Kyanar: In that case, would I need a second LNB? A friend of mine indicated that he's managed to get Freeview and Sky working off the same LNB/dish but I'd always thought they were mutually incompatible (different satellite or something).
What you might have heard is that when Optus D1 was launched someone (it's never been announced who) screwed up the polarisation of the antennas on some of the NZ beams for Sky, as a temporary measure they used some of the AU/NZ beams on a different pol.
If in those days if you were watching a channel on V pol on sky and H pol on freeview then one of them wouldn't work.
All sky and freeview transponders are now on H pol so you can run them together quite happily off the same dish and lnb.
Ease of use doesn't make your list, I take it you live alone or belong to a family of hardcore geeks? I found that most functions for a custom setup took about 15 explanations before they really sank in - in other words, I usually ended up being the voice-controlled remote. So far I have found Tivo lessons only need to be repeated 3 times. If I really can't be bothered then I can direct them to the 7-day 0800 support number. Good luck getting anyone at HN or WD to answer at 7pm on a Sunday.
You can pretty much copy and play anything you like between PC and Tivo as long as the format is supported. Once the files are in the right place then anyone can figure out how to transfer and play them. DRM amounts to a "please respect copyright" onscreen para.
CASPA is a lame duck with its tiny library and strait-jacket DRM, but I consider it an intriguing add-on that may be improved in future - not a key selling point.
For someone who tends to watch then erase, you must really hate ads to expend all that effort on stripping them out. Tivo may not have a skip button, but it doesn't take long to become a dab hand at catching the start of the programme at triple fast forward.
The only thing Tivo doesn't provide from your list is Sky TV which you have conveniently excluded from your costing. If you have mates, can get late passes and don't have clinical agoraphobia then live rugby is available for the cost of a pint per game. Living without a Sky subscription is not just a good idea for Tivo - it's a good idea for life.
1. Yes, I do admit I like to tinker and some parts of the setup can't pass muster on the "ease of use front" <blush>. However, the basic setup is Sky Box -->DVD Recorder [split] --> TV & amplifier. The GF, who is probably one of the least technically literate perople on earth, has mastered that just fine. Only the sky remote and the DVR remote to manage (it also controls volume on the telly) and after a couple of teething issues, she doesn't grumble about that anymore.
2. I am interested if the only copy protection on TIVO is a warning message. I had been advised that as part of the spec the networks had the ability to broadcast shows with flags so that they couldn't be transferred?
3. For the record, I don't have agoraphobia and do go to the pub with mates, incl for sports matches. However, I like my Sky subscription and for me it is worth it - esp channel 95 (financial news) which is useful for me keeping up woth work-related stuff, and the History channel. Also, I am not going to be going the pub (often) for the 3am northern hemisphere games. While you may not regard Sky as value for money, each to their own. I left out the sky costing as it is irrelevant to the choice - if I got TIVO I would keep Sky, so the cost is the same under each scenario.
4. Yes, I agree, CASPA is a bit of a joke. Tiny library and offensive DRM.
5. I don't so much dislike ads as detest them! I virtually never see them. Even most of the material I watch live, like the 6pm news, I tend to push record on the DVD recorder, and then start watching them 20 mins later. The little blue "skip" button is much better than having to fast forward, and ad skipping was the clincher in the GF acceptance stakes for the setup. I watch the 6pm news in about 42 minutes, finish at 7pm as the actual broadcast finishes, see no ads, and reclaim 18 minutes of the day. Most other channels, incl Sky, get the same treatment. I was away over the holidays and the TV where I was just connected to antenna and I had to watch the ads for the news and weather - it was painful!
6. I do tend to watch and erase, although I burn some films to disc. Now that I have the WDTV player and a decent Harddrive connected, and can encode films, I am tempted to start building a film archive. One of the guys at work has been doing that for more than 10 years (and is now migrating VHS recordings from the 90s to disc), and being able to pick from over 1,000 films, an a network and wirelessly available from anywhere in the house, is an appealing proposition.
freitasm: TiVo Desktop... It won't allow TiVo folder to be a network share or mapped drive. Bad if you have tons of content on a server.
I have read that you can add a shortcut to the share in your Tivo folder, haven't tried it yet but. Plan to spend hours making your library TV-remote-navigable if it works :)
I tried that just a couple of days ago, and found it still wouldn't allow me to save to a network drive. I've resorted to saving to a small local folder and moving the files to the network drive later.
The one major issue I have with the TiVo is that none of the unofficial tools work with the AU/NZ version. My plan when I got the TiVo had been to replace my old XBox XBMC unit and stream to the TiVo. I run only Linux and OpenBSD at home, and the TiVo Desktop software does not run under Wine. I looked aoround and from what I read it looked like there were excellent open source tools available to do everything I wanted. Unfortunately, since getting the TiVo I've found out that the AU/NZ TiVo uses MPEG-TS encoding, and not MPEG-PS like the rest of the world.
I tried several programs for downloading content from the TiVo:
Galleon (Couldn't download content, and the GoBack function only worked with TiVO encoded .TiVo content)
KMTTG (Can download mpeg-ts but can't decode, because tivodecode doesn't work)
tivodecode (Only works with MPEG-PS content, and it seems that AU/NZ TiVos use MPEG-TS)
TiVi Web interface (Has links for both MPEG-PS and MPEG-TS streams, but only MPEG-TS links work. MPEG-PS links download approx 15k then timeout. See tivodecode.)
I also wanted to transfer content back to the TiVo for viewing:
Streambaby (Looked like it was working, but wouldn't stream any content. Apparently this is related to the MPEG-TS encoding)
Galleon (the GoBack feature seems to work, but I haven't been able to get it to transcode anything that's not already in TiVo format)
PyTiVo (Works well for transferring back to TiVo for viewing, and was simple and painless to get running under Ubuntu Karmic)
So, in short, for the AU/NZ markets they've changed the basic functionality of the software, and as a result none of the Linux based tools work anymore.
compost: (snip) 4. I would like each tuner to have a "home channel" that they go back to after a period of inactivity, so that I don't have to season-pass (and later clean up) daily shows like the news that I often miss the start of.
Next best thing is to do a Season's Pass for the news and set 'keep at most 1 episode'. Works quite well.
compost: (snip) 4. I would like each tuner to have a "home channel" that they go back to after a period of inactivity, so that I don't have to season-pass (and later clean up) daily shows like the news that I often miss the start of.
Next best thing is to do a Season's Pass for the news and set 'keep at most 1 episode'. Works quite well.
I do this, works a treat.
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I know there is a way, but apparently it is very complicated.
I can't see how with no imputs or the option to record anything other than channels it picks up.
Are yout thinking of TiVo in the US? I know from the beginning they could record satellite or cable, it had [or at least, used to have] an attached IR device which would change the satellite receiver to a specific channel at a pre-programmed time and the TiVo would start recording, presumeably through an input.
Damon
I read ages ago that it could be possible with a minor hack or something. This was when I was investigating a Media PC/MySky/ or Tivo Option.
You can use a Series 1 TiVo for recording Sky, as they have AV inputs on the back. They aren't too hard to set up and are much cheaper. Plus you can record analog UHF/VHF as well (it switches between the inputs). If in Chch I can give you a hand.
Righto as an FYI to this post and also I will post under another subject, kmttg, decrypting, ad editing and spitting out mkv or MP4 is working now. Listed some items in the tivocommunity forums and the author of kmttg made a couple of tweaks to the software to allow the specific requirements of NZ tivos ... watch this space and ill post how to do it tonight.
Tuataras were once feared by Māori as the messengers of Whiro, god of death and disaster. Today, tuataras are regarded as a taonga (treasure), and as the kaitiaki (guardian) of the trails to the realms of the mind and spirit that give humans life.
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KMTTG (Can download mpeg-ts but can't decode, because tivodecode doesn't work)
tivodecode (Only works with MPEG-PS content, and it seems that AU/NZ TiVos use MPEG-TS)
Get the latest version of kmttg and there's a switch to transfer in TS format, there's no free decoding solution that works with our H.264 content uet but VideoReDo 4 has H.264 support and works a treat for decoding the TS streams.
Tuataras were once feared by Māori as the messengers of Whiro, god of death and disaster. Today, tuataras are regarded as a taonga (treasure), and as the kaitiaki (guardian) of the trails to the realms of the mind and spirit that give humans life.
My Tech : Samsung 3d LED UA46C7000 - Samsung 3d Blu-Ray HT5530W - Plex for Samsung Widget - XBOX360 Slim - Windows 7 Workhorse - Windows Homeserver - Plex Media Server for Windows
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