Bell Canada, but it's a satellite box, and not allowed in my apartment building. The boxes for Videotron are manufactured by Scientific Atlanta, which has more info on them here.

I do believe other cable co's in Canada offer these, Quick searching turns up one at Rogersas well

We've been using it for a couple of months now and we love it (despite the software glitches in the firmware that can be annoying sometimes).

Most normal folks still aren't keen on this whole digital lifestyle thing. My dad is pining for a single device that lets him control music and video easily, and he won't even do that until its simple and elegant unlike the kludgy PC video capture stuff out there for free. Tivo has the best PVR sheduling features out there, and adding an easy way for joe consumer to get his music and pictures from his pc to his entertainment center (which is where he really wants to enjoy these things in the first place) may just be the extra value that people need to warm up to this whole set-top digital hub concept. outside of us geeks, few have so far.

But charging extra for these features can't last for long. Tivo has the best scheduling features and I love my DirecTivo, but the gap is closing, and many others are starting to offer devices that provide PC power that can be controlled from the couch with a remote control. Microsoft is pushing its Media Center, but the real device that may finally hit it big is the Moxi Media Center. This box does the tv recording and music and photo streaming from a pc as well, and apparently does it elegantly as it was widely considered the best of show at last year's CES. Most importantly, Charter Cable will soon be rolling out this box to tons of subscribers next year, normal folks who would NEVER seek out let alone pay extra for an all-in-one media box, but will likely fall in love with it after the cable guy installs it. This type of functionality is coming fast from many angles and I for one am quite excited about it. I love my Tivo, but if they try to charge too much for the features, the masses will eventually have all this stuff handed to them trojan-horse style. Pioneers often get arrows in their backs...

Time Warner Cable of Maine is also renting Scientific Atlanta 8000 PVR's with an 80GB hard drive. The cost per month is only $4.95. Pretty compelling for home users but it also seems some what conflicting with their InDemand and IControl initiatives.

Yes, the TimeWarnerAOL cable company is stopping by my place tomorrow to install the Scientific Atlanta DVR/PVR. With no phone line connection - gets all of its data from the cable line, and can program from the Digital guide. And it just takes the place of my existing Digital Terminal thingy... :) As long as I can tell it to record every episode of Firefly, life is good.

I did some more digging to followup on my previos post about TimeWarner's integrated DVR/Digital Cable box. They are testing it in Rochester, NY, and they have a page up here. There is a movie (infomercial) about the service where you can see what the UI looks like... does not resemble TiVo at all, so I doubt they are using TiVo. Probably custom software from Scientific-Atlanta, the people that make their digital cable box. It's called the Explorer 8000.

It will have an 80GB drive. It will allow for PIP, watching live TV while recording another show, or recording two shows at once.

There is no cost for the device from TW, you pay around $10 a month for the service. No installation charge if you already have TW service.