Re: Anyone here have experience with Beyond TV?
- From: "J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 10:23:03 -0500
Ken wrote:
Hi all,
I'm thinking of buying a Beyond TV bundle (Beyond TV and Dual-Tuner
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Kit, to be specific) to install in my PC.
Before I take the plunge though, I'd like to hear any feedback from
others who may have had experience with this product.
My reasons for wanting to try Beyond TV has to do with the fact that
where I live, in Canada, we are pretty much limited in terms of PVRs to
what is offered by our local cable and satellite providers. For
example, I just paid almost $800 (CAD) to Shaw cable to purchase the
Motorola DCT6412 PVR unit that they offer. Hardware-wise it is a good
unit, except that its hard drive can hold only a maximum of 15 hours of
recording in HD. (It holds up to 40 hours of standard-broadcast-only
recording. But I bought the unit especially to compliment and take full
advantage of my newly purchased widescreen HDTV. If I have to ration
my hard disk space, it won't be by limiting my HD broadcast
viewing/recording.) The DCT6412 has myriad digital ports on both the
back and front of the machine. I'd just love to attach an SATA,
Firewire, or USB 2.0 external hard drive to it in order to try to
address the limited storage space issue. But all the digital ports on
the machine are rendered disabled by its software, which is provided
and controlled by the local cable provider (Shaw Cable; whom btw has
expressed no credible intention of ever changing this). Installing a
larger drive without some kind of secret software authorization key or
something to that effect, I've researched and concluded, is pretty much
impossible. So my only option left in order to increase storage space
for recording is to spend another $800 and add an entire additional
Motorola DCT6412 unit alongside of the existing one. (I would then
manually switch between units as recording needs require.) Yet this
one additional unit would increase my HD recording capacity to only 30
hours. Obviously, I've realized, this approach is far too expensive
for the returns.
Then I heard about the Beyond TV PVR option, in that, unlike Tivo or
ReplayTV, etc, it will work (fully, that is) in Canada too. Now, I'm
posting my above query here as I just want to make sure by doing so
that this product is nothing less than it is promised to be, before I
buy. Therefore, thanks in advance for any helpful, informative, or
otherwise interesting responses.
If you want to record HD, you will need a different tuner board from the
WINTV-PVR500, which is analog-only. You _may_ be able to get unencrypted
HD off the cable using a Dvico Fusion V board, but encrypted HD you can't
get at all except using the cable company's box.
You might find this thread
<http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=3818890#post3818890>
helpful, Shaw may have killed the firewire ports since though.
If you don't mind being a scofflaw, HDDirecTivo remains an option--basically
you need a US mail drop and you're on your own for installation. You can
get up to 130 hours of HD recording time out of one of those.
There is a Series 3 standalone HDTivo coming shortly that is rumored to be
able to record HD off of Shaw in one fashion or another--it may have the
same limitations as the Fusion board or it may be fully functional--it
might be worthwhile waiting a bit to see what it can actually do once it is
shipping.
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
.
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