PVR for 4dtv
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I've been looking at that product too. There's a couple of really good threads on the AVSForum site you should look at.
I don't really see R5000hd as a true PVR. It seems more geared towards recording of digital content. Basically a really, really good VCR. It sort of does time-shifting, but it appears to be more of a manual process. You can't just sit there with one remote and channel surf and then press pause or rewind, unless your sitting at your computer watching TV. It also looks like to make the product work well, you'll want to have a MyHD card or another third party product for displaying the files it creates on your TV. It does automatically add files to the MyHD file list which would help with time-shifting, but I'm still thinking you have to do the channel flipping at the computer. Given enough time, a guy might be able to come up with a Girder solution to fix the problem though, and MyHD does produce a great picture. Another drawback I've seen is that it only records digital channels. It doesn't have any ability to record the analog channels. As more channels go digital this will become less of a problem though.
All that said, it does seem like a really neat product. I don't think you could ever get a better quality recording, and the files it outputs are accessible and can easily be edited and archived. They also just came out with a new product that doesn't require the HDD200 module for HD content, it works with the 922, 920, or 905, and are giving a $100 discount. For someone just getting into 4dtv like me, this reduces the cost of the R5000HD quit a bit as I wouldn't have to buy the HDD200.
Right now I'm trying a PVR solution with a Hauppauge PVR-350 card and GBPVR, but I'm still very tempted by the Nextcomm solution. Maybe using GBPVR for pausing live TV and R5000hd for recording.
I don't really see R5000hd as a true PVR. It seems more geared towards recording of digital content. Basically a really, really good VCR. It sort of does time-shifting, but it appears to be more of a manual process. You can't just sit there with one remote and channel surf and then press pause or rewind, unless your sitting at your computer watching TV. It also looks like to make the product work well, you'll want to have a MyHD card or another third party product for displaying the files it creates on your TV. It does automatically add files to the MyHD file list which would help with time-shifting, but I'm still thinking you have to do the channel flipping at the computer. Given enough time, a guy might be able to come up with a Girder solution to fix the problem though, and MyHD does produce a great picture. Another drawback I've seen is that it only records digital channels. It doesn't have any ability to record the analog channels. As more channels go digital this will become less of a problem though.
All that said, it does seem like a really neat product. I don't think you could ever get a better quality recording, and the files it outputs are accessible and can easily be edited and archived. They also just came out with a new product that doesn't require the HDD200 module for HD content, it works with the 922, 920, or 905, and are giving a $100 discount. For someone just getting into 4dtv like me, this reduces the cost of the R5000HD quit a bit as I wouldn't have to buy the HDD200.
Right now I'm trying a PVR solution with a Hauppauge PVR-350 card and GBPVR, but I'm still very tempted by the Nextcomm solution. Maybe using GBPVR for pausing live TV and R5000hd for recording.
The quality on the R5000 even with DirecTV is very nice... I imagine with the big dish it is outstanding. If you don't have the decoder though, you won't be able to actually watch anything that you aren't recording.
-MP
-MP
madpoet said:
I think that's only true of HD content. SD content should still be viewable without the HDD200.
I'm still trying to decide about the R5000 solution, but it would seem like there ought to be a way to rig something up that would allow for true live pause capability. One thing I was wondering about was the ability to change channels during a recording. Does R5000 continue to record whatever is coming through the stream or does the recording stop with the channel change? If recording continues it would seem like a person could just start a recording, start playback of the file in MyHD, and then until the recording was stopped you could pause and rewind live TV.
It would continue to record on a channel change until the stop time occurs or you run out of space. The file is open, so you can play it back after a 1 sec delay with a lot of different things like the Linkplayer2, Theatertek, MyHD, etc;
madpoet said:
MP, thanks for the info! It doesn't sound like it would be hard to make live pause happen then. Something could be rigged up with the r5000 command-line interface to have it generate a file. Slap together a little program to kick it off via a keyboard shortcut, and make a girder script to tie it in with a remote. Program a universal remote to do both the 4dtv and MyHD remote functions and voila! It wouldn't be quite as smooth as a Tivo, I'd have to manually start the file playing in MyHD, but I think I could live with it and the geek value would be very high. Now if I can figure out a similar process for analog channels using my Hauppauge card, I'll be in business.
I know there's a guy at AVS who uses the R5000 and multiple LP2s to essentially stream his HD around his house. Says it works great. It is a high geek factor to set up, but once established it works well.
FWIW, I emailed R5000 about their CBand solution and this was their reply:
"Hi,
The $100 off ONLY applies to the newly introduced Moto receiver modes,
not the HDD-200. If you don't care about viewing HD programs live then
you don't need the 200. thanks"
"Hi,
The $100 off ONLY applies to the newly introduced Moto receiver modes,
not the HDD-200. If you don't care about viewing HD programs live then
you don't need the 200. thanks"
If the MyHD solution works the way I think it will, you won't be able to watch HD live but it should only be a couple seconds behind. It's still not a solution that a lot of people would want to tackle though.
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