HD DVR - An Indispensable Component for HD Movie Lovers

[SRW1000]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

If Dish let me pay for my statins a la carte, I would probably pay for about 6 stations max. The rest, at least in my house, is just fluff.

I'd also love to see that. I don't think we ever will, though.

We may get close someday with digital downloads, though. Except you won't pay per station, just per program.

Scott

[SRW1000]

Originally Posted by Rayzor77

The one good thing about Bell Satellite tv is that there's no monthly fee for the pvr if you own it. The older model receivers such as the dual tuner 9200, however, don't have the usb port enabled for adding an external hard drive, and probably never will. So it's stick to the 25hrs of HD recording space, or shell out $400-$500 for a new receiver.

Providers have realized that a lot of consumers are more than willing to pay the additional monthly fee for DVR capability. I've never bought the reason for this, and consider it just another way for them to add a fee to a bill. The functionality is built into the receiver. They aren't incurring any additional expense (other than the extra hardware costs). To tack this fee onto all additional charges, is a slap in the face, especially if you own the equipment.

What's the justification for this, other than they can get away with it because people are willing to pay for it? It's too bad consumers didn't reject the fee en masse when they first started adding it.

Scott

[Favelle]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

Yeah, the title of this thread really throws me off.. The only reason we still even have Dish is because of:
- Sports (Espn channels, NFL Channel, Vs, etc)
- The Disney Channel for the kids
- The History Channel

The vast majority of the shows we record and watch are from NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS and I can get them in HD via OTA.

If Dish let me pay for my statins a la carte, I would probably pay for about 6 stations max. The rest, at least in my house, is just fluff.

If I didn't watch live sports, I wouldn't have a cable connection at all. I live on the west coast and I can torrent all TV shows in HD, commerical-FREE, 2 hours before they air here.

[Favelle]

Originally Posted by luclin999

This was an excellent series with very high production quality. My wife and I loved it.

Just be advised, it is definitely "TV-MA" in content.

Rome was awesome. What a treat those 2 seasons were.

[Favelle]

Originally Posted by SRW1000

If you haven't watched a single movie on it, how can the experience always be worse than DVD????

I've never had an In and Out burger, but they always taste worse than one from McDonald's.

Scott

Easy. Watched one for a few minutes, hated the commercial break, hated the burned in image of the network, and hated the lame low bitrate sound. THEREFORE, I haven't watched the movie. Just enough to realize that it was poor poor quality.

[nextoo]

Originally Posted by Favelle

If I didn't watch live sports, I wouldn't have a cable connection at all. I live on the west coast and I can torrent all TV shows in HD, commerical-FREE, 2 hours before they air here.

Wow. I'm impressed.

Do the torrent contributers remove the channel bugs for you too? Because you don't watch anything with channel bugs right?

And where are these torrent contributers getting all this commercial television for you in 1080p with lossless audio? You don't watch "poor poor quality" and listen to "low bit rate sound" do you?

They sound like magicians.

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by Favelle

Easy. Watched one for a few minutes, hated the commercial break, hated the burned in image of the network, and hated the lame low bitrate sound. THEREFORE, I haven't watched the movie. Just enough to realize that it was poor poor quality.

You watched a few minutes of ONE movie....hated the commercials...hated the station logo....hated low bitrate sound......and from this ONE experience concluded that watching movies off Sat/cab/Telco is not for you.

Maybe all you needed to do to get a whole new experience was to simply change the channel.

[Forge]

Originally Posted by Taffy

You watched a few minutes of ONE movie....hated the commercials...hated the station logo....hated low bitrate sound......and from this ONE experience concluded that watching movies off Sat/cab/Telco is not for you.

Maybe all you needed to do to get a whole new experience was to simply change the channel.

First impressions are a powerful thing. Got kicked by a horse once, didn't like that, I don't think I'd try a new horse.

[nextoo]

I fell of my bike the first time I got on it. Not for me. I can't understand all those idiots who ride bikes. Simply insane.

[Forge]

I didn't say I stopped riding horses, just getting kicked by them.

Edit: Although I can understand why you might think I said that.

[luclin999]

Originally Posted by SRW1000

This method also has it's own disadvantages:

• You may have to buy or upgrade your PC to handle the software
• Everything is re-encoded, reducing the quality
• The Hauppage 1212 is about $200
• You have to do a lot more work to archive. With Dish, the program name, date, run time, and record date are all taken care of automatically. Using the Hauppage 1212, you have to do all of that through a computer.

The activation fee, at least for Dish, is a one-time, per account charge of $40, so that's a minimal difference. If you use and external hard drive, you still have the same chances of losing programming due to drive failure, often sited by others in this thread. True, you could back up to BD, but that's a much higher cost.

While some may find it worth it for the freedom of not being tied into a single provider, others will find the reduction in quality, additional expense, and required time and work to not be worth the trade off.

But, if it works for some people, that's fine. Just another option to increase available content.

Scott

• Even if you had to build an entire PC from the ground up to play back the recordings, this can be done for $200-300.
  
• Quality reduction is negligible at least by all reports from the people using the 1212.
  
• The Hauppage 1212 is indeed about $180-200. That is why I said in the original post that putting together this setup would cost between $400-500 total ($200-300 for the PC + $200 for the 1212). As some people actually purchase their Dish DVRs (for several hundred dollars) as opposed to renting them this option is approximate to those costs while providing the user with a much more versatile recording machine.
  
• Anyone "archiving" movies to external HDDs is already moving files around manually. Setting up your own directories on a PC is hardly more work than that.

The advantages are:

• Ability to externally record content from any cable/sat provider (not limited to Dish or other services which allow extra storage systems).
  
• Ability to playback files on Laptops and other mobile PCs, thus allowing you to take the content with you and play it remotely.
  
• Backup files can be transferred to DVD/BD media for permanent storage. Thus removing HDD failure as a potential problem for programs that you absolutely do not want to lose. I've seen BD blanks on sale already for as low as $2 per disk and this price will continue to plummet over the next 12-24 months. Once it drops below $1 per disc then the storage cost will be below the "$1 per movie" touted in this thread for HDD backups. Technically, since 2 movies can be stored on one BD you could already match the "$1 per movie" cost if you were willing to double up on each disc. (this does however require you to add a BD recorder to your HTPC at additional cost).
  
• Not required to stick with a single cable/sat service in order to maintain access to recorded content.
  
• More storage options as there are no specified limits on which HDDs are able to be used for storage. If the PC can format it, it will work. This means that less expensive, internal OEM drives are available to be used for storage.
  
• Ability to edit files allowing you to delete commercials from archived media or correct audio sync errors which sometimes are found on HD broadcast programming.
  
• The computer that is required for this is not simply a dedicated DVR and is capable of considerably more applications than say a Dish 722. It also allows the user access (when connected to the network) to the Internet, email, games, and other programs as well as streaming content such as Hulu, Amazon, etc making the HTPC a more complete home video/entertaiment solution than a simple DRV. (try playing World of Warcraft on your DVR and see what happens).

Yes, it does require a bit more technical expertise than simply plugging in an external HDD, calling tech support and having them walk you through the setup process. It also offers considerably more freedom and options as to how to archive/store broadcast HD content.

Edit: I just noticed that Frys is offering 10 packs of BD-R media for $25 with a $10 rebate making the final cost $15 (or $1.50 per disc). Prices are dropping even faster than I had expected.

[SRW1000]

Originally Posted by Favelle

Easy. Watched one for a few minutes, hated the commercial break, hated the burned in image of the network, and hated the lame low bitrate sound. THEREFORE, I haven't watched the movie. Just enough to realize that it was poor poor quality.

What channel was that movie on?

[ack_bak]

Originally Posted by luclin999

Edit: I just noticed that Frys is offering 10 packs of BD-R media for $25 with a $10 rebate making the final cost $15 (or $1.50 per disc). Prices are dropping even faster than I had expected.

I believe the price in Japan is even lower as they love their BD recorders over there. I think we will see prices on blank BD's really drop in the next 2 years.

[h0mi]

Originally Posted by SRW1000

This method also has it's own disadvantages:

• You may have to buy or upgrade your PC to handle the software
• Everything is re-encoded, reducing the quality
• The Hauppage 1212 is about $200
• You have to do a lot more work to archive. With Dish, the program name, date, run time, and record date are all taken care of automatically. Using the Hauppage 1212, you have to do all of that through a computer.

The hauppauge solution is not for the faint of heart, but for people not willing or able to use a DVR that works the way Dish's DVR does, it's the only method we'd have of pulling (most) videos off of the DVR since we can't swap hard drives out. Note that I'm not saying this is "indispensable" or a solution that is clearly superior to the Dish network DVR solution, but it has some advantages and disadvantages. And I say "most videos" not all because for me, I don't need to do this for any unprotected videos as tivo desktop (or pytivo) software will work. Anything aired on OTA networks and probably a handful of cable channels (Syfy was unprotected last year when they were still "SciFi" but I haven't checked recently).

That said, the copy on the PC hard drive becomes yours. You can even remove the commercials out of that Titanic recording from TNT. You can take the resulting file and author a DVD, author a blu-ray or HD DVD (compatible on a DVD5/9 or actual blu-ray/hddvd) disc. You can convert it to your ipod, zune, sansa, PSP or other device.

Note- you can also use the hauppauge 1212 directly with a set top box in lieu of having an actual DVR, and you can record HD content from any source so long as it outputs via component.

With Dish, the program name, date, run time, and record date are all taken care of automatically.

I kind of think this is a wash. When authoring your HD encode using the 1212, the resulting file is whatever you want to call it, and it doesn't have some of the information you're mentioning above but that's up to you to decide how you're going to categorize this file. Once you have the files on an external drive, you have to determine the best way to distinguish the drives and what's on them.

Originally Posted by SRW1000

The activation fee, at least for Dish, is a one-time, per account charge of $40, so that's a minimal difference. If you use and external hard drive, you still have the same chances of losing programming due to drive failure, often sited by others in this thread. True, you could back up to BD, but that's a much higher cost.

At this time I don't think it's worth authoring actual bd-r/bd-re discs unless you got a burner cheap and can get a source of media cheaply as well. AVCHD discs though or even 3XDVDs for HD DVD usage work pretty well. And for players that support Divx or Mkv files, you can always encode the ripped file into that format for playback.

Originally Posted by SRW1000

While some may find it worth it for the freedom of not being tied into a single provider, others will find the reduction in quality, additional expense, and required time and work to not be worth the trade off.

But, if it works for some people, that's fine. Just another option to increase available content.

Scott

I know its using the analog hole so it's not a 1:1 perfect digital copy but I've not read any complaints about severe reductions in PQ or AQ.

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by Forge

First impressions are a powerful thing. Got kicked by a horse once, didn't like that, I don't think I'd try a new horse.

I hear you. I slammed my finger one time closing a door when I was little. I don't use doors anymore.