What do you use for DVR?

[hillview]

We have Verizon FiOS and it is $$ monthly to DVR. What do you have/do?
/hillary

[egoldber]

We have a DVR through our satellite provider, Dish Network.

[calv]

yes we have FiOS as well and LOVE it. Going on 2 years w/it now. Honestly we pay I think $150 for my cell, one main box and an extra room box. In other words you can only record on one box and the bedroom one is just so that you can watch the recorded shows. Make sense? Anyway, back to the all in one Verizon bundle. It also includes our home phone and ligtning fast internet conection. Obviously our bill is going up next month since DH just upgraded my phone to a G3 and now we have the $30 unlimited date/internet on the cell phone.

call and get the best deal. we got $200 GC to circut city for signing up. w/that money we got the PS3 and we use that as our blue ray player not as a gaming system. I just saw the add for the $200 in an add yesterday.

[mommylamb]

We have a DVR in the digital cable box from our cable provider (cox), which of course has a monthly rental fee. Probably not the best way to do it, but I'm too lazy to change.

[Andi98989]

Sage TV. It's a computer-based system where everything is stored on a computer hard drive but you watch through your TV and record through your cable/satellite system.

I'm married to an uber-geek. ;)

[SnuggleBuggles]

Fios too but I hate it as a DVR. Hate it. I loved, loved, loved my real Tivo that was integrated with our old DirectTV unit. Dh owes me big time for consenting to Fios. Tivo was so much better in every way as a DVR. Sadly we couldn't come up with a good solution for the choices we had available.

Beth

[wellyes]

Real Tivo since 2002. It's one of my favorite indulgences ever.

So you can't use Tivo with Fios? That would bite - DH wants Fios someday.

[DebbieJ]

Comcrap DVR.

[caleymama]

Tivo

We used to have DVR through the cable company but when we wanted to drop to basic cable a couple of years ago, we were told the DVR service needed to have a digital cable package. We switched to Tivo at that point.

[sunshine873]

A 5 year old TIVO box through DirecTV. We're thinking about upgrading to HD, which would mean using DirecTV's DVR. I guess they don't have the actual TIVO boxes anymore. Anyone have any feelings about their version?

[KpbS]

We have Directv--satellite service. We dvr everything we ever watch.

[SnuggleBuggles]

A 5 year old TIVO box through DirecTV. We're thinking about upgrading to HD, which would mean using DirecTV's DVR. I guess they don't have the actual TIVO boxes anymore. Anyone have any feelings about their version?

If you can wait, they are supposed to be doing an HD Tivo. DirectTV box "sometime this year." If only we could have gotten a good idea when/ if that was actually going to happen we would have waited.

I don't think any DVRs compare to Tivo.

I think there is some $, slightly complicated way to use Tivo with Fios but I'm not sure.

Beth

[egoldber]

I don't think any DVRs compare to Tivo.

Funny. We actually also have a Tivo (that we got for free.....long complicated reasons...) and I really dislike it. It could be that I am just so used to the Dish Network DVR, but I thought the Tivo was really complicated in comparison.

[KrisM]

Sage TV. It's a computer-based system where everything is stored on a computer hard drive but you watch through your TV and record through your cable/satellite system.

I'm married to an uber-geek. ;)

Similiar here, but we use BeyondTV.

No fees once it was set up. DH did build a computer just for the TV. I like that we can watch on our laptop easily too. And, if we're going on vacation, we can move shows from the TV computer to a laptop and bring them with us. Also, we have software that lets us remove commercials, so none of the recorded kids shows have commericals.

We can record a ridiculous number of hours of TV.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Similiar here, but we use BeyondTV.

No fees once it was set up. DH did build a computer just for the TV. I like that we can watch on our laptop easily too. And, if we're going on vacation, we can move shows from the TV computer to a laptop and bring them with us. Also, we have software that lets us remove commercials, so none of the recorded kids shows have commericals.

We can record a ridiculous number of hours of TV.

I'll have to look into this. We had so, so much storage space on our Tivo that I forgot how small our new capacity was. We lost every single show we had because we recorded the Olympics a few nights. We watched the Olympics every night and planned to catch up on our other shows when they were over. Now we can't and I am still bitter. The capacity stinks.

Beth

[NewMom2007]

We have a Tivo (on our secondary TV) which I love, love, love...but a Comcast DVR on our main TV..which I hate, hate, hate.

I need to evaluate what options we have here so I can buy an HD Tivo and get rid of the Comcast DVR. I can't say enough bad things about it :) The technology is terrible and the particular box we have seems to have a lag with the remote b/c I spend half my time trying to get to the right spot (lag more than usual, I should say - Comcast doesn't have the same technology as Tivo and doesn't find the end of the commercials/start of the show).

[Andi98989]

Similiar here, but we use BeyondTV.

No fees once it was set up. DH did build a computer just for the TV. I like that we can watch on our laptop easily too. And, if we're going on vacation, we can move shows from the TV computer to a laptop and bring them with us. Also, we have software that lets us remove commercials, so none of the recorded kids shows have commericals.

We can record a ridiculous number of hours of TV.

Yup, we have the same options through Sage, and we can actually use their placeshifter option to just watch it remotely off the server at home without having to load it onto a laptop. Love the commercial removal option, too. The intelligent recording options are great - we've gotten some cool stuff that way.

DH has a huge server that holds all our stuff. It's crazy.

[WatchingThemGrow]

so funny...we got a new (refurb) Tivo box (HD, 140hrs) like two weeks ago. I went to link to it, and they don't even sell it anymore. This new Premiere thing is all they have.

Anyway, we like it. We pay $10/mo for the service, $10/mo for cable and the box was $100.

[arivecchi]

2 TIVOs boxes that are at least 5 years old. Paid the $200 lifetime service for both.

[daniele_ut]

We have a Tivo that I :love5:. We are looking at doing a home network based system with a windows media server in the future, however. It would allow us to record everything to a computer hard drive and play it on any TV in the house. My boss uses it in his home and helped another coworker set one up as well.

[AnnieW625]

We have a DVR through our cable company Time Warner. I find it almost as easy to use as Tivo, but do not miss the random shows that Tivo would record for us. The cost to us is $12-$15 month, which was equal to what we would've been paying for Tivo monthly fees. The lifetime service fee went up a lot from 2003 to 2005 when we bought our box. It was reasonable like $200 (our friends bought theirs then) then all of a sudden was close to $400 and the box would've had to last at least 4 yrs. in order to break even so we just did the monthly service. It worked out fine for us as the Tivo corrupted our cable box at not quite 4 yrs. old.

No DirecTV no longer has Tivo boxes because the two got in a HUGE spat about 5 yrs. ago. I don't know or recall all of the details, but Tivo wouldn't let their dual tuner boxes work on DirecTV equipment. I wish I would've known that in 2005 when we bought our dual tuner box directly from Tivo; I felt a little duped by Tivo for them not disclosing that fact. Long story short we ended up switching from DirecTV to Time Warner about a year later when it became available in our area and our dual tuner box worked just fine until it corrupted our cable box.

[TwinFoxes]

Tivo all the way. We used to have Replay TV, Tivo's competition, but it stopped working and we figured Replay would be going the way of the Betamax soon and switched a few years back. It's great, but no better than Replay.



So you can't use Tivo with Fios? That would bite - DH wants Fios someday.

We have Fios and Tivo. I think to take advantage of the two-tuner capabilities (record one thing, watch another live) you have to have HD Tivo, which we do.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Tivo all the way. We used to have Replay TV, Tivo's competition, but it stopped working and we figured Replay would be going the way of the Betamax soon and switched a few years back. It's great, but no better than Replay.



We have Fios and Tivo. I think to take advantage of the two-tuner capabilities (record one thing, watch another live) you have to have HD Tivo, which we do.

I didn't want to hear that. I know my dh did a ton of research and thought through his decision knowing full well how I didn't want to give up Tivo. I'll have to press him on this. How much recording space do you have on your Tivo/ Fios?

Beth

[SnuggleBuggles]

We have a DVR through our cable company Time Warner. I find it almost as easy to use as Tivo, but do not miss the random shows that Tivo would record for us. The cost to us is $12-$15 month, which was equal to what we would've been paying for Tivo monthly fees. The lifetime service fee went up a lot from 2003 to 2005 when we bought our box. It was reasonable like $200 (our friends bought theirs then) then all of a sudden was close to $400 and the box would've had to last at least 4 yrs. in order to break even so we just did the monthly service. It worked out fine for us as the Tivo corrupted our cable box at not quite 4 yrs. old.

No DirecTV no longer has Tivo boxes because the two got in a HUGE spat about 5 yrs. ago. I don't know or recall all of the details, but Tivo wouldn't let their dual tuner boxes work on DirecTV equipment. I wish I would've known that in 2005 when we bought our dual tuner box directly from Tivo; I felt a little duped by Tivo for them not disclosing that fact. Long story short we ended up switching from DirecTV to Time Warner about a year later when it became available in our area and our dual tuner box worked just fine until it corrupted our cable box.


DirectTV and Tivo have been working to try and work together again, from what I understand. Everything I have read says that they will be putting out a product sometime this year.

Beth

[♥ms.pacman♥]

we use TiVo's..we have two of them, one in our bedroom and one in the living room. we've had TiVo for years..don't know how i could survive without it, even more so now with a baby in the house.

i think a dual-tuner is important (both of our Tivos have this) so that u can record 2 different things at once.

[KHF]

We have 4 Windows Media Centers. My darling husband got me a card where I can record 2 shows at one time and still watch something else. I do :heartbeat: him.

[KpbS]

Our HD dvr from Directv has almost 190 hrs. recorded right now (a mix of HD shows and non-HD) and has about 8% space remaining. It is a huge amount of space. We can record 2 programs at once. I've been really happy with it.

[slworld]

We have a DVR through our satellite provider, Dish Network.

:yeahthat:

[KrisM]

Yup, we have the same options through Sage, and we can actually use their placeshifter option to just watch it remotely off the server at home without having to load it onto a laptop. Love the commercial removal option, too. The intelligent recording options are great - we've gotten some cool stuff that way.

DH has a huge server that holds all our stuff. It's crazy.

To watch off your server, you'd need to have internet available, correct? My parents don't have it up north at all (internet). Or is there something I'm missing?

[ett]

Similiar here, but we use BeyondTV.

No fees once it was set up. DH did build a computer just for the TV. I like that we can watch on our laptop easily too. And, if we're going on vacation, we can move shows from the TV computer to a laptop and bring them with us. Also, we have software that lets us remove commercials, so none of the recorded kids shows have commericals.

We can record a ridiculous number of hours of TV.

We have BeyondTV too.

[KrisM]

I'll have to look into this. We had so, so much storage space on our Tivo that I forgot how small our new capacity was. We lost every single show we had because we recorded the Olympics a few nights. We watched the Olympics every night and planned to catch up on our other shows when they were over. Now we can't and I am still bitter. The capacity stinks.

Beth

You're only limited by the size of hard drive. We have a 800GB and a 1.5 TB drive and can, seriously, record around 2000 hours of TV. Yes, 2000. We have something like 80 each of what the kids enjoy - Phineas and Ferb, Nihao Kai Lan, Mickey Mouse, Little Einsteins, Clifford, etc. We recorded most of the Olympics and still have about 40 hours of it hanging around.

We own the Scooby Doo DVDs and DH put them on the computer too, so we don't have to pull out the DVDs to watch a show.

I often wonder WHY we need so much, but it really limits what the kids watch, since they don't have to watch live and have a big choice of episodes to pick from. They don't have to watch 1 episode over and over.

[baymom]

We have a DVR through our satellite provider, Dish Network.

:yeahthat: We've been pleased with it, though have nothing else to compare with.

[tarahsolazy]

We have a circa 1999 or maybe 2000 TiVo box. Its so old, you can't record one thing and watch something else, except something on TiVo. But I think I paid $100 for it, and $200 for lifetime service, so we are getting our money's worth. Since we don't have an HD TV, and we only own one TV, it works great for us. I really like TiVo, its been problem free for us for a decade.

[BabyMine]

Me - Cable HDDVR but switching soon.

DH- Windows Media Center on our server.

[mrshalco]

We've had Tivo for years! We LOVE tivo!!! We also have Fios. When we switched to them - I made sure we could still use our tivo box. They said we could and came and set us up with a Fios HD box (with DVR). Well, our Tivo wouldn't work with it so we returned the HD box with DVR and got just the Basic Cable box with no HD. Again, everything worked well for a couple of months until they (fios) changed from analog and digital to an all digital format. We had a dual-tuner that relied on the analog stations to work and when they switched, we lost the capability to record two shows at once. That was VERY frustrating!!! We decided to keep our existing Tivo and suffer through only having 1 tuner ;) When our Tivo finally dies....we will then upgrade to the HD Tivo and switch back to HD Fios.

[AnnieW625]

We have a circa 1999 or maybe 2000 TiVo box. Its so old, you can't record one thing and watch something else, except something on TiVo. But I think I paid $100 for it, and $200 for lifetime service, so we are getting our money's worth. Since we don't have an HD TV, and we only own one TV, it works great for us. I really like TiVo, its been problem free for us for a decade.

You don't want to know how many times I have kicked myself for not getting it way back then when I was in college and first found out about it in one of my media classes. Every so often will run into someone who has a box that old and it's still running just fine. I think QC went down once it became big.

[hillview]

Similiar here, but we use BeyondTV.

No fees once it was set up. DH did build a computer just for the TV. I like that we can watch on our laptop easily too. And, if we're going on vacation, we can move shows from the TV computer to a laptop and bring them with us. Also, we have software that lets us remove commercials, so none of the recorded kids shows have commericals.

We can record a ridiculous number of hours of TV.

Thanks am going to try this!
/hillary

[LexyLou]

I'm so impressed some of you still have original TIVO boxes that are working! We had a first generation box from 2000 but it died on us about 4 years ago + the original boxes you can only record one show at a time.

We have the DVR from DirecTV right now. I'm happy with it.

[KrisM]

We have a circa 1999 or maybe 2000 TiVo box. Its so old, you can't record one thing and watch something else, except something on TiVo. But I think I paid $100 for it, and $200 for lifetime service, so we are getting our money's worth. Since we don't have an HD TV, and we only own one TV, it works great for us. I really like TiVo, its been problem free for us for a decade.

I also have a 2000 Panasonic ShowStopper, which ran ReplayTV. I paid about $150 for it and it included a lifetime subscription, too. I loved that thing! Ours likely still works, but I have no idea if ReplayTV is still around or not.

[hillview]

You're only limited by the size of hard drive. We have a 800GB and a 1.5 TB drive and can, seriously, record around 2000 hours of TV. Yes, 2000.

Kris could you provide a suggested computer config (or an actual computer) to purchase for this sort of effort? Or maybe your DH :)
Thanks!
/hillary

[Penny's Pappa]

We use the one provided by our cable provider AT&T U-verse. We also pay for an extra box so we can view shows in a separate room simultaneously. The best thing, though, is that the box has 4 tuners in it so we can record up to 4 shows simultaneously. Nice.

[wellyes]

We have a circa 1999 or maybe 2000 TiVo box. Its so old, you can't record one thing and watch something else, except something on TiVo. But I think I paid $100 for it, and $200 for lifetime service, so we are getting our money's worth. Since we don't have an HD TV, and we only own one TV, it works great for us. I really like TiVo, its been problem free for us for a decade.

I have one about that old. So old it ran on the phone line. When we got rid of our land line, I mailed it to my parents 8 states away & it is still chugging away just fine.

[salsah]

we use media center. free (well, no monthly fees) and easy to use. it may not be as robust as others (i don't know because i don't have experience with any others) but it suits our needs fine.

[kozachka]

We are currently using the DVR provided by AT&T Uverse. They recently increased our monthly fee, so I wanted to switch to a fewer channels, but I would have had to pay a fee DVR, making it about the same $$ out of pocket. DH spends a lot of time overseas so I've been promising him to set TV up in such a way that he'd be able to watch it from Europe. BeyondTV, SageTV and Slingbox are all viable contenders. Can any users of these services tell me about pros and cons of each/the device they use?

ETA: Here's a dated but still useful comparison of SageTV and BeyondTV (http://www.pcworld.com/article/126104/apps_turn_your_computer_into_a_powerful_dvr.html) by PC World. And for space shifting, which is apparently the term for devices like Slingbox, there are several option, hardware-based such as Slingbox and Monsoon HAVA. Still can't decide what to get for DH.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Kris and Andi-

Dh wants to know what cable or satellite provider you use, if you use one.

Beth