Posted by Bill's News on 04/11/06 22:57

Bob wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 07:30:00 -0700, "Bill's News"
> <BillsNews@pcmagic.net> wrote:
>
>>>> Buffalo LinkTheater,
>
>>> Unfortunately it cannot be used to capture TV programs directly
>>> from
>>> normal broadcast sources.
>
>> See the subject line!
>
> That was not the purpose of my contact.
>
> I like the BLT - it's unfortunate that it isn't a PVR.
>
> When is someone going to give us all we want in one afforable
> package.

Probably when we all agree on what we want and how much it's worth ;-)

IIRC, KISS and LiteOn each makes, or has made, a PVR with HDD that
played mpeg4-ish files as well. I suspect there are several others
now.

My comment regarding the BLT simply pertained to its way above average
(at least as far as the other players cited) video presentation. The
only other asset at present of the BLT is its networking capability.

Since I capture TV on a PC and the BLT has wired access to the 720 gB
storage of that PC, I have a PVR that does ALMOST everything I want
(digital capture being the only lack; I am a cable customer). There
is no need to write DVDs in order to edit or playback captured
material and there is also no need to author the captured material
into a first generation format in order to play it.

Should the "server" become overloaded, the captured files can be
written to DVDs as data files and later played by the BLT directly.
In anticipation of this event, I "break" recordings into ~1.5 gB
chunks during the capture process.

I've been making xvid versions of some episodic TV programs simply
because of storage requirements as I don't watch most of such programs
until the entire season has been recorded. It takes roughly 70 gB to
hold an edited-of-commercials 24x1 hr season at the capture rate which
I use. So, I compress these to about 1/5 their edited size, which
fits on 4 DVD5s. There are a few shows for which I've kept the
DVDs of several seasons, but most get reused for the next season.

In the case of movies (rarely captured from commercial laden TV) I may
need to trim the first and last capture file, but otherwise they can
be preserved on DVD5s, if necessary, without any further ado.

I don't think that an all-in-one, stand-alone PVR would suit me. The
PC seems much better suited to the job today.

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