A Life Most Ordinary

Currently I am running a TiVo, a Moxi (from Charter), and a Media Center PC…call it extended field testing.

All of these assume that you will be watching your TV through the PVR, to get around the tuner cap you can always split your cable and put one into the Ant In on your TV to watch Live TV while recording.

TiVo:

Price: 40hr Tivo=$50 if you get a year subscription for $149 = $200

Pros: Web-based interface I schedule programs to record from work.

It also keeps itself full based on your preferences it records shows that it “thinks” you may want, the more you use it the better it gets.

Can synch it to a computer and download .Tivo files to play in WMP and the sort

Basically with TiVo you will never watch live TV again.

Clean UI

Cons: All except the DirectTiVo have a single tuner…one show can be either watched or recorded at a time.

Transfers to a computer take a while and are usually of pretty bad quality.

Moxi (Charter’s DVR)

Price: $3/mo. More than digital cable for the boxes and now $15.95/mo for service. = ~$228

Pros: Dual Tuners…watch/record or record/record

Very Nice UI

No commitment

Cons: Keeps getting more expensive

No way to export programs outside of burning to a DVR or connecting to a computer

Lots of issues with what is on the screen, occasionally weird lines and colors.

Media Center PC

Price: Dual Tuner Video Card ~$160

Single Tuner Card~$90

Windows MCE~$120

If you are lucky the bundled software wont suck and you are good to go.

I'm using MythTV which is like $50 is like the UI for Moxi and TiVo mashed together.

<$330

Pros: Already on your computer for moving to PSP,iPod,Laptop…etc.

Runs in the background without stealing too many system resources.

Some software will let you login online and schedule

Upgradeable

No Commitment

No price changes

Cons: Its on your computer

Need a Media Center Extender($250) to stream to a TV

Need an extra computer to run this, if you arnet willing to give up the computer.

What I did was

Bought a $500 eMachines T6524 with WMC a 200GB hard drive, Video Card not included

Swapped Harddrives with my existing PC

Bought a single tuner Video Card from ebay for $50

And now I have a PC sitting out in the living room with MCE that acts like a PVR. (Video 1 is cable and Video 2 is the computer)

I am left with a brand new computer running XP that I can use to remote desktop into the other computer and make any changes that I need or watch TV on if no one is using the TV in the other room.