Best Non-Subscription DVR?

ngc5194 asks: "I'm thinking about joining the 21st century and purchasing a Digital Video Recorder. However, I DO NOT want to subscribe to any services. I understand that this will limit what my DVR can do, and I'm fine if it just acts like a solid-state VCR. Given the constraint above (no subscription services), which would be the best DVR to purchase and why?"

Comments

Re:If you're worried about artificial limitations.

[QuantumG]

I have a five year old laptop.... what video capture and tv out device would you recommend for it?

Re:If you're worried about artificial limitations.

[shadow349]

Not as cheap as a DVR, but no subscription. Of course, this misses one huge hidden cost .... electricity.

Most embedded boxes (Cable set-top DVRs, Tivo, etc) are built using specialized components and consume much less power than a home-built MythTV unit.

I've done a few tests with various units (Comcast DVR, Tivo, Myth box) and found there is about a 150W difference between home-brew and embedded. .150kW * 24 hr * 365 days * $.15 kWh / 12 mo = $16.425 / mo

So the electricity for that that "free" MythTV box actually costs $16.43 more per month than a embedded device.

Yes, you can do a lot more with a MythTV box, but don't try and kid yourself that it doesn't cost as much as other solutions.

Consider replacable media

[DynaSoar]

Most DVRs are sealed and the storage is recycled. As long as you have your receiver in a different box, you can get a replaceable media DVR. Several manufacturers are making DivX compatible home DVD burners, Phillips being the cheapest right now. You can get 12+ hours of standard broadcast or 6 hours of HD material on a single DVD. You can rotate through a box of 10 DVD/RWs and get about the same storage you get with a satellite provider DVR unit, and you can permanently burn anything on regular DVDs (including multisession capability). I screwed up and got the read-only unit for $50. I could have gotten the burner for $150. I'm sorry I didn't, despite already owning a Dish Network receiver/DVR. As an added bonus with these units, you can load a single DVD with MP3s and get over 24 hours of continuous music. And it's worth noting that you can get format converters that will take pretty much any video format and convert it to any other, including DivX, so you can download eleventy seven gubbabytes of stuff and make it watchable on your home unit. For Winboxes DivX sells a passable converter, and eRightSoft gives away an absolutely jam packed converter (actually a front end for just about any OSS codec/format converter already available).

Any argument about DivX vs. another format is moot unless there's another format being built into home replaceable media recorders. And as for the false permanence of DVDs, if you follow the listing at http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=178622 you can get media that lasts 10 times longer than the commonly available 2 to 3 year lifetime disks.