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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."
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.
HDTV capture cards have a slight advantage over typical TV capture cards because they don't have to digitize anything from analog, they just have to remember the bitstream they were fed from the channel.
Their disadvantage is that HDTV can be quite the high-bandwidth application, and that means the limitations of the PCI bus, and even the AGP connection can sometimes cause quality loss. PCI Express seems to be the solution to that in the pipeline, and that's most likely what the mainstream vendors are waiting for. An HD card on the market today has to be labeled as an "early adopter" model.
On the other hand, maybe this is a technology that you want to be an early adopter of to avoid cards that end up getting crippled by "broadcast flag" laws.
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.
A codebase split seems to have happened when the DirecTiVo units officially took on the name of "DirecTV DVR with TiVo service" and the monthly subscription price got halved from $9.95 to $4.95. Near that time, the fees for standalone TiVos moved upwards from $9.95 to $12.95...
And at that point the DirecTV code froze, while development for the standalone TiVos continued. Apparently, DirecTV now must pay for any new features they want added to the DirecTV DVRs, meanwhile TiVo continued to push its latest stuff out for free to their direct subscribers. All of the things that a standard Series 2 TiVo can do that a Series 2 DirecTV DVR cannot were added after that point in time.
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).