Buck Turgidson wrote:
My recommendation to anyone
wanting to invest in a new recorder, would be to spend a little
bit more,
and get a HDD recorder, with a DVD recorder built in. That way,
the HDD
section does all of the time shift day to day donkey work, and if
you need
to get a recording physically off the HDD, you can archive it to
disc via
the DVD writer.


Can you buy an HDD recorder that doesn't require a monthly fee to
Tivo or
the like? I just don't like the idea of being beholden to someone
for
whatever amount a month.

Yep, got one running right now recording '24' in HD to be watched
later. It's using an ATI HDTV Wonder (got 3 of them). The MPEG files
can be played across the network in real time in HD. The 'main'
computer is the one connected to the DLP set via DVI. BUT, this rig
only records Over The AIr (free) HD / SD digital TV. The computers are
not anything special. 2 Athlon XP 3200s on Gigabyte with nVidia chipset
boards. The first DVR was a Sempron 2500 with 512 meg RAM which worked
just fine. You want big disc drives for this. I wouldn't bother with
120 gig as an hour of HD (19 megabit) will use 8 gigs.

There are many tuner cards available from PCI to USB. If you haven't
tried DTV yet, you're in for a treat.

GG