Posted by Doug Jacobs on 02/16/07 19:24

gadjo <fgdsfg@w45w4.sdf> wrote:

> Alas, no Tivo for me... Where I am it's pretty much a monopoly with one
> cable provider, the only alternative being satellite which my co-op doesn't
> allow.

The Series2 Tivo is "stand alone", meaning it can take input from an
antenna, standard cable, cable box, or satellite box. The Tivo can change
the channel on your cable box, but this means that you won't be able to
watch another channel on your TV while the Tivo is recording something
unless the TV has its own cable box. In reality this isn't much of a
problem anyways. After the Tivo has been running for a few weeks, you'll
usually have more than enough recorded content that you won't be watching
"regular" TV anymore. Again, there is a monthly fee, which is probably
higher than what your cable provider is charging but so far, none of the
other providers' PVR have approached Tivo in terms of usability and
stability.

> The cable provider I'm with does provide their own PVR's, either rented or
> at a hefty price, and it's not even clear that it can interface with other
> devices... Anyway I'll end up paying more and getting less than what a
> dedicated PVR is capable of.

This would replace your current cable tuner with one that has the PVR
built into it. You could still plug it into your PC, though I don't know
what that would do for you, since the PVR in the cable box would be in
control of what channel was being recorded...

Of course, one of the advantages of the build-it-yourself PVR (like MythTV)
is that you can add much larger hard drives and have access to other features,
such as burning shows to DVD or adding additional tuners, allowing you to
record multiple channels at once.

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