Why we can't record our TV shows (was: In case you have not seen it.....Linux Media Center)

[Ben Scott]

On 3/26/07, Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:
> As a TiVo owner and former DirecTV subscriber, I couldn't figure out why
> people would get a DirecTiVo instead of a stand alone.

  As everyone else has said, better quality.  The DTiVo units stored
the digital MPEG stream right from the satellite feed.  No loss of
quality by compressing, decompressing, compressing again.  Also, at
the time, the DTiVo was the only TiVo on the market that had dual
tuners.

> The standalone lets you transfer between 2 TiVos or to a PC that you can
> burn to DVD.  The standalone can run HME java apps and view weather, movie
> listings, etc.

  When the DTiVo first came out, none of that was available on the
TiVo platform.  All it did was record shows and play them back.  When
TiVo's HMO (Home Media Option, the name from back when it was a
pay-extra option) was first announced, a lot of people ass-umed that
DirecTV's promises of support meant something.

  Now that DirecTV has finished shafting all their the DirecTiVo
customers, they know better, of course.  Hindsight and all that.

> Of course, my next TiVo will be MythTV.  Anyone got a way for them to play
> .TiVo files directly?  Or script Myth to run tivodecode to convert to mpg
> before playing? :-)

  Why not just do a one-time batch tivodecode of the .tivo files to
.mpeg files?  That's what I did.

-- 
"One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / And the next it's rolling over me"
                                                  -- Rush, "Far Cry"