Ever wonder how your 13 inch TV and Series3 HD TiVo home setup measures up against other TiVo users'? The folks at the TiVo Community Forum have posted a number of photos of their TiVo units in action and at rest.
Popular TiVo playmates seem to be large screen TVs and Xbox 360s. While some users seem to find beauty in a simple setup that hides the wires and most of the AV components, others seem to revel in showing off as many AV boxes as possible. My personal favorite is a shot on page four of the 16,000 wires used to plug in what appears to be a Series3 TiVo, several DirecTiVos, some serious audio hardware, and what might very well be a possibly a warp drive.
Apparently a couple of researchers at the University of Nebraska are doing a study on electronic delivery of personalized recommendations. They're looking for anyone who uses recommendations from Amazon.com, Netflix, TiVo, or iTunes when searching for new media.
For participating in the survey you can either collect a $5 check, or have it made out to a charity of your choice. It's not clear exactly what the study will be used for, but the researchers do point out that they have no affiliation with any commercial interest.
We've given you tips time and timeagain on how to build your own PVR. You can go out and purchase some new parts, or you can dedicate an old computer to the task.
But the voyeur in me just can't get enough of these tutorials, because I love seeing how other folks' home-built PVRs stack up against mine.
Shawn Kent has written up a pretty simple tutorial on building a relatively inexpensive HTPC using parts from an old computer, a new case, hard drive, video card, and TV tuner.
The problem with tutorials like this is that they're getting outdated by the minute. Yes, it's true that you can build a home theater PC to handle standard definition content for just a few hundred dollars. But as the push towards high definition video and high definition television sets continue, these systems may not really suit your needs much longer. Adding a hi-def tuner doesn't cost much more, but you really need to reevaluate your choices in graphics cards, hard drive capacity and so forth if you're making the leap to a hi-def.
And while Windows Vista promises CableCard compliance, allowing you to receive cable HDTV signals (most PC-based HDTV tuners only handle over-the-air signals), there's still no support for advanced features like video-on-demand. In other words, building a home theater PC today means making compromises. To be perfectly honest, I'd only suggest doing it if you don't plan to buy a HDTV for another few years. Otherwise, it might make more sense to get the cable company PVR (especially if it's a Comcast/Cox Motorola box that will soon run TiVo software), and wait another year or two for PVR technology to catch up with TV technology.
File this under "who thought this was a good idea?"
High-end home theater PC case makers Silverstone has decided to do away with that whole putting an LCD in the front of an HTPC case trend, and instead put a little window for you to watch your hard drive spin. I guess it gives you something to watch when you're wife's monopolizing your PC to watch period dramas.
Anyway, XtremeComputing put the Silverstone CW01-WD through the paces, and for the most part, they like what they saw. There's room for 6 hard drives and 2 5.25-inch bays, and the case includes a 52-in-1 memory card reader. The only real problem is that it takes a very long screwdriver to remove the hard drive cage at the front of the case. That, and when you're done, you've got a case with a visible hard drive in the front, (although the XtremeComputing reviewer seemed to think this was a good thing).
Want to run MythTV but don't have the energy to install Linux? I can't help you with that, but if you've already got a MythTV system up and running and you'd like to be able to watch recordings on your Windows machine, you're in luck.
MythTV Player is a PC-based program that lets you watch videos stored on your MythTV backend box. It's not a full frontend, but simply a way to access your recordings. There's support for MythTV bookmarks, skipping commercials, and you can delete recordings using the player.
MythTV versions 0.18 to 0.20.1 are currently supported.
The CW has finally joined its network brethren in offering up full episodes of TV shows on the web. Beauty and the Geek, Supernatural, Veronica Mars, One Tree Hill, Everybody Hates Chris, All of Us, Girlfriends and The Game are all available for free.
The CW's video player is based in your web browser, and requires installation of a plugin. But that takes less than ten seconds. My biggest complaint is that the video quality is far lower than that offered by sites like NBC and Fox. While the video player occasionally jumps up to 700+ kbps, most of the time it streamed video at just 227kbps.
That said, there's plenty to like about the CW's offering. There are no commercials, you can skip to any point in the show, and there are several episodes of each program available for viewing at a time. It's a perfect solution if your PVR died on you and you just need to catch up on the last few episodes. The only thing that would make it better (besides higher video quality), would be if you could pop the video out of the browser and make it truly full screen.
Normally I refuse to say when a product is priced at $29.99. I feel it's disingenuous on the part of those setting the prices, and I just round up and tell you that you can pick it up for $30. I wish gas station owners and others would follow suit.
That said, it's technically true that OneCall's selling the TiVo Series3 for under $600. Just barely under $600, but still that's $200 off the list price. Of course, if resellers can keep affording to knock $100 or $200 off the price, I wonder why TiVo couldn't have just introduced the Series3 at $700, but I guess they need to recoup the development costs.
It looks like OneCall's sale ends on the 23rd. Keep in mind, if you pick up a new Series3 unit by the end of the month, and if you happen to have a lifetime service plan for an older TiVo, you can transfer that lifetime service tot he new box for $199.
Mark Cuban poses an interesting question: Why are companies like Apple and Microsoft working so hard to give you a way to move video from your PC to your TV screen? Why not just make the video available on your existing set top box or PVR?
Basically, he argues that cable or satellite services could transfer video feeds directly to your PVR and you could peruse video clips from content producers like CBS or from frat boys running around like idiots. No computer needed. Your PVR is already designed to let you easily sift through a large amount of video content to find what you're looking for, all from the comfort of your couch.
The problem is, you'll never be able to store the same quantity of video content on your PVR hard drive that you can access by visiting sites like YouTube. Nor, I suspect, would you want to. The beauty of internet video is that it's there waiting for you if you want it, and it's not taking up space that you'd rather use for other things, like say, choosing your own television programs to record.
While I agree with Cuban that you could easily access internet video with a PVR, I think the way to do that is to connect more PVRs to the internet. Throw a web browser on there. You can already access online video using PC-based personal video recorders like Windows Media Center (with Yougle), or SageTV (which can access Google Video). Why not add the same functionality to set top boxes, which are basically stripped down computers these days anyway.
Or you could always buy an Apple TV or Xbox 360 to stick next to your TiVo so that you can record shows to watch on one box, and flip a switch to use another box that will let you watch programs recorded on your third box, the PC in the other room. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
Thinking of building a home theater PC, but you don't really want to put your tower case next to your LCD TV? Well, there's a growing number of HTPC cases out there for building machines that look more like audio/video equipment than computers. And then there's the Origen S21T.
This case has a 12.1-inch motorized touch screen on the front with support for resolutions up to 1920x1080. That's right, while most cases with an LCD display top out around 7-inches, which means you'd have to be standing in front of the display to make use of them, this case almost makes the TV or monitor its plugged into irrelevant.
You also get an attractive case. That touch screen slides out to reveal a media bay, USB hub, and audio and firewire ports. Theres' three fans in there, 2 intake and 1 exhaust, but they're all of the low-volume variety. Oh yeah, and you can cram up to 10 hard drives in there.
Recommended recordings. You either love them or you hate them. There might be a middle ground, but I don't know anyone who lives there.
When I got my first TiVo, I loved the idea that it would track my viewing patterns and record more programs that it thought I would like. There were just two problems. Between my wife's habit of recording home makeover shows, and my tendency to thumbs up science fiction shows, I think we broke the thing. And what's worse, we had a 40-hour unit, which was only 20 hours at a decent quality. And I love saving up recordings to watch in marathon sessions. That didn't really leave room for recommended recordings.
Well, recommended recordings have finally made their way to Windows Media Center. Proxure's MyTV Genie lets you rate programs you like or detest, and it will recommend future programs you might like, and it will go ahead and record them for you if you let it. If you're too lazy to rate the shows, MyTV Genie will just track your viewing habits and go from there.
It's free, and a future release will have one feature missing from TiVo: community. You can share your favorites with friends or subscribe to a friend's "channel," to try recording some of their favorites.
Less than two weeks until Windows Vista comes out, and my computer up and dies on me. At first I thought it was the power supply, but it's not. It could be the CPU, the motherboard, anything really.
Well, I'd put a lot of money into my last computer which served double duty as my work machine and my PVR (since I write about PVRs, I guess it was really just my work machine). Anyway, it had a couple of hard drives, all of which survived intact, a couple of TV tuners, and an NVIDIA graphics card with a TV-out.
I decided the easiest thing to do would be go and find a sale at a nearby electronics shop, pick up a computer for under $500, and slap all of my old goodies inside. So far so good. But here's the thing. The new system came with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, and in a few weeks I'll qualify for a free upgrade to Windows Vista.
But one of the first things I did was disable the Media Center services from launching at startup so that I can reinstall BeyondTV and restore my scheduled recordings from a backup file. I've got hundreds of hours of programs that I've recorded in BeyondTV. They have smartchapters, a BeyondTV feature that makes it easy to see where the commercials are and skip them with one click. It doesn't always work perfectly, but it's better than a thirty second skip when it does work.
I've showsqueezed most of my recordings (a fancy word for compressing them to WMV or DivX files) so that I could fit more programs on my hard drive. And some of them have strange resolutions that really look best when played back in BeyondTV.
So I decided to stick with the software that I've been using. But is it silly of me not to treat this as an opportunity to play with MCE, and to have all the benefits that come with having a PVR that's integrated with my operating system? That said, I'm also going out of town for a week soon and it'd be nice if I know my PVR is set up and ready to record all my episodes of 24, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica while I'm gone.
ReplayTV is offering a 20% off coupon code for purchases of their PC-based PVR software if you buy a copy by February 27th. That brings the price down to about $80, which brings it closer to its competitors' prices. You can pick up a copy of BeyondTV for $70, and SageTV goes for $80.
ReplayTV is not only a newcomer to the PC software market, it's also one of the highest priced options available. I'm willing to cut them some slack, since they did help to popularize the concept of PVRs with their set top boxes. And some of the search options in the ReplayTV PC edition are quite cool.
To get the coupon, use the code RTVJAN0720 before February 27th. There's also a 30 day free trial of the software, so you can test it out for a full month if you like before deciding whether it's worth spending $80.
Posted Jan 18th 2007 8:30AM by Brad Linder Filed under: News
Say you've got a Windows-based PVR that's running quite nicely and you don't see the need to upgrade to Windows Vista anytime soon? But you're stuck using analog cable because you can't figure out how to get your computer to change the channel on your cable box.
Well, Hauppauge has been shipping an IR blaster with a code library for multiple set top boxes for some time now, if you happen to pick up a PVR-150 PCI card.
But if you've got the WinTV PVR-USB2, which is basically the same device in an external case, you've been out of luck, until now. According to the SnapStream Blog, Hauppauge plans to begin putting IR blasters in the box with USB2 tuners any day now. The retail box won't be changing, so if you're picking one up in a store, you might want to ask the clerk if you can open the box and take a peak before buying a new unit. Alternately, SnapStream says they'll post another entry on their blog when they start to receive the new units in their online store. If you've already got a TV tuner without an IR blaster, you can still pick up a USB UIRT cable pack for about $50.
If you'd rather watch TV in the bathroom than read the paper, you might as well go all out, right? Roto Rooter is sponsoring a contest for a "Pimped out John." The winner will get a flat screen HDTV, laptop computer, an iPod with a dock, a TiVo, an Xbox 360, and a DVD player, portable fridge, and other components to make sure you never have to leave your favorite room in the house. Oh yeah, and there's a Kohler toilet thrown in for good measure.
The contest begins January 24th, it's not clear at this point what you have to do to win, but Roto Rooter is encouraging people to sign up for the company's newsletter "to be reminded when the sweepstakes begins."
With Microsoft Vista set to officially launch in a couple of weeks, Microsoft has begun adding content to the Online Media section of Vista Media Center.
The Online Media function provides online content to Media Center users in the same interface they use to view their personal media such as television recordings and music collections. Some of the new content includes clips from the Discovery Channel, Yahoo video, VH1, Napster, and other music services, and access to MovieLink video purchases and downloads.
While Media Center functions are included in several versions of Vista, most computers still aren't sold with TV tuners, so I imagine online content is sort of a selling point for using a Vista PC as a digital hub in the living room.
Mark Cuban
