TIVO Alternatives?

[Kelemvor]

Well, I'm finally making the move to Digital Cable so now of course I'm thinking about some way to store programs such as TIVO. However, having something that's a stand along product in my house and having to pay a monthly fee to use it, just doesn't make much sense.

I heard of some softwarea a few months ago that was supposed to be somewhat comparable but didn't get the details. I have extra PCs at home and can find some hard drives and such to put in them. But I'm not sure if something special is needed to make it work with the digital cable (Time Warner) or if it's even possible.

I know TW advertises their DVR technology but again, it has a monthly fee for something that just sits in my house and shouldn't need any outside fees to work.

Thanks for any info.

 

[Jeraden]

You can use SageTV or BeyondTV. (I use sagetv personally).

With that, you need a tv-encoding card. I recommend a WinTV PVR250.

Then, you need a way for your computer to control your digital cable box, so you need some kind of IR transmitter. I recommend a USB-UIRT.

 

[Kelemvor]

If I decide that the only shows I want to record automatically are on the normal cable channels, can I just plug a cable line into the tuner card and not have any need for anything controlling the box? Not sure how that part works...

 

[Jeraden]

Yeah, the pvr250 can tune regular analog cable directly, so you wouldn't need the USB-UIRT then.

I use sagetv/pvr250/usb-uirt to control do all my tivo'ing of dish network stuff. Works quite well.