Slashdot Mirror
Current Crop Of HDTV Recorders Compared
rbrander links to this "nice review of all the HDTV Recorders from the Washington Post: DirecTV's based on the TiVo wins for best interface, but Dish Network's gets a few nods. There's also a nice swipe ('...spectacularly stupid decision') at JVC's for allowing only (copy-protected) Firewire input to the one HDTV tape recorder on the market."
I've recently built myself a nice HTPC with two tuners (Hauppauge PVR-250), and I'm quite happy with it. I intend to move onto HDTV capture cards once the most popular PVR software packages (SageTV, Beyond TV) supports it.
Does anyone know what the state of the HDTV capture cards for PC looks like right now? Obviously, hardware encoding and picture quality is key...
The current crop of Standalone Tivo's blow the DirecTiVo away performance wise. The features of the DirecTiVo's can't be beat, but those that are used to the standard Series2 TiVo (or even the Series1) are growing tired of the dismal menu performance of the DirecTivo. All of this can be solved quite easily.......in software. Update those TiVo's DirecTV!
-Randy
Didn't the title say the review was of ALL the HD recorders available? The Scientific Atlanta 8000HD may not be the best, but it certainly works.
I have never seen D-VHS, but I can only imagine that since it is tape, that it has the same fundamental flaws as VHS, the magnetic tape. I don't care if it is digital, if I put my copy of Fear and Loathing in there and play it over and over I can only surmise that it's going to degrade as the heads go over and over the tape. IMHO, Blu-ray is a much more reliable (in comparison, I know) format.
I do it all the time.
Now you do lose the enhanced resolution BUT it does record in widescreen format which is nice for movies over cable.
FireWire wasn't a stupid decision...it was 5C-protected (copy-protected) FireWire that was a stupid decision.
:-(
FireWire was probably the best promise of device interconnectivity to ever exist in recent years. But it has been crippled by several things:
1. Content providers/TV/movie/Hollywood's deathly fear of being able to easily interconnect all devices, including computing equipment, via one perfect, digital connection.
2. A bit due to Apple's early ridiculous licensing and logo requirements to use the "FireWire" name. FireWire is the name that would have taken IEEE-1394 the furthest, but thanks to the early bungling, we're now stuck with "FireWire", "DV", "i.Link", "IEEE-1394", "1394"...what's that sir? Oh, yes, they're all really the same thing.
Imagine having ALL of your entertainment equipment, including your computer, connected digitally via one, simple FireWire cable each, all daisy-chained off one another. All able to control one another when necessary, sending meta-data and device control commands, as well as audio, video, and other data over the wire. No ridiculous bundles of cabling. Everything plug and play. Everything "just works". Even Wireless FireWire (yes, there's a spec). (And yes, FireWire has the bandwidth necessary to handle all this and more.)
That was the promise of FireWire. Instead, we're stuck with final output formats like DVI, and HDCP-protected HDMI, 5C FireWire that virtually nothing supports, and the coming Broadcast Flag.
Oh well.
The DTheater has encrypyted tapes that can only be played on DTheater (the copy protection) compatible VCRs.
I can record lots of open signals over the Firewire. The lower end one can be found for around $300, but the newer and more expensive ones are made a lot better.
I have a Motorola DCT-6208, the model I think they are referring to in this article that Comcast offers.
:)
Even though the hard drive is only 80GB, and the interface sucks, the thing is virtually free and I don't have to worry about it breaking, hard drive failing, or the eventual obsolescence in less than a year. Anyone shelling out $1000 for the satellite models is a sucker IMO.
I used to be a DirecTV customer and bought a RCA DTC-100 HD tuner on Ebay for $400. I was able to turn around and resell it on Ebay for $350 2 years later, but only because I sold it before the crop of DVRs came out, and because it was a high-demand model. Now, if you are stuck with an obsolete HD Tivo in a year or two, you are pretty much screwed because the new models will be so much better no one will want an older model. Maybe you can sell it to your grandmother though for $100.
With cable though, I can keep getting a better box for virtually nothing. The new Motorola DCT-6412 with two tuners and 120GB hard drive is right around the corner, and I will just have to call and setup an appointment to have the tech come in and swap it out.
Look at the actual URL, not the one displayed.
"If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."
-Lewis Black
Oh and don't forget that current HDTV capture cards will be illegal on 2005.7.1. Buy 'em now while you can. Future models will have to support DRM via a broadcast flag. :-(
http://www.1394ta.org/About/products/consumer_prod ucts.html
Additionally, the FCC is mandating that as of July 1, 2005, all digital cable set top boxes MUST include a functional FireWire port, and as of April 1, 2004, must provide a set top box with a working FireWire port on customer request. Of course, this doesn't help if content providers choose to encrypt the content.
Here's hoping we can fight the Broadcast Flag. Unfortunately, I can see a future where our kids think that the only way they can watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, and on the device they wish to watch it on, is by illegally downloading it from a P2P network, instead of being able to legally record it and move it around THEMSELVES with equipment THEY BOUGHT from a service THEY PAY FOR in their OWN HOMES.
Get the lifetime subscription. It's worth it, and you can think of it as part of the hardware cost. Plus, if you decide to sell your box you can expect to recoup the lifetime subscription cost as it transfers with the box.
As far as "phoning home", how else could it get the program listings and software upgrades? Tivo Series 2 supports broadband, if access to a landline is an issue.
I have yet to meet a Tivo user who isn't happy they bought a Tivo.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I agree that the Tivo has the best interface and general coolness. But be aware that there is a very good chance that the HDMI port will not work at all or has to be messed with and even thats not 100%. If you dont believe just check the tivo community forums about this unit http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.ph p?s=f81a3d87b7dcd78fda0257b6df286bc6&threadid=1832 03
That said if you do not plan to use the HDMI port by all means get one immediately DirecTV has several HD promotions going on right now and has plans to add a lot of HD programming in 2005 and 2006.
I know some (read most) people will think I am crazy but I recently purchased the DirecTV HD Tivo. I have had the unit for just over a week now and absolutely love it.
:) I know I know I know.. justify myself all the way to hell.
The price: 999.00 (ouch, don't tell my wife)
I have had DirecTV HDTV for about 6 months and really hated not being able to record the shows I like to watch. I found myself using my hacked/upgraded tivo (series 1 non-hd) to watch shows that also are aired in HD simply because I like skipping commercials.
The quality of recorded shows are simply amazing. Especially Disovery HD and movies on HBO-HD. Very nice sound as it keeps the DD 5.1 soundtrack.
Was it worth the 1000.00 I paid for it? Well, I priced out building a similar HTPC (Home theater PC) with 2 HD tuners and 2 OTA tuners and it was more expensive to roll my own. Also, mythTV does not worth well with direct (from what I have read). So I do believe it was worth the 1000.00 considering it does come with a 250gb hard drive (150.00).
What the article does not tell you is that the decision to include anything OTHER than a firewire input to the D-VHS VCR would have also required a REALTIME HDTV MPEG2 encoder in the VCR. By "the most popular 3 hdtv interconnects" they are probably talking about Component YUV, Component RGB, and DVI-D -- while these are indeed the most popular interconnects, they transport the already uncompressed video stream. To record them in DVHS format you'd have to recompress the video back to MPEG2, and remux the audio (and ensure sync). This alone would have sent the price of the unit skyrocketing. In addition the decision was not stupid, because as of April 1, 2004, cable companies are required to have the firewire transports on their devices, meaning that the decision for a firewire-only vcr would be fairly standards compliant as well as inexpensive.
The nice thing about firewire transporting this is that the video arrives preencoded in a nice transport stream in full quality. The not-nice thing about it is that the FCC is also allowing the firewire to be C5 encrypted. I really really hope someone is working on breaking this one.
I have HDTV and I am with Dishnetwork. There is a cheaper option to record programs and to receive HD tv. It would cost you under $200 to view HD and to record with the ability to record SD signals (There are only like 6 channels in HD anyways). The HD recievers are now on promotion (DirectTv and Dishnetwork). If you can get a 1 year contract, you can get the receiver around $80. Then you buy a modified Tivo box (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite m=5721787901&fromMakeTrack=true) which will run you around $100. The Tivo box you can send the recorded stuff onto a computer for later viewing. Best of all, no monthly fees ever once you buy this unit.
Let me know what others think. No this is not my auction.
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I get the same thing with my Series 2 TiVo right now. The simply listing is pretty fast, but the grid view fills in like Tetris on level 1...
Check out http://www.mythtv.org/. They have some links to how to setup a MythTv.
I recently had quite a struggle getting a cable box with a 1394 port on it from my local cable co (BrightHouse Tampa). I had dreams of a pure digital connection from the tuner to the computer, right to file or to my XvMC X session. After finally getting it and connecting it to my computer, and writing a a good chunk of code to get it to talk through the firewire card in my linux box... every channel is either analog or 5C.
Most the channels here in Tampa are analog and there is no MPEG encoder chip on the Scientific Atlanta 3250HD box, so that means nothing comes out of the firewire port for those channels. The rest of the channels are encrypted and flagged as CCI "once", meaning that only hardware that supports 5C can read it and that hardware must respect the "copy only once" intent of the flag. As far as I know, there is no way to decrypt 5C content in software, which leaves the user with unusable transport streams.
I'd still love to work on a pure digital PVR (one that doesn't make several analog->digital->analog->etc convertsions once the signal gets to the box), but firewire definately doesn't further that cause.
I have been a long time DirecTV customer but i just cancelled last week.
/mo for television and it seems like there's honestly nothing that enriching to watch. Seems like a better way to spend $60 a month is to use half of it to take your significant other out to some cheap resturant, and then donate the rest to a local organization.
I have a Hughes HDVR2 Series2 DirecTivo. It was cool and all, but what I really wanted was a way to get content off of it and watch it on a computer. No home media option for DirecTivo users though. Nice.
The real reason we axed DirecTV (and have not replaced it, nor do we plan to) is that the content just isn't there compared with the price you pay for it.
My big interests are F1 racing and World Rally. Speedchannel's coverage of same amounts to under 10 hours a month, tops. Sure, there is other stuff i _can_ watch (cartoon network, for instance) but i could take or leave it. One issue i find with a tivo is that i have all this stuff in there that i feel obligated to watch because its there and i enjoy watching it...
My wife on the other hand is a minnesota twins fanatic. Yet there wer eless than 5 games available to us, even though we live within 3 hrs of minneapolis and have the local tv pack. The MLB extra innings deal is like $70 or $80 or something silly, and you cant ever get a straight answer on what will or wont be shown because of the ridiculous blackout and regional rights issues related to TV.
So I was basically paying for a few races a month and then some time sucking.
My wife was getting no twins games, but a whole boatload of junk off of TLC that managed to suck her day away. It would start innocently enough - "oh, i'll just watch an episode of blah while i do this chore" and then shes managed to waste the whole afternoon watching crap that isn't even all that interesting.
So $45/mo for a bit of racing and a whole bunch of time wasting didn't seem like a good deal to us anymore.
HD seems like an even worse deal. Where's the HD content ? The devices for doing HD PVR are "cool" (although i think any directivo solution will still have the lack of home-media i cited above) but you're talking like $60+
IMO, alot of whats coming right now is technology for technologies sake. I admit that i am captivated by the appeal of a distributed mythTV setup with FEs all over the house, but really, i shouldn't be watching enough tv to justify that.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Myth TV (http://www.mythtv.org/)is the best software out there to use under BSD. Wendey Seltzer actually used the program and make it fully functional. on here website you have full directions, drivers and programs to do it. http://wendy.seltzer.org/mythtv/ I myself am looking this for an option to build my own with a DVD recorder. IF serveral people are interested in this kind of project let me know, maybe we can share insight and idea.
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I spoke to one of the media contacts at Tivo and they said they would be happy to do an interview on my LCD tv site. The media contact said that she would be happy to connect me with any of their engineers.
I would love to collect good questions for this Tivo Interview. Please feel free to visit the site and post your questions and I will do my best to get answers.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
I am yelling at the pirates. But that's not the point: no matter what the industry does, the pirates will still pirate. They'll break every encryption, work around every roadblock, and will still do everything they do now, and have always done.
The only people really affected by things like the Broadcast Flag and encryption of content are the ordinary, paying, law-abiding consumers. The pirates still pirate, and we can do less and less with the things that we OWN - or rather, we can only do what the media moguls' whims let us do.
Satellite uses QPSK or ("turbo") 8PSK, not QAM.
The QPSK is pretty standardized, whereas the 8PSK is still being tweaked by various parties for maximum bandwidth. Of course, most HDTV broadcasts use 8PSK.
Once you get above the encoding layer, there's the encyption. The cable industry appears to have settled on cablecard as a means for standardizing the encryption setup (I think this may have been forced on them by the FCC).
However, unlike in Europe, where satellite receivers have been standardized, US satellite systems are very proprietary, and even where they use international standards (Dish uses DVB and Nagra encryption), they will not let you subscribe using anything but their own proprietary hardware.
They'll have HDTivos in all those secondary rooms (guest bedroom, kitchen, etc) of their house.
I agree with your larger point, though -- the cable company provided box is a huge defense against obsolence, repair, and overpriced periodic subscription fees (or "lifetime" gambles).
It's one of the reasons that Tivo is in a tough spot; people who need a cable box will find the cable provided box to be an automatic "yes", given that it's little or no extra cost and zero integration effort as is required with a Tivo.
Tivo's salvation *may* be the new cable-card standard, which would give a standalone Tivo access to the same digital bitstream as the cable company provided boxes, enabling stuff like multi-channel recording and HD recording far simpler (since you just store the bitsream off the line, not re-encoding the actual picture).
I've been told that the cable companies really don't like being in the hardware business. While it seems like easy money, in many urban areas the losses and repairs have to make it a break-even deal at best.
So that I can record some TV to watch later... So that I can watch a DVD... So that I can continue to use my TV to watch TV without having to worry that the next time I rent a movie it will completely disable my television. Contrary to what you may believe, people like me are not all P2P crazed file swapping junkies. I purchase DVD's. I buy my digital music, and I pay my cable bill. I don't have time to rip and share every movie under the sun.
Have you actually read anything about how the C5 copy control is implemented? The 'analog hole' argument does not hold a lot of ground when re-digitizing the content or othewise storing it is prohibitively expensive, and as far as encryption not interefering with storage -- well I guess it shouldn't but it does, unfortunately. Have you tried to play a Divx (Circuit-city's version, not the codec) recently? You can be content storing an encrypted version all you want, but unless there is a 100% effective way to recover the original data, you are lost. The problem is not the crypto itself, but the copy control and how licenses are granted. The industry will happily grant a cable box manufacturer a device key after they can demonstrate their unit capable of respecting the copy control rules; however, they will never grant MythTV such a key even if the software becomes capable of respecting their copy control provisions. The reasoning, I guess, is that it would be easier to circumvent copy control in some open source software than it would be on a cable box.
LG-3410A (there is an older Zenith version also). This can record OTA HD, but apparently cannot playback while recording. It has active firewire ports for archiving to DVHS. I hear folks have put 300GB drives in them without fuss. Was $800, but now are $600ish.
... ultimately the best thing would be to have a unit that records to a HDD and can archive to HD-DVD (or Blu-ray), that has integrated firewire for other units that may come along.
RCA-DVR10: this is a firewire only solution. two plugs: power and firewire. I hear it is unreliable, plus you can't buy them in a local shop. You should be able to daisy chain to DVHS.
Firewire ain't that bad. To record HD, I go onto my integrated set, then tell the timer to record a show, it turns on the vcr, sends the show to the DVHS deck (mine was $90 at Best Buy) and turns it off. Again I have 2 cables: firewire and power. Yea, it's tape, but I'll spend $90 plus a few tapes (which can be found for much cheaper online than their "retail" prices) before I spend $600+ on a HD unit.
I'm not that much on the bleeding edge. I'll wait for prices to come down and more features to be crammed in. PLUS, other units are coming that support cablecard. I can afford to be patient, as long as I can record the occasional HD show that I absolutely cannot miss.
DVHS seems to be a stopgap technology
Last thing: the article implied that the JVC deck should have been able to record over component video. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but recording an analog HD signal over component wires would require the signal to be (re)encoded in realtime to be recorded. This is $$$ for the chip, compared to just recording a straight digital signal.
I have one of the new Motorola HD-DVR boxes that Comcast puts out, and a handy-dandy new Dual 2.5ghz G5 with 30" cinema (don't hate me, I just sold my primary residence and took a little profit, is all...). I'm able to connect the two boxes via FireWire and record (through a couple of clunky apps out there) the packetized MPEG2 stream to a disk file, and play it back with VLC... but all I want to be able to do is VIEW the cablebox signal via the FireWire connection and use the 30" cinema display as an HD screen, avoiding the cost of a separate (redundant hardware!) HDTV... It already has a PVR so I don't need to record.
Does ANYONE know of anything out there (or that will be out there) that will accomplish this?