Recording digital cable?

[Boomyal]

I have no doubt fallen behind in these areas. We have digital cable TV that uses a digital converter supplied by Comcast (the cable company) Our TV is an older rear projection Toshiba.

We currently have a BluRay DVD hooked up to show DVD's and do instant streaming. We also have a VCR that that is currently not hooked up to the TV. I would assume that if I just wanted to play a tape I could hook it to one of the several TV auxiliary ports.

Herein lies my total ignorance. It became obvious that to hook up the VCR to record, considering the digital cable converter, would be a wiring and operational nightmare. Thus entered my head, TIVO. I know nothing about this digital recording or the available devices to do it with.

Is that what I would want to be able to record and possibly watch something else at the same time?

I guess that like the VCR, a TiVo device would need to be wired to the input (cable converter) but still wired to the TV in a manner that you could watch what you record.

I am told by Comcast that even if I had a digital capable TV or other device, I would still need to use their converter or all the channel numbers would be goofy and not reflect the channels listed in the local guides.

Someone out there must have experience with this. I'd be overjoyed at anything you could share.

 

[smclear]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Ask Comcast for a DVR. Problem solved.

 

[Augoose]

Re: Recording digital cable?

X2 on the DVR which can be supplied by the cable provider or bought by you. My wife has become absolutely addicted to "DVR-ing" shows and we haven't even come close to filling it up the storage space. Most of them have at least two "tv tuners", which interprets the incoming signal thereby allowing you to both record a tv show on one channel and watch another show live on another channel at the same time. You can also pause, start over or rewind live tv along with some other nice options. If you are really motivated, you can purchase a DVR from a third party which will then let you save your recorded shows to your computer, functionality that most cable company provided DVR's won't do unless you trick the system. My Time Warner cable box has USB and SATA connectors but they are disabled. To get around that I run the outbound video feed from the DVR box to the inbound tv tuner card in my laptop which then interprets the signal the DVR box is sending as a normal cable signal. The laptop then records the show and I convert it to AVI or another HD video format.

 

[ktbarrentine]

Re: Recording digital cable?

We dumped comcast sometime ago because I was on the road quite a bit and they had weird rules for putting accounts on standby. I hated paying a monthly fee for a bunch of channels I never watched, and then had to continue paying (contract) even when I was on the road. Long story short... Went to antenna-digital HD and TIVO. Sure, i have to pay 20 a month for the TIVO service, but I am very happy with it. Able to stream Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. and I get upwards of 50 digital channels free over the air (including major networks, Public televsion, . Plus, I can work the TIVO box from my Iphone, IPad, IPod. Can program recordings from my blackberry. Just my 2c...

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Boom,

As others have said, a DVR is going to be the best way to go to accomplish what your after, I tried to circumvent the satellite by building a media center computer with a duel tuner in it, and was still not able to achieve what I wanted, so I negotiated with the satellite company and got a DVR for free and only pay an extra dollar a month for the next year to have it. I fully understand the desire to do things my way, but sometimes it is just best to do it their way.

 

[tomdinwv]

Re: Recording digital cable?

The DVR box from your cable co. is the way to go. We have one and we use it all the time. Nice thing about getting it from your cable co, is if there is a problem, they will replace it. We had to do that one time and it was free of charge and no questions asked. Some cable companies will even do the swap at your house. We also have the Netflix setup. We have a Vizio blueray player a Wii and a Roku box that all stream Netflix and other services. The Roku box is really cool because it's wireless.

I vote for the DVR box from your cable provider.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Ok, I understand that the best solution would be the cable company.

I would have thought that this would have been something that was available on the open market but I will give the cable company a call and see what they say.

Thanks all!

 

[smclear]

Re: Recording digital cable?

I don't think you can buy DVR's off the shelf anymore. I bought a DVR from Toshiba about 6(?) years ago. I really don't remember when, but it was when they first came out. Bought another one a year or two later for a Christmas present for my parents. Shortly after that, they disappeared. I think it had something to do with a patent issue with Tivo. Not really sure.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Here locally Best Buy carries several models of DVR type machines.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Yesterday I had a conversation with a rep at Video Only. He confirmed that the only practical option for digital cable recording was to go with the cable company. They (Video Only) had no equipment to do what was necessary to seamlessly watch and record off of digital cable. He stated that when the cable company went digital, that killed the DVR market.

The other option was TiVo. However using it eliminates your ability to get the cable 'on demand' feature. You also have to get some kind of card from the cable company to be able to use the TiVo equipment and, of course, you have to pay TiVo a monthly fee.

With Comcast, for an additional $13.99 per month, I can get their recorder, many (unspecified at this moment) additional channels AND a two times increase in internet speed. The extra charge gives you what they call their Premium Bundle.

Now this does not sound so bad until you realize that you (we) are already paying them $174.00/mo for TV, Internet and two telephone lines. That would bring the total to over $190.00 mo. That is more than we pay for our utilities. Talk about a racket!!!

 

[joed]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Generic DVR(digital video recorder) or PVR (personal Video Recorder) are not common. Most of them are linked to service like DISH, DirectTV or your cable company. They contain a hard rive just like in your PC and record to the drive. You should be able to actually purchase one instead of renting.
It is also possible to turn your PC into a PVR.

 

[smclear]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Here locally Best Buy carries several models of DVR type machines.

That's true, but don't those also require you to purchase service from someone i.e. dish, directtv, tivo? Again, I'm not positive about that. The one I purchased years ago, is like a VCR, except it has a hard drive. It also has a DVD player/burner so I can burn anything I record to a DVD. I don't need to "purchase" any service. I do run the cable (Brighthouse) through it, but I can also just hook up rabbit ears and get over the air stuff.

 

[ezmobee]

Re: Recording digital cable?

Years ago I had a home-brewed DVR running on a desktop computer with a TV tuner card and software called BeyondTV. It was friggin' fantastic. Analog cable went away and killed it. There is an option now to do that again using a cable-card TV tuner http://cetoncorp.com/ It's a pretty slick unit and I think can record up to 4 shows at once. Last I checked BeyondTV is no longer supported but rival SageTV is. Now that I have small children I don't watch enough TV to warrant the cost of building a new system but if I did, that'd be the way I'd go. I sure do miss my old setup.