[NTLUG:Discuss] HDTV, broadcast flag, ...

[Paul Ingendorf]

Lifetime is somewhat subjective, but if you backup your Tivo HD and don't do
anything outside of common sense with your Tivo you are ok.  Mine has been
running for going on 6 years now still original hard drive.  The newer
direct Tivo units do support real time hardware compression & decompression
with dual OTA tuners.  All SA units support hardware compression which is
what I was referring to with the $49 dollar 40 hour unit.  You are correct
though about the older units and newer units simply streaming the encoded
streams to the hard drive.  Why work when you don't have to?

I currently use an xbox I picked up used, moded, and running xbmc to stream
Tivo to my bedroom over a wireless link.   The tivo runs a small program
called cxserver to publish to content to the network and the xbox can
receive and view all programming on the box.  For my office I run vserver
another small app that runs on the Tivo that allows me to use Tivowebplus to
stream the content to one of the PCs in my office.  I little codec called
tyshow allows windows media player to connect to the asx stream and view the
content.

And it is all in a package even my wife can use.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bryan J. Smith [mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 12:23 PM
To: pauldy at wantek.net; tr_data1 at ev1.net; discuss at ntlug.org
Subject: RE: [NTLUG:Discuss] HDTV, broadcast flag, ...

FYI, by "lifetime" they mean the life of the TiVO _device_ itself, not you
personally.
If a box gets hosed, you've gotta sign up for another plan.
Not good when the monthly rate is flat per household no matter the number of
TVs.

They seemingly have raised the monthly subscription though.
When I bought my DirecTiVO 40GB for $79, it was $4.95/month for 2 years.
BTW, I upgraded it to 2x120GB.

Well, the DirecTiVO units don't have the codecs, only decodecs.
The stream is already encoded.
Which makes it easy to have 2 _simultaneous_ feed.
People forget that advantage of DirecTiVO.

Which is Linux too.
There are major hacking guides for the units too.

Exactly.

Well, some people do want additional features too.
And that's why they do it.

But IMHO, just add another box for those.
In fact, assemble such a box, and you can connect it to several TVs.
I.e., treat it like "just another cable feed" from the standpoint of going
into ypur TV.
There are then 900/2400MHz wireless remotes that don't need line-of-sight.

I haven't yet because I plan on building a serious box with 1080i via DVI
out.
And I'll do that when I get a TV with DVI in.

Until then, my DirecTiVO does what I want.
And then the only other capability is audio (MP3/Ogg), which I plug directly
into the Logitech Z-580 system (my 5.1 amp I use with Digital 5.1 decoding
built-in).

Which is why I'm going to build one later on - probably just for load
broadcast pickup.

Exactly.

--
Bryan J. Smith (currently mobile)
b.j.smith at ieee.org