PVR or DVR Help needed.

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:33 pm

I'm looking to buy a PVR or DVR I would like to get one that will work with Cable and that I can just plug a Harddrive into it nd record TV Show's with can anyone tell me what ones work really good.

I found this one but it means I have to Run Cables into my PC and I don't want to do that if I can help it,the one that looks really good is the 1212 Model.

I know I most likely posted this in the wrong section but I was not sure where to post it.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/prods_hd-recorders.html

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 8:49 am

That is a good PVR, Haven't tried it but hear it's a good one. A PVR hooks into your computer and utilizes your computers drive to record to. A DVR is a stand alone unit with it's own hard drive. A DVR is much easier to setup, but has limitations, and usually only records in one format. A PVR requires more setup, but you can do alot more with it, and depending on if your wanting to share your recordings then I would go with the PVR. Now for the final pro's and cons. Some show's like major sporting events will have a do not record flag embedded into the metadata that is being streamed. A DVR will usually comply with the do not record flag whereas a PVR since controlled by the computer can override this, and that comes down to what software you are using. and here's a link to what i believe is the best free tuner software, well link is to their forums which has the answer's to any PVR related questions..
http://forums.gbpvr.com/

and if you cant find an answer there this is a treasure trove.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/pvrs-vcrs/

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 11:24 pm

kudos for that post james +1 for you. i even learned a few things from it!

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:44 am

Thanks RA

When I first bought my tuner card, it took me a good half day to get it up an running, and it was putting a 50% load on my CPU. Over the course of a month or so I finally had it running cherry and only using around 7% cpu. Having the right encoders and codec is probably the most important thing, and each system is different but for me ffmpeg does the job. Aside from the video stream many stations will stream 2 to 3 audio streams and the closed captioned data. So 1080p shows are streaming at or above 13 Mbs which is going to put a GB on your HD every 10 minutes. Best to have 2 or more internal HD's to properly run a PVR. Or at least if your running a single drive not to be running a backup while recording a show. Laughing

Now after you have recorded the show if you plan to share it the fun begins, you got the cut the commercials , then re encode it from the big ass .ts file into something the masses will download like an .avi or .mp4 or . mkv
Now it don't have to be all that difficult if you just want to watch and record regular shows and don't plan to share them then windows media center is the easiest to setup and also has the best tv guide for free. It will detect and work with most PVR's all you need is to download the driver and media center will do the rest. 3 down sides of media center is it ads DRM to the stream and it will not record things that have a do not record flag. Also it is a resource hog.
So if that did'nt scare ya off, then i highly recommenced a PVR, or tuner as I call em. It was a hobby of mine for a while, till I moved to dead zone.