Hmm, not really in my case. I have a Windows Media Center Edition PC with a 320GB capacity. It gives me well over 30 hours of HD recording capacity, or hundreds of hours of analog NTSC recording capacity with Fair or Good resolution. I have actually gone through 2 years of use with this thing, and what I did was bank up shows to watch during the off season. I did whatever I could to save shows off somewhere to put back on later. During the peak season, Fall and late Winter, when a lot of shows are new, I watch them same day or within a day or 2 of recording them, then delete them. Meanwhile, I pick 2 or 3 shows for myself, and 2 or 3 for both my wife and I to enjoy later and record those all season long. I've even copied them off the MCE PC onto my desktop PC to save room for more. Once the peak season is over, and everything is in repeats, I copy all of the shows back and watch them. One by one, we pick them off. That's what we've been doing all summer long and the summer before that. Once Fall hits, we'll be out of recorded shows, but then back to new episodes and sweeps weeks.
Also, we use the thing to record cartoons for the kids. Our kids rarely watch live TV. We select about 5 of their favorite cartoons (and ones we approve) and record them at Fair resolution, and keep only the latest 5. That way, if they're not getting watched, they go into a continuous loop of record one, delete one.
You can do all of that with a Media Center Edition (MCE) PC. You get maybe a $600 PC with 2 tuner cards. Just like you would set up 2 different rooms to receive Dish TV, you get 2 Satellite boxes. Each tuner connects to a Satellite box. Through IR Blasters you can then control each Satellite box for each tuner.
The Guide is a piece of cake. All MCE PCs come with a built-in Guide feature that downloads all of the information from a free, centralized server, once every 2 weeks, or you can update as needed.
Guide info is not hidden. There are several web sites in fact that carry guide info for all of the major carriers and even local TV stations. TitanTV is perhaps the best known one. Since I'm using a Windows MCE, I use http://tv.msn.com/ That's also the source that is automatically downloaded for free to use in the MCE interface.
Yes, you can copy the recorded shows anywhere you like, and as I point out in my earlier post, you can even play them on any PC with Windows Media Player 11 on it.
...and oh by the way, my MCE PC also runs Cygwin with SSH, and through an SSH tunnel from work (or wherever I have PC with PuTTY on it), I can do Remote Desktop to it...which is how I'm typing this message right now.
Let's see your TiVo do that!
Sure. Six to one, half a dozen to another. If Linux MCE works better for you than Win MCE, I say go for it!
The biggest advantage Win MCE has over me is the familiarity. I was doing Windows back in the v2.0 days, and have stuck with it ever since. However, I have 14 years of Solaris experience under my belt to earn a living, but none of that knowledge really translated over to MCE decisions. I just never made the leap to Linux, because no job I've had ever wanted it. Plus, with a Win MCE, you can buy a pre-loaded PC or even get a custom job where all of the Windows stuff and the MCE setup is already done for you. In fact, that is what I insisted on. My latest PC was through Puget Custom Computer. The point is, I didn't have to install anything to get it working. Just like TiVo, right out the box, all I had to do was cable it up to my TV, go through the MCE setup screen to tell it how I wanted to receive TV, what zip I'm in for the Guide, etc. and I was off and running.
I say the biggest advantage any MCE PC has is the ability to add options and to multi-task. You can use an MCE to run programs, operate as a server, surf the web, and oh by the way it also records and plays TV. That and you can get a 4 tuner option (2 NTSC + 2 ATSC). You can add your own storage, make it RAID for redundancy to minimize hardware failures, and you can take your recordings anywhere (although if it's Broadcast Flagged, it'll only play on the one PC you recorded it on--*raspberry* AMC). Oh, and you never have to pay a monthly fee to rent it or subscribe to anything. Yeah, there is a much larger up front cost to purchase a good PC to do all these things, but then, what I'm describing is the Cadillac of MCE's. TiVo's have, what?, 1 tuner, maybe 2? I have 4 tuners, all of which can record simultaneously, while I also watch a recorded show (yes, I do that a lot). I've seen some pretty good 2-tuner MCE PCs in Mini AT cases even for about $600-$800. Once you start adding options like RAID, extra storage, more tuners, Vista, more RAM just to run Vista, and in my case a super great graphics card that can handle FULL HDTV (1920x1080p) as well as full HD monitor support(1920x1200p) and DVI &/or HDMI with full HDCP compliance, then the prices start jumping. But, what options can you add to TiVo or your Cable company's DVR?
Far be it from me to advocate a Microsoft product, but I'm a big believer in Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). It's a full DVR, records to hard drive (even a RAID, if you get the right PC), you can copy to other PCs, share video libraries to multiple MCEs, etc. Hell, you can even play your recorded shows on any PC that has Windows Media Player 11. It also handles pictures, homemade videos, music (your entire MP3 library), and online content. What does TiVo have that MCE doesn't? A fancy GUI?
Compare this to your TiVo: I have 2 MCE PCs. Each has 2 analog NTSC tuners and 2 HDTV ATSC tuners. I have 2 NTSC tuners connected to basic cable (no cable box or cable card or anything) and it tunes in and records everything great. I have my other 2 NTSC tuners on antenna, as well as all 4 HDTV tuners. You can also get MCEs with Cable Card tuners, and you can even make the regular tuners work with a Cable or Satellite box by using an IR Blaster. Plus, MCE has no subscription. You sign up to receive a guide, but it's free.
Again, how is TiVo better? For that matter, why would you even go with your Cable company's DVR? It's probably limited and full of crap that prevents you from doing what you really want.
With an MCE PC, you can choose all of the hardware, the OS gets to be XP MCE, Vista Premium or Vista Ultimate. You can also use the thing as a server, your desktop PC, whatever. I've even heard of people buying laptops with MCE on it, and you can even my thumbdrive-sized tuners now that make it VERY portable. In my case, I chose my latest MCE to have 2 RAID1 volumes, using 4 SATAII drives. An 80GB volume for the OS and a 320GB volume to store all Recorded TV. In the future, I can add on a Firewire (IEEE-1394), USB, or eSATA RAID device for more storage, probably a half or 1 TeraByte. Hell, I could probably find a multi-terabyte unit, although for thousands of dollars. I could go on and on about this, but let's discuss the one downside for a sec...
Afterall, this is Microsoft. You have to deal with compatibility issues. TiVo has one thing that MCE does not...absolute user friendliness. The unit will always function for what it was designed to do. Every now and then, an MCE PC might suffer from PC problems, patch updates, crashed programs, etc. Still, the only problems I've had are (a) one failed hard drive after 1.5 years of use (have RAID1, so replacement was a breeze and didn't lose a thing), (b) sharing Recorded TV is not so easy, but it is doable, and (c) I once tried to build an MCE PC myself and failed miserably. I really much prefer to have someone else build them. Also (d) even if you have the unit in your media cabinet, only connected to a TV for a display, at some point, you will have to interact with the unit in a PC way with a keyboard, a mouse, and hopefully a monitor (if your TV doesn't have great resolution--if your TV is DVI or HDMI then no prob). Still, I solve this by doing a dual display. I have KVM on the DVI port and my TV on the TV Out port. That splits the desktop area into 2 areas. The desktop with all the icons, taskbar and such appear on the monitor, while Media Center appears only on the TV.
My company blocks all IM. Similarly, all of the government agencies I have worked for have blocked it. Some will go out of their way to provide their own IM service in-house to allow employees to collaborate, but it is little used.
Also, cell phones are banned in the workplace for any secure government facility you may work at, PDAs too. Some allow laptops with a special letter of authorization, but then they won't let you connect them to anything...like a network, a phone line, anything useful.
What's left? The PC they give you, the e-mail client they give you, and the web.
E-mail is dead? Hah! Be prepared when you get a job, kid. Can't stand not to IM in the workplace?! Don't try applying for any DoD job or for any major corporation that gives a damn about IT security on the Internet.
What do I use? I've stuck to using web mail. I can still access it from any site I work at. Whether it be a "downtown" government site, my company's site, a friend's house or home, I always have access to my e-mail. Where do I have access to my IM account? Only on the one PC I have at home that I could install the app on. My company allows me to install software on my Internet PC, but they block the IM ports. All of the government sites I work at do not allow me to install anything on their PCs. Also, my cell phone is banned in those workplaces as well.
Yeah, that worked for me too...until one day I got spam on the entire domain. Someone decided to run their username for loop on mydomain and they actually caught 3 or 4 of my aliases. I had to seriously cut back on the obvious (and stupid) aliases that I was using, such as postmaster, help, sales, sysadmin, etc. Now, I only use purpose-derived aliases, such as microsoft, amazon, etc.
I'm just going to download my movies in HD quality from actual movie "rental" sites. So, no thanks.
I may be old fashioned, but once I have my new Media Center PC in my hands, I'm going to record Over-The-Air broadcasts of HDTV, and I'm going to start downloading my movie "rentals". There are several sites (all legal) out there to do that. Some with DVD-quality and some with HD-quality.
My mind may change in the future, but I am just not worked up over Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. DVD was a major improvement over VHS in picture quality but a PITA for making your own. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD is just gilding the lilly as far as I'm concerned. I'm not in any hurry to support it.
To me this new format is when Star Trek came out with DS9, then Voyager, then (gak!) Enterprise. "Just one more" really starts to spread things a bit thin.
I am really tired of having to upgrade all of my entertainment equipment every 5 years. I am not a bottomless pit of a consumer. I've replaced all of my equipment twice in my lifetime, and I'm only 35. Well, I'm tired of it now. As it is, I have to buy a specialized media pc just to record fscking HD content (where were the components?). Damn Blue Ray! Damn HD-DVD! They can rot for all I care. I won't be hollywood's damn pawn. I am the consumer, and I vote with my wallet....and if Blockbuster ever drops the DVD format, guess what? I'm not going to Blockbuster anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, not really in my case. I have a Windows Media Center Edition PC with a 320GB capacity. It gives me well over 30 hours of HD recording capacity, or hundreds of hours of analog NTSC recording capacity with Fair or Good resolution. I have actually gone through 2 years of use with this thing, and what I did was bank up shows to watch during the off season. I did whatever I could to save shows off somewhere to put back on later. During the peak season, Fall and late Winter, when a lot of shows are new, I watch them same day or within a day or 2 of recording them, then delete them. Meanwhile, I pick 2 or 3 shows for myself, and 2 or 3 for both my wife and I to enjoy later and record those all season long. I've even copied them off the MCE PC onto my desktop PC to save room for more. Once the peak season is over, and everything is in repeats, I copy all of the shows back and watch them. One by one, we pick them off. That's what we've been doing all summer long and the summer before that. Once Fall hits, we'll be out of recorded shows, but then back to new episodes and sweeps weeks.
Also, we use the thing to record cartoons for the kids. Our kids rarely watch live TV. We select about 5 of their favorite cartoons (and ones we approve) and record them at Fair resolution, and keep only the latest 5. That way, if they're not getting watched, they go into a continuous loop of record one, delete one.
You can do all of that with a Media Center Edition (MCE) PC. You get maybe a $600 PC with 2 tuner cards. Just like you would set up 2 different rooms to receive Dish TV, you get 2 Satellite boxes. Each tuner connects to a Satellite box. Through IR Blasters you can then control each Satellite box for each tuner.
The Guide is a piece of cake. All MCE PCs come with a built-in Guide feature that downloads all of the information from a free, centralized server, once every 2 weeks, or you can update as needed.
Guide info is not hidden. There are several web sites in fact that carry guide info for all of the major carriers and even local TV stations. TitanTV is perhaps the best known one. Since I'm using a Windows MCE, I use http://tv.msn.com/ That's also the source that is automatically downloaded for free to use in the MCE interface.
Yes, you can copy the recorded shows anywhere you like, and as I point out in my earlier post, you can even play them on any PC with Windows Media Player 11 on it.
...and oh by the way, my MCE PC also runs Cygwin with SSH, and through an SSH tunnel from work (or wherever I have PC with PuTTY on it), I can do Remote Desktop to it...which is how I'm typing this message right now. Let's see your TiVo do that!
Sure. Six to one, half a dozen to another. If Linux MCE works better for you than Win MCE, I say go for it!
The biggest advantage Win MCE has over me is the familiarity. I was doing Windows back in the v2.0 days, and have stuck with it ever since. However, I have 14 years of Solaris experience under my belt to earn a living, but none of that knowledge really translated over to MCE decisions. I just never made the leap to Linux, because no job I've had ever wanted it. Plus, with a Win MCE, you can buy a pre-loaded PC or even get a custom job where all of the Windows stuff and the MCE setup is already done for you. In fact, that is what I insisted on. My latest PC was through Puget Custom Computer. The point is, I didn't have to install anything to get it working. Just like TiVo, right out the box, all I had to do was cable it up to my TV, go through the MCE setup screen to tell it how I wanted to receive TV, what zip I'm in for the Guide, etc. and I was off and running.
I say the biggest advantage any MCE PC has is the ability to add options and to multi-task. You can use an MCE to run programs, operate as a server, surf the web, and oh by the way it also records and plays TV. That and you can get a 4 tuner option (2 NTSC + 2 ATSC). You can add your own storage, make it RAID for redundancy to minimize hardware failures, and you can take your recordings anywhere (although if it's Broadcast Flagged, it'll only play on the one PC you recorded it on--*raspberry* AMC). Oh, and you never have to pay a monthly fee to rent it or subscribe to anything. Yeah, there is a much larger up front cost to purchase a good PC to do all these things, but then, what I'm describing is the Cadillac of MCE's. TiVo's have, what?, 1 tuner, maybe 2? I have 4 tuners, all of which can record simultaneously, while I also watch a recorded show (yes, I do that a lot). I've seen some pretty good 2-tuner MCE PCs in Mini AT cases even for about $600-$800. Once you start adding options like RAID, extra storage, more tuners, Vista, more RAM just to run Vista, and in my case a super great graphics card that can handle FULL HDTV (1920x1080p) as well as full HD monitor support(1920x1200p) and DVI &/or HDMI with full HDCP compliance, then the prices start jumping. But, what options can you add to TiVo or your Cable company's DVR?
Far be it from me to advocate a Microsoft product, but I'm a big believer in Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). It's a full DVR, records to hard drive (even a RAID, if you get the right PC), you can copy to other PCs, share video libraries to multiple MCEs, etc. Hell, you can even play your recorded shows on any PC that has Windows Media Player 11. It also handles pictures, homemade videos, music (your entire MP3 library), and online content. What does TiVo have that MCE doesn't? A fancy GUI?
Compare this to your TiVo: I have 2 MCE PCs. Each has 2 analog NTSC tuners and 2 HDTV ATSC tuners. I have 2 NTSC tuners connected to basic cable (no cable box or cable card or anything) and it tunes in and records everything great. I have my other 2 NTSC tuners on antenna, as well as all 4 HDTV tuners. You can also get MCEs with Cable Card tuners, and you can even make the regular tuners work with a Cable or Satellite box by using an IR Blaster. Plus, MCE has no subscription. You sign up to receive a guide, but it's free.
Again, how is TiVo better? For that matter, why would you even go with your Cable company's DVR? It's probably limited and full of crap that prevents you from doing what you really want.
With an MCE PC, you can choose all of the hardware, the OS gets to be XP MCE, Vista Premium or Vista Ultimate. You can also use the thing as a server, your desktop PC, whatever. I've even heard of people buying laptops with MCE on it, and you can even my thumbdrive-sized tuners now that make it VERY portable. In my case, I chose my latest MCE to have 2 RAID1 volumes, using 4 SATAII drives. An 80GB volume for the OS and a 320GB volume to store all Recorded TV. In the future, I can add on a Firewire (IEEE-1394), USB, or eSATA RAID device for more storage, probably a half or 1 TeraByte. Hell, I could probably find a multi-terabyte unit, although for thousands of dollars. I could go on and on about this, but let's discuss the one downside for a sec...
Afterall, this is Microsoft. You have to deal with compatibility issues. TiVo has one thing that MCE does not...absolute user friendliness. The unit will always function for what it was designed to do. Every now and then, an MCE PC might suffer from PC problems, patch updates, crashed programs, etc. Still, the only problems I've had are (a) one failed hard drive after 1.5 years of use (have RAID1, so replacement was a breeze and didn't lose a thing), (b) sharing Recorded TV is not so easy, but it is doable, and (c) I once tried to build an MCE PC myself and failed miserably. I really much prefer to have someone else build them. Also (d) even if you have the unit in your media cabinet, only connected to a TV for a display, at some point, you will have to interact with the unit in a PC way with a keyboard, a mouse, and hopefully a monitor (if your TV doesn't have great resolution--if your TV is DVI or HDMI then no prob). Still, I solve this by doing a dual display. I have KVM on the DVI port and my TV on the TV Out port. That splits the desktop area into 2 areas. The desktop with all the icons, taskbar and such appear on the monitor, while Media Center appears only on the TV.
My company blocks all IM. Similarly, all of the government agencies I have worked for have blocked it. Some will go out of their way to provide their own IM service in-house to allow employees to collaborate, but it is little used.
Also, cell phones are banned in the workplace for any secure government facility you may work at, PDAs too. Some allow laptops with a special letter of authorization, but then they won't let you connect them to anything...like a network, a phone line, anything useful.
What's left? The PC they give you, the e-mail client they give you, and the web.
E-mail is dead? Hah! Be prepared when you get a job, kid. Can't stand not to IM in the workplace?! Don't try applying for any DoD job or for any major corporation that gives a damn about IT security on the Internet.
What do I use? I've stuck to using web mail. I can still access it from any site I work at. Whether it be a "downtown" government site, my company's site, a friend's house or home, I always have access to my e-mail. Where do I have access to my IM account? Only on the one PC I have at home that I could install the app on. My company allows me to install software on my Internet PC, but they block the IM ports. All of the government sites I work at do not allow me to install anything on their PCs. Also, my cell phone is banned in those workplaces as well.
Sincerely,
Think Differently
Yeah, that worked for me too...until one day I got spam on the entire domain. Someone decided to run their username for loop on mydomain and they actually caught 3 or 4 of my aliases. I had to seriously cut back on the obvious (and stupid) aliases that I was using, such as postmaster, help, sales, sysadmin, etc. Now, I only use purpose-derived aliases, such as microsoft, amazon, etc.
I'm just going to download my movies in HD quality from actual movie "rental" sites. So, no thanks.
I may be old fashioned, but once I have my new Media Center PC in my hands, I'm going to record Over-The-Air broadcasts of HDTV, and I'm going to start downloading my movie "rentals". There are several sites (all legal) out there to do that. Some with DVD-quality and some with HD-quality.
My mind may change in the future, but I am just not worked up over Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. DVD was a major improvement over VHS in picture quality but a PITA for making your own. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD is just gilding the lilly as far as I'm concerned. I'm not in any hurry to support it.
To me this new format is when Star Trek came out with DS9, then Voyager, then (gak!) Enterprise. "Just one more" really starts to spread things a bit thin.
Who held a goddam gun to your head and forced you to buy a new TV?
Congress, telling me the "old" TV format will go away; it's just a matter of when.
I am really tired of having to upgrade all of my entertainment equipment every 5 years. I am not a bottomless pit of a consumer. I've replaced all of my equipment twice in my lifetime, and I'm only 35. Well, I'm tired of it now. As it is, I have to buy a specialized media pc just to record fscking HD content (where were the components?). Damn Blue Ray! Damn HD-DVD! They can rot for all I care. I won't be hollywood's damn pawn. I am the consumer, and I vote with my wallet. ...and if Blockbuster ever drops the DVD format, guess what? I'm not going to Blockbuster anymore.