DVD Connections

[Ron]

Huh?

[Ed Pawlowski]

"keith" wrote

That was my thought also. Most of what we watch are the cable channels not available OTA. Discovery, History, Travel, NatGeo, TLC etc. Take them away and I'd hardly turn the TV on except for the news.

I can proudly list many sit-coms and celebrity gossip showes I've never watched.

[Phisherman]

I have my doubts about the Blu Ray format really catching on and becoming a long-term standard (mainly due to its higher cost plus being released during a long recession). But, all you really need is a means of saving video and playing it back which can be done with an inexpensive PC with a half-terrabyte storage drive and a tuner card. The more resolution, the larger the file. I find it amazing folks are paying a monthly fee for a Tivo type device or DVR cable service when that is not needed. It's my guess there will be fewer discs (of any format) and more wireless streaming to your TV screen. And then there are these low-cost high-capacity non-volatile memory thumb drives (the "new" hard drives) that can store a hi-res movie or two.

[jamesgangnc]

dvr's offer a convenience that is hard to match with what you propose. I tell it to record new episodes of House. That's all I have to tell it. The dvr's integrate the schedule with what you want recorded.

[Ed Pawlowski]

"Phisherman" wrote

The DVD guys have conceded and Blue Ray is the future (at least until something better comes along). Cost is coming down considerably. Remember when a Betamax was over $1500 and then a VCR was down to $20 over time?

Only if the PC has all the programming capability that a cable company DV-R has for setting schedules. I don't know if they do or not yet. Nice to know that even if I'm away my series recordings will start without me intervening, even season to season.

Agree there. From what I can see though, the downloaded product is not the full resolution and can be even lower if you don't have a fast enough connection. Blu Ray give 1080p but the downloaded is only 720p or less from what I've found. Of course, that may change too.

[HerHusband]

I have two Hauppauge HVR-1600 tuner cards, and a Hauppauge HVR-2250 dual tuner card in my computer. My 1600's are connected to an outdoor antenna to pick up over-the-air broadcasts (HD and SD), and my 2250 is connected to my cable company to pick up free QAM channels (unencrypted channels accessable without a cable box, mostly local broadcasts and a couple of extras like Discovery channel). If I had enough slots available, I would use two HVR-2250's, but right now I have more PCI slots than PCI-e slots.

I have a 1 terabyte hard drive I dedicate solely to video, though I'm currently using less than half that space despite dozens of music videos, home movies, and over a months worth of HD TV recordings. This leaves me plenty of working room for editing home movies and whatnot.

I use the excellent free software "GBPVR" to schedule and record my TV shows, with a $20/yr subscription to "Schedules Direct" TV listings. This allows me to schedule recordings up to two weeks in advance, as well as automatically recording repeating series episodes or other recurring shows.

Then I use Comskip and VideoRedo to automatically locate and remove commercials from my TV recordings.

We use a Tvix M-6600 media player to stream my recorded shows from the computer, over our home network, to our TV in the living room. I only have the one media player, but I could easily hook up other media players to watch shows in other rooms if I wished.

Surprisingly, this all has minimal impact on my computer resources. I can easily record 4 HD shows at once, while streaming a prerecorded show to the media player in our living room, while my wife plays Farmville on Facebook. :)

Of course, this means my computer runs 24/7, but it's usually running other tasks like defragging drives, or processing other files anyway, so that's not an issue.

Admittedly, there's a bit of a learning curve and tweaking to get everything setup properly. But being able to record four shows at once, while watching a fifth, and no subscription fees makes it more than worth it. True, we're basically limited to the major broadcast networks, but I'm not interested in paying for the extra cable channels anyway. Combine our TV recordings with a couple of movies from Netflix each week, and streaming Netflix movies through my BluRay player, and we have WAY more shows to watch than we have time for.

Oh, and for those rare shows on a channel you can't get, you can usually find them online or as a torrent download.

Anthony

[Ed Pawlowski]

"HerHusband" wrote

Interesting setup and not too costly. We don't get any OTA reception to make putting an antenna feasible though. I'd still need a decoder as most everything we watch is on the encrypted channels. History, TLC, Science, Nat Geo and all pay-for.

How is the resolution on the Blu Ray downloads? I understand they cut the resolution if you have a slower connection. Seems like a handy way of getting movies though.

[HerHusband]

Ed,

Have you checked your location at

You might need a larger antenna, but I would be very surprised if you couldn't get ANY OTA reception.

You can still use GBPVR and the tuner cards with cable boxes, but you have to use IR emitters and whatnot if you want to change channels. You would also need a box for each tuner if you wanted to record more than one show. I've never looked into that, but I know people on the GBPVR forum discuss it all the time and could probably provide more info.

Also, I thought I read somewhere that most cable companies carry the local broadcast stations unencrypted (Free QAM). The cable companies usually won't tell you that though, as they want you to rent the box. But, I haven't looked into that in a while, so that could be outdated info.

Are you talking about Netflix? If so, I really haven't paid much attention to the resolution, as some movies are SD and others are in HD. I don't know what res the HD movies default to, though the quality setting changes depending on the speed of your network connection. I have a 42" plasma and have been pleasantly suprised by the quality of the Instant viewing.

Of course, only a small subset of the Netflix movies are available for instant viewing, mostly old movies, or those that are less popular. You won't find many (any?) new releases for instant viewing.

Also, I think Netflix downloads are limited to stereo audio. Last I checked, 5.1 audio is not available.

If you're talking about torrent downloads, the quality is whatever the person who encoded it used. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's horrible. Sometimes the picture is excellent, but the audio is in a foreign language. :) But, I limit my torrent downloads to TV shows I can't record myself, and rent Blu-rays through Netflix.

Take care,

Anthony