Re: PVR?

Roderick Stewart wrote:

Perhaps they have moved on since I last looked, but those I found have only been able to record one channel or video source at a time. Also, since they force a conversion to baseband video at some stage in the process they don't usually have any way of allowing you to get the undecoded file data off the machine, and onto a computer. The closest being to record to DVD and then rip it later

All true, but why is it important? If you have a machine that lacks the ability to record two programmes at once, or record one while showing you another, then on the rare occasions when this ability is needed (and it's surprising how rare

As I mentioned above, the need to record two programs at once is not "rare" once you have the ability to say "please record all of these". The machine will then create its own scheduled recordings and these will be competing for a tuner with any activities that you want to do with the machine interactively. Some of these you could get round with extra auxiliary tuners, but at the expense of extra complexity for the user.

it really is in practice), it can easily be added. You only need to obtain another machine, which you might have anyway - either a cheap freeview box just to watch, or you might dig the VHS out of retirement, or do as I did and upgrade the HDD/DVD recorder to a newer bigger and better one, but keep the old one as a spare. Or you could even ask a friend to record the extra programme for you. It depends on how often this requirement occurs.

or you might be away from home and find out about a program you would like to record. So you SMS a message to your PVR via its network connection to your LAN and have it record it ;-)

However, if you have a disk recorder that lacks the ability to record from external sources, you can't add this at all. Everyone's priorities are different of course, but that seems a huge limitation for a video recording machine.

Indeed, requirements are different. Hence the value in discussions like this that highlight some of the implications of certain buying decisions. You need to choose what will be appropriate for you.

I can't imagine why I would want to feed anything from a television recorder into a computer. I'm sure others have their reasons, but personally I prefer to watch

I will frequently watch stuff the PVR has recorded on my computer. Often because there will be others camped out in front of the TV at the time I want to etc. (I watch very little broadcast stuff live). As to viewing experience, I don't find a the computers 23" monitor 24" in front of me to be inferior to the 29" TV the other side of a room etc. (although the surround sound in the lounge is better in the lounge, when I can get in there).

television programmes on my television set because it has a bigger screen and a comfy sofa in front of it.

Sounds like you need a better chair for your computer then ;-)

If I really wanted to watch a recorded television programme on a computer, it could be done because they've all got DVD drives, but

I find for stuff that I want to keep, it is easier to make DVDs on the computer as well, far easier to edit, and add menus etc.

I don't really see the point. Feeding signals the other way might make a little more sense, because there are some TV programmes only available on the internet, and it might be nice to watch these on the TV.

I can do this, although have not actually bothered. Might be handy if you download stuff from the US that you want to watch on the TV though.

I'd only have to run a cable round the room to achieve this, though I suspect the bigger screen might just emphasise how awful the quality is. Maybe in 5 years time when everything is delivered by 24Mb/s broadband it'll be worth looking at the situation again, but not for now.

For downloaded stuff there is plenty of DVD quality stuff out there if you want. (we are not talking youtube here!)

--
Cheers,

John.

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