Best PVR options for taking recordings on the road

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Wazza69

66 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

#193466 11-Mar-2016 22:53

Hi,

I’m in the UK helping my Dad in NZ. He travels a lot and would like a Freeview HD solution where he can take his Freeview recordings with him to watch. He currently has a Sony 4k TV (last years I think) and a Dish TV T2200 PVR. It works fine at home but the AES encryption prevents moving recordings to another device.

Any suggestions would be really welcome. He often works remote so cant just use streaming etc.

Thanks

turb

881 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1511713 12-Mar-2016 06:46

A small windows 7 laptop running Windows Media Centre (WMC).

The tv signal could either come from a usb tuner (don't know much about them, but from the posts on GZ I think they might be cheaper, but less reliable) or from a HD Homerun (an external tuner that can attach straight to a pc with a network cable, or all the pc's on your network - they are excellent).

The laptop would sit there quietly doing all the recordings he wants, without interfering with his normal setup. When he wants to go on the road, he can either plug it into the motel's tv with an hdmi cable, or if he's literally on the road, watch it on the laptop screen.

And of course a pc will play every other format of video, using the awesome, free VLC player. And stream if he does have decent wifi.

WMC is set up so you have to watch on the same device that you record on. There is software out there that claims to crack it, but I've never tried it.

The laptop needs to be win7 because wmc stopped being free with win8, and isn't easily available for win 10.

Recordings don't take up as much space as you'd think, and you can set up wmc to manage the space for you. Say you're recording the news, you can set it to only keep the most recent recording etc.

I have 25 things recorded on my HTPC, mostly HD. They take up 91GB of space.

If you're interested in taking this route, head over to the HTPC forum for more advice!

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

Lenovo

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Rikkitic

Awrrr
18586 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1511753 12-Mar-2016 09:22

I think (others will know) that all Freeview-approved devices cripple your freedom to record and transfer. I use an inexpensive non-approved UHF box that records anything to an external usb drive in HD with 5.1 DD and no restrictions. It is just a standard file in a .ts container that can be played, copied, transferred, etc., anywhere. I often record directly to flash drives if I just want a single programme in a convenient format. The trade-off is no EPG data so recordings have to be manually set up or started.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

B1GGLZ

1961 posts

Uber Geek

#1512148 12-Mar-2016 22:15

Rikkitic:

I think (others will know) that all Freeview-approved devices cripple your freedom to record and transfer. I use an inexpensive non-approved UHF box that records anything to an external usb drive in HD with 5.1 DD and no restrictions. It is just a standard file in a .ts container that can be played, copied, transferred, etc., anywhere. I often record directly to flash drives if I just want a single programme in a convenient format. The trade-off is no EPG data so recordings have to be manually set up or started.

My Panasonic Recorder (Freeview approved) doesn't cripple my freedom to record and transfer. I can easily transfer recorded programs (.tts file) to my PC via my network using drag and drop in Win10. I can then edit them in VideoReDo to remove all the ads and save as a .ts file which I can play or stream virtually anywhere. Once stored on my PC's external portable HDD any other PC or Media Player is capable of playing them.

Wazza69

66 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

#1512164 13-Mar-2016 00:16

Many thanks guys, I'll share it with Dad.

B1gglz - Would you be able to confirm your recorder model no?

Thanks

B1GGLZ

1961 posts

Uber Geek

#1512184 13-Mar-2016 09:17

Wazza69:

Many thanks guys, I'll share it with Dad.

B1gglz - Would you be able to confirm your recorder model no?

Thanks

BWT720 but it's no longer available. New models should be the same though.

old3eyes

9111 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#1512235 13-Mar-2016 12:02

Rikkitic:

I think (others will know) that all Freeview-approved devices cripple your freedom to record and transfer. I use an inexpensive non-approved UHF box that records anything to an external usb drive in HD with 5.1 DD and no restrictions. It is just a standard file in a .ts container that can be played, copied, transferred, etc., anywhere. I often record directly to flash drives if I just want a single programme in a convenient format. The trade-off is no EPG data so recordings have to be manually set up or started.

Does it also do HD over component??

Regards,

Old3eyes