I have access to Windows Media Center Edition and am not ever home to watch my favorite episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (I sound like a friggen commercial). I want to be able to tape them. Cable has autotune for me, but I want to be able to just have it run while I'm not home, and I don't have a VCR.
Does anyone know of any good, cheap TV tuner cards? Or, anyone have a Media Center PC?
You could use bittorrent to download them. :)
Quote from: Shout on July 12, 2005, 09:37 PM
You could use bittorrent to download them. :)
I've done that before, and while that's okay, the Entire DS9 collection (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00062RCC6/qid=1121222608/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/002-5173871-0956062?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846) is over 48 DVDs. Generally 3-4 one-hour episodes fit on one disc, and there are
48 DVDs in that collection. If a single episode of Alias takes me one night to download (another one-hour series) and I manage to get good seeds for every show,
even the old ones (esp. since DS9 is a dead series), I'll run at 192 nights.
I need a better alternative. Spike TV has 2 episodes on per day, and 3 episodes of TNG per day. M*A*S*H has 4 episodes per day. It would be easy to record these if I could just plug in.
PCWorld had a Top 10 of TV Tuner Cards a few months back. I'll dig through my stack and see if I can find it for you.
In the meantime, I've heard good things about the ATI All-in-Wonder (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=ATI+All-in-Wonder&Category=38&minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0). Not the cheapest cards, I'm sure, but very good.
You can buy a Tivo for I believe around $99 or something now. With the new TivoToGo software you can download the episodes to burn them to a dvd or hack your tivo and extract them that way. It might be cheaper than buying a seperate TV Tuner card but I haven't really looked at what they cost.
Sorry for the bump...
I ended up getting a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 (http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/products/data_pvr150.html) at CompUSA. I wasn't going to get a WinTV card because of the price ($100), but at CompUSA I picked it up because it was marked at $70.
I went to take it up, and it rang up as $100. I said, "Whoa whoa whoa, this was marked $70."
They said it was a tag error, but since it was their error they gave it to me. :)
Works well, too. Today I watched an episode of DS9 while TNG was recording. :)
Tigerdirect has them all the way from $40 to $200.
I've got a spare PVR-250. :)
Quote from: Newby on July 14, 2005, 08:28 PM
I've got a spare PVR-250. :)
Want to send it to me and I can still return the 150 in the next 29 days? ;)
Quote from: MyndFyre on July 14, 2005, 09:42 PM
Quote from: Newby on July 14, 2005, 08:28 PM
I've got a spare PVR-250. :)
Want to send it to me and I can still return the 150 in the next 29 days? ;)
Beh. I should have specified. You have to fine-tune it while it's working.
It's practically impossible to tune.
I'll get around to looking for it, and if I find it, I'll get in contact with you. ;)