Pete is not alone in his experience of a Hybrid's disappointing MPG.
I bought a Honda Hybrid in fall 2002. Aside from highway trips, I averaged 33 MPG.
I discussed this with the local dealership. Got no help from them. So I went online and found the answer to my low MPG in a Yahoo discussion group on Hybrids: The individual trips I made were too short (2-3 miles, mostly). I was told that driving for such a short period of time didn't allow the "lean burn" to kick in.
That didn't satisfy me, but the issue became a moot point six months after I bought the Hybrid when a Yukon rear-ended me at 40 MPH. I will say this for the Hybrid: They're very SAFE cars. Even though my trunk was turned into an accordion, I barely had a scratch on me.
But I'd learned my lesson. I did NOT replace that Hybrid with another one. I was still tempted by the Toyota Prius, but instead I went with a conventional car, a Nissan Altima.
But, to my knowledge, those TiVo/burner units do not work with DirecTV.
If I could find a TiVo/burner/DirecTV unit I'd buy it today! (And if there were one that transcoded TiVo/DirecTV's MPEG2 stream directly to the DVD's MPEG2...)
Here's a solution I use for time-shifting radio programs and recording them as MP3s:
Take the audio out from a receiver and plug it into your computer's sound card.
Turn on the receiver and tune it to the station you want to record. AM or FM, it doesn't matter.
Use your OS's scheduler to start an MP3 encoding app at the appropriate time--setting the encoder so that it stops automatically.
Transfer the MP3 file to CD or an MP3 player.
Listen and enjoy!
E.g., on Windows XP I have scheduler start XRipper (which will turn itself off after a set time period) every Friday night and Saturday afternoon to catch two favorite programs. Then I burn the MP3 files to CD-ROM for archiving and listening to later.
Ultimate TV has been abandoned by Microsoft. I read months ago that they would no longer develop software for it. Which is why I was quite surprised to read of Microsoft's "Personal TV," a TiVo-like service.
This confuses me. Are they getting back into the PVR hardware business?
I'm one of the few who still owns an Ultimate TV box. It works just fine with DirecTV and overall I'm quite pleased with it. Its only drawback is it's not--to my knowledge--as readily hackable as a TiVo. So, I'm stuck with the hard drive capacity it came with.
Oh, one thing it does better than TiVo: a 30-sec commercial skip is built-in and doesn't require a special hack.
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And, thankfully, they picked a really crappy name -- Attack of the Show -- so that no one will be tempted to watch it.
Pete is not alone in his experience of a Hybrid's disappointing MPG. I bought a Honda Hybrid in fall 2002. Aside from highway trips, I averaged 33 MPG. I discussed this with the local dealership. Got no help from them. So I went online and found the answer to my low MPG in a Yahoo discussion group on Hybrids: The individual trips I made were too short (2-3 miles, mostly). I was told that driving for such a short period of time didn't allow the "lean burn" to kick in. That didn't satisfy me, but the issue became a moot point six months after I bought the Hybrid when a Yukon rear-ended me at 40 MPH. I will say this for the Hybrid: They're very SAFE cars. Even though my trunk was turned into an accordion, I barely had a scratch on me. But I'd learned my lesson. I did NOT replace that Hybrid with another one. I was still tempted by the Toyota Prius, but instead I went with a conventional car, a Nissan Altima.
But, to my knowledge, those TiVo/burner units do not work with DirecTV.
If I could find a TiVo/burner/DirecTV unit I'd buy it today! (And if there were one that transcoded TiVo/DirecTV's MPEG2 stream directly to the DVD's MPEG2...)
- Take the audio out from a receiver and plug it into your computer's sound card.
- Turn on the receiver and tune it to the station you want to record. AM or FM, it doesn't matter.
- Use your OS's scheduler to start an MP3 encoding app at the appropriate time--setting the encoder so that it stops automatically.
- Transfer the MP3 file to CD or an MP3 player.
- Listen and enjoy!
E.g., on Windows XP I have scheduler start XRipper (which will turn itself off after a set time period) every Friday night and Saturday afternoon to catch two favorite programs. Then I burn the MP3 files to CD-ROM for archiving and listening to later.This confuses me. Are they getting back into the PVR hardware business?
I'm one of the few who still owns an Ultimate TV box. It works just fine with DirecTV and overall I'm quite pleased with it. Its only drawback is it's not--to my knowledge--as readily hackable as a TiVo. So, I'm stuck with the hard drive capacity it came with.
Oh, one thing it does better than TiVo: a 30-sec commercial skip is built-in and doesn't require a special hack.