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ReplayTV May Drop "Commercial Advance"
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News is reporting that the new owners of ReplayTV are considering dropping the Commercial Advance and Send Show options features." I had bad luck with that function chopping out bits of show anyway. Between that and the 30 second skip function, I'm surprised ReplayTV has lasted this long!
I've thought of Tivo and Replay TV in the past, but as time goes on the companies degrade their products by getting rid of useful features like this.
How feasable is it to do something as good, but without the crippling, on a computer with a large hard disk and good video card?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Would you rather have cat^H^H^HTV detector vans running around?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I'm sure it'll be a big hit.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The V4 software for Tivo supports the USB Ethernet cards. The one I just bought was V3 software, so I had a phone cord running across the house for 3 or 4 days until it got the V4 download. And I bought a Replay over Tivo, just because of their stand against the Media companies...but the product just doesn't compare. Changing channels is ass-slow, there's no multi-user guide/preference setup, nothign other than the cool sharing feature, which is likely going away. Go for the Tivo, you'll be ahppier.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Actually, the new TiVo kernel (4.0+) finally makes use of the USB ports in the back. You can connect either a Wireless or Wired Ethernet device (http://customersupport.tivo.com/tivoknowbase/root /public/tv2006.htm?) and you are good to go. I do this with my TiVo and wouldn't go back to regular TV, ever.
Software solutions such as MythTV and Freevo (both run on Linux) require fairly hefty hardware to do the encoding of TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc. Then they need to decode it to play it to the screen. Both encoding and decoding is necessary in order to do the time shift.
However, MythTV is leading the charge to offload this processing to the WinTV PVR cards, freeing up the system CPU for other stuff, or just allowing the user to scrape by with minimum requirements. So the feasability is improving quite rapidly right now.
MythTV has also been doing some impressive work on their GUI (check out the screenshots). This was one area I previously thought Freevo had a leg up on, but that advantage is going away.
Links:
MythTV
Freevo
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I believe there was a Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago regarding building your own PVR. The majority of the comments seemed say "Why bother, just buy a TIVO/Replay TV, its already done for."
Well, this is why you roll your own. Yes, its a little more work, the cost is pretty much the same, but there is no monthly fee, and features don't get yanked out from under you.
MythTV is absolutely amazing, and its evolving incredibly fast. If your lookinng for a PVR, I recommend giving it a shot.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
The commercial skip works great on sitcoms that are on the main network stations. That's about it. On TechTV and G4 it doesn't skip past the long commericals (video professor, that air filter thing). On dramas like 24, Buffy or Alias it skips too far, requiring me to rewind several minutes. I probably use commercial skip on about 1/4th of all my recorded shows.
TiVo had built-in support for USB ethernet well before Version 4 came out...version 4 of the software just added an "official" interface menu where you can pick static IP/DHCP.
I bought my Series 2 last year when they were still at version 3. All you had to do was plug in the USB ethernet adapter and set the dialing prefix to #401. My TiVo has *never* touched a phone line - it's been ethernet only since day 1.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I'm a bit confused as to why commercial skip/advance has become so controversial all of a sudden. VCRs have had these features for years: Panasonic, Sony. So why is this a big deal when it comes to PVRs?
I'm noticing a lot of posts along the line of 'This is why you should use MythTV..'
Don't overlook SageTV!
While it's not free, nor open source, it's the most incredible PC-based PVR I've seen to date. At only $59.95, it's a bargain. Program guide data is FREE! Upgrades are FREE! And the pace of development has been outstanding.
In it's current build, it supports;
- Multi-tuner, multi-lineup recording (satellite on one card, cable on the other.. or two cable captures, or five.. whatever.)
- Recording to either Mpeg2 or Mpeg1 format (for easier portability to DVD-R or VCD.)
- Network streaming to other PCs
- Automatic recording of favorites, as well as suggestions based on your viewing history (which is easily disabled.)
- XMLTV listings import (if for some reason, free listings aren't good enough for you.)
- Dscaler support and plugins (much better quality than MythTV, Tivo, or Replay on my HDTV.)
- Audio library management..
Features they're saying will come 'soon' include;
- HDTV Support
- DVD Playback
It's not free, but it's definitely a value. The way the guys at Frey Technologies are adding features is just unbelievable. Sometimes, free solutions are not the best.