Could use any guidance.
I may or may not know what I’m doing. Don’t know what I don’t know, unknown unkowns as Rummy would say.
I’m thinking I need HDD (DVR) and DVD Recorder. Maybe in one unit, or maybe better seperate. Or, maybe pay comcast for a DVR box ($16month) and buy DVD recorder.
Currently:
Comcast cable, digital box (not DVR).
DVD player
VHS VCR
7yr old 32" old school monster of a TV, not HD. will someday make the HD move, maybe this year.
Sort of things I want to do:
watch one thing on TV while I record another (“dual tuner” required?)
record onto DVD, edit out commercials
copy my VHS collection onto dvd, edit out stuff
play recorded dvds on other standalone dvd players
ideally, erase and reuse dvds as I do vhs
The only high definition DVRs are the Tivo HD and the cable companies’ DVRs. It’s very difficult to get other DVRs to control a cable tuner box. The Tivo HD and Comcast DVRs get rid of the cable box and use Cablecards so they operate as digital tuner and DVR.
I have Comcast and what I did was get a Tivo HD, install a 1 tb HDD in it, and upgrade from Comcast analog (no cable box) to Comcast HD. The Tivo worked with Comcast before my HD/digital upgrade but when Comcast switches to digital that would no longer be an option. I setup my PC to stream TV shows and movies. They can be almost any video format found online (x264, xvid, divx, MPEG2, etc.). The Tivo can also send programs it recorded to the PC where I use VideoRedo to edit out the commercials. Sometimes it’s just easier to download the show later for archival purposes.
For example, I’ll have the Tivo record a show in HD. A 60 min show is ~20 min of commercials so I’l start watching 20 min after it starts and skip al the commercials. If I want to save the show I can either send it to the PC to edit out the commercials and then send it back or I’ll delete the recorded copy and download the MPEG2 transport stream that someone else captured and edited the commercials out and send it to the Tivo.
I don’t really use my DVD player anymore. TV shows are broadcast or downloaded in HD. Movies are downloaded in HD (saves me the trouble of getting a BluRay DVD player) and streamed from PC to Tivo. If I run out of space on my PC then I’ll move the x264 or xvid files onto DVD+RW.
For your VHS stuff, it might be better to just find DVD versions rather than converting it yourself unless it’s really rare. You can use a camcorder to do the analog-digital conversion then encode to MPEG2 and author your own DVDs. It’s kind of involved though.
or that Philips Walmart use to sell it. But not there now. My understanding they are the same unit, the Magnivox is a newer release with a few improvements.
Connecting to my pc is not something I’m going to take on just yet, but that’s a pretty nice setup you have.
I’m hoping to avoid Tivo/Comcast DVR, and the monthly fee they entail.
So, leaning toward a DVR/DVD recorder combo unit, if I can find one.
Assuming, I can: use a splitter (or simply switching viewing mode setting) to enable me to watch one thing while recording another just run VHS out to the DVR/DVD recoder in and put my VHS onto dvd? or the HD? If it means just straight dubbing of the VHS tape to DVD and living without editing commercials
Pretty basic stuff. Is this not the case?
Dish Network Vip 722 HD DVR which has 3 tuners (1 OTA, 2 Sat.) where I could record 3 programs at once (all either HD or SD) and at the same time watch 2 recorded programs. It has 350 hours of SD recording capacity and I also have another 500gb hdd attached that expands that to 700 hours (roughly 110 hours of HD total). My bill for that is $38 per month (Cinemax included) and the only equipment I had to purchase was the external HDD which was $65 (there was a dish network $39 fee to activate the external hdd feature). I can watch 2 different programs from the DVR box at the same time on any tv in the house and can also access the recorded programs from any tv in the house. I am absolutely LOVING this system.
RCA DVD recorder. I have pulled about 250 movies off of my DVR and recorded them onto DVDs (all before I upgraded to the 722, now I just dump them to the external HDD and will just upgrade that once it’s full). I have only come across about 4 or 5 movies that were copy protected in a manor that I couldn’t record them. I am able to use those dvds on any dvd player. If you plan on just using the dvds at your house you may want to just use hdd storage instead of dvds. The quality level of the dvd reproduction is far from perfect whereas the DVR quality is flawless. The only downside to the DVR (or HDD) stored movies is that a failed HDD could mean the loss of valued programming.
If you need the Comcast box to tune both channels then it has to have dual tuners. If you use the Comcast box to tune one channel and bypass it to tune the other channel, you can only tune analog cable (and you better hope that Comcast in your area hasn’t switched to digital only).
You can do this but it forces the MPEG2 compression to be done in real time. The quality might come out OK though.
Analog DVRs are basically obsolete. The one you linked to, for example, has no ability to tune HD and doesn’t appear to have any digital tuners whatsoever. The only DVRs that can do HD and digital are Series 3 Tivos and the DVRs provided by satellite and cable providers.
There are a lot of complaints about the Comcast DVR though but it seems like Comcast is working on it so it might get better. One problem is the small HDD which you can’t upgrade. HD takes up a lot of space. A Google search for the Comcast DVR should be elucidating.
