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ReplayTV and TiVo Compared
j0atz writes "The New York Times is running a story today that, while it's a bit redundant in the beginning and a bit short on technical details later, gives a rundown the newest features for ReplayTV (numbered 4000 or above) and TiVO (Series2); basically, you can program your favorite DVR to record a show from a remote computer or from another (same-brand) DVR. Along with that, you can stream MP3's and pictures with TiVo now.
Still...I'd much rather use something like FreeVo or MythTV and actually burn my shows to cd, stream whatever I want, etc, etc."
At the high or best settings, you'd be hard pressed to pick out a digital cable signal from a tivo recorded digital cable signal.
At the basic quality setting, you'd have no problem whatsoever.
However, if your input signal is poor, tivo will have a harder time compressing it (as it tries to store all the noise), and compression artifacts might become obvious at High.
The ReplayTV series was purchased by Denon & Marantz (makers of higher-end A/V receivers), a company with greater resources that SonicBlue ever had. So really they are better off now than they were before. Buy with confidence.
You choose the picture quality (a default which you can override for specific shows/SPs) but higher quality uses more disk space.
Basic looks pretty horrible, and it does the usual blocky MPEG artefacts when something moves quickly but it's better than VHS at least.
Medium is quite watchable, and OK for fairly static programmes (gameshows and the like)
High is what I use for day-to-day and is very good - I have (UK) Sky Digital as the source and it's as good to my eyes.
Best uses even more disk space, but will be as good as what you throw at it. It's what the live buffer uses and is recommended for sports and other fast-moving stuff.
It's pretty straightforward to upgrade a TiVo to use a (cheap now) 120Gb disk and you can store a lot at High or Best with that.
Your friend heard incorrectly. TiVo has 4 levels of compression available: Basic, Medium, High, and Best.
Best: Virtually indistinguishable from the original broadcast. This is a good level for sports or movies with a lot of action scenes.
High: I record everything (except sports) in high. For most shows, it's also very very close to original broadcast quality. On my 120GB TiVo I get about 40 hours recorded at High quality.
Medium: Obviously a small step down from High. Dark scenes start getting hard to see, there are artifacts, etc. I never record at medium.
Basic: I think this one sucks pretty bad and never record anything with it. However, I would get like 130+ hours of recording time on my 120GB TiVo if I used it all the time. Some people are satisfied with it, but I suspect those people have smaller TV sets.
We have a 60" TV, so it's big enough for the quality to be important, and with High and Best, TiVo's quality is awesome. Definitely better than VCD, and better than most DivX encodings I've seen (although I understand you can encode DivX at real high rates too).
I would be wary of buying one simply because the future of the service is in jeopardy.
That is some horrible information there. I am not worried about my ReplayTV service that has not had a single problem since my purchase last year. If you haven't heard/read, ReplayTV was purchased by a good company, D&M.
Here's an article
Maybe you should reconsider giving out advice.
Anyway, yeah, it'd be cool to have some kind of software solution to all this (preferably Free software), but as it is, it just doesn't seem feasible, mostly because TiVO hardware is cheap and a large part of what you're paying for is the guide service, anyway.
These are mentioned everytime a TiVo/ReplayTV article is published, do a Google search for MythTV or SageTV
There are much better comparisons available, including http://pvrcompare.com/ , a great site for people considering a PVR purchase.
TyStudio does that.
The DirecTV Tivos copy the satellite stream including Dolby digital as they come off the Sat-- so they are as "perfect" as the source-- which means for hi-bitrate channels like HBO, it's not DVD quality, but it's better than any cable I've seen.
:-P
The flipside is that the DirecTivos are more difficult to hack, and I don't think there's any easy way to Hack the HDVR2 (latest and 'greatest')
As others have mentioned, the HDVR2 is plagued with audio issues, while not devastating, still annoying-- and there hasn't been a patch since release-- 8 months ago. Also, there's no word on support for Home Networking for this model, even though the hardware supports it.
I've been too lazy-- but if if I give up on DirecTV sanctioned networking, I'm going to actively persue video extraction options.
Huh?
A decent tuner card does not run for more than $60. And you only need one (MythTV for example can use more than one though). Now, a TiVo (not counting service) is still cheaper than a PC you build for the same functionality. Thats what you get with mass produced bare bones hardware.
Looks like APEX is joining the bunch. This also includes a DVD player, or rather this DVD player includes a DVR. I don't read anything about a service fee either.
ADR-1000
"Then along comes the OSS community. Builds a competitive box at 3x the price, software that's more difficult to use, and a feature-set that still can't compete. (yay for OSS)."
What do you mean - THEN comes along the OSS community?
Your tivo was built on OSS software!
I have tried both MythTV and Freevo.. Each of which took days to get to work and not fully. The quality of the broadcasts was very low and there were driver issues and hacks all over the place that had to be done just to get a common TV tuner to work correctly (AvertMedia). That aside I wasn't impressed with either product after weeks of fighting and research. I am looking at TiVO at this point.
The /. crowd is still missing a valuable lesson in "building your own tivo" -- it's freaking EXPENSIVE! I love how all the lists of "needed hardware" included multiple super high-end video capture cards -- each of which costs the same as a full TiVo.
Now mind you, I have not yet built my own PVR, but have actually been looking into it quite a bit now.
How is it more expensive? First, as far as I know, you'd need a VIA EPIA with at least around an 800MHz chip on it; that should set you back around $105 shipped. Then you'd need some memory; an extra $50. 80 gig hard drive; should be around $80. WinTV PVR card, to handle all the MPEG2 encoding from TV; $125. Mini-ITX power supply; $30. (Throw in some extra for a case, or put it in something fun like at mini-itx.com.) Linux distribution and an installation of Freevo or MythTV; free.
No priceless joke at the end of the list: good.
That totals under $400 ($390). I'd say put an extra $75 in the mix, just in case there are upgrades/other necessities, and you're at $465. When I was looking at TiVOs this past December, they ended up being well over this price with subscription services.
Now, the question remains of whether or not my product list up there would be feasible...
Compatability with DirecTV.
.. they are.. but the DirecTV receiver I needed for it to work was another 150$.
.. buy a refirb DirecTV/Tivo receiver. That was 6 months ago and not a problem since. And Tivo is actually cheaper that way.. 4.95$ a month.
I bought a ReplayTV first... but after trying every way to get it to work with my direcTV receive and failing, I called DirecTV and according to the techs I talked to.. Replay systems are "not supported"
So, I took it back to best buy the next day.
I think looked at rolling my own.. but 1) they didn't compare cost wise and 2) nothing was mentioned with them working well with DirecTV. All the linux/windows packages are geared for Cable Boxes, not satelite.
So, I ended up at plan C)
Have you ever used a TiVo? I mean, I live in the UK and have both a TiVo and Sky+ box. TiVo's were sold over here, but TiVo marketed it badly and they picked Sky as their partner in the UK (baaad idea!). Sky+ isn't as good as TiVo in many ways, such as the scheduling. With the TiVo, you record things by picking the program name (or lots of other ways I wont go in to), whereas with Sky+ you have to pick by time, or use their very broad 1 day A-Z listings (which are pretty crap). Season passes on Sky+ suck, with no real help with priorities and soforth. The only good things about Sky+ is the fact that you can record something, and watch something else (live) at the same time, the digital sound output, and the fact it records the direct digital stream, and doesn't reencode. The only reason Sky+ can, and TiVo can't, is because Sky is a closed system, they you can't buy CAM's for! If sky were to open their system, it would allow the devolopment of something like DirectTivo for the UK, and mean I don't have to be ripped off by murdoch so much! Don't get me started on Sony and Playstations. . .
If you had a DirecTivo you wouldn't have this problem...it has digital audio out and you are watching the stream live.
To do this on a Tivo you have to remove the hard drive and put it in a PC, futz with it and put it back in. If you have a series 2 Tivo you can setup the net connection to download the movies over the network but its not a friendly process. To download shows from a series 1 you have to add an gray market network card.
With ReplayTV you can just use DV Archive to download shows from it. Friendly interface, no warranty voiding required.
The protocol that TiVo uses for it's HMO (Home Media Option) is open. http://developers.tivo.com
There is a Linux server available that I think is better than the official TiVo server already. http://ptivohmo.sourceforge.net. You have to get it out of CVS, but it works great.
The server has a few problems here and there, but it's updated frequently. I use it daily and very rarely have any problems.
I used to have a Replay (Panasonic Showstopper), but bought a Tivo when I went to DirecTV because my local cable provider finally annoyed me enough. I picked up a combined "DirecTivo" unit.
For $199 I got free installation with dish (and they did a great job) and a dual tuner unit (Hughes HDVR2). The HDVR2 records the original data stream from the satellite (IOW, no digital-analog-digital generation loss) so the recorded shows look as good as watching live. My local channels come in over the dish now, and show up in the proper channel slots (2, 4, 5, 7, etc.) instead of up in the 600s or 700s. Satellite, local, and pay per view are all integrated into a slick package.
Cost in time: none. I'm able to log into work from home over a VPN, so I just worked at home the days of installation. Yeah, my cable company still gets me for Internet, but they achieved fiber optics at the curb in my area and reasonably priced megabit access, so that's OK.
The monthly charge for the Tivo service is only $6 through DirecTV for some reason. Honestly, if I have to worry about a $6 a month charge, I have greater concerns that watching television more efficiently.
I read accounts of the roll your own approach, and it just seems like endless hours of annoyance. I like to program and mess about with my computers (I have Macs, PCs and Linux boxen), but I really can't see the point to re-inventing the wheel in this case. They do seem to be getting a little more plug and play, but still... the claims of "it's free this way" completely ignores the value of a person's time.
As for the comparison, I liked the Replay a lot. It was my first DVR, and I had a definite "how did I live without this" reaction. However, I like the Tivo more for three reasons: "to do" list, better conflict resolution, and better search functions.
I like the direct recording of the original data stream, but Replay could just as easily do that in a combo unit, I imagine. I don't care about sending stuff to the computer, so I can't speak to that. Ultimately, it's just TV... that's why I like the DVRs in the first place- they make my TV time much more efficient (and shorter). If I just HAVE to have a copy of a movie, DVDs are cheap.
--- Ban humanity.
The Tivo and Replay both support the passing through of the closed caption signal. The compression of the video doesn't affect CC.
However, if you are asking do the boxes themselves actually have the ability to generate CC subtitles, Replay does not. The Tivo Series 1 machines can *if* you have the ability and time to go through installing a separate add on program from here:
TivoVBI
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
SonicBlue is selling the ReplayTV 5040 (including Lifetime activation) for only $329
This is an incredible deal, especially since the price of the activation alone will be $299 on June 1st. The only catch is that it is refurbished, but it still comes with a 90 day warranty.
This is a limited time/quantity offer, so I'm guessing that it won't be available much longer.
More info in the AV Science Forum