My Digital Video Recorder (DVR)

What is a DVR (aka PVR)?

A Digital Video Recorder (DVR), also known as a Personal Video Recorder (PVR), is a piece of equipment that is designed for recording TV shows, much like people used to do with VRC cassettes in old days. A DVR usually allows you to record a program that you would like to see, but it also usually allows a viewer to pause Live TV so that they can do something else. I will say that I do the first more often than the second. This is a great piece of equipment for anyone that loves to watch a favorite show but can not always be there to see it. Also, when you are not watching TV live (but either after pausing it or something prerecorded) you can fast forward. You can fast forward through commercials or through really bad Saturday Night Live skits that are just dragging on too long.

What is Tivo?

Tivo is a specific example of a DVR, more information can be found at their website (www.Tivo.com). Cindy's family has been a big supporter of Tivo for a long time now, and after getting one for christmas, Cindy and I have been using it a lot. Tivo is a set top box that you put with all your other audio visual equipment like your DVD player and VCR. This makes it really nice for putting in the living room. Tivo communicates back with the Tivo company (either via Ethernet or Phone line) to get program listings that are then used for scheduling programs to record. (The network link also allows several Tivo units to transfer files between them and now it allows your computer to download Tivo files.)

So that is what Tivo is, but how well does it work? Personally I liked the way that it works fairly well. First of all, there is the favorites manager. This allows you to choose and rank the programs that you want to record in order of importance. The Tivo unit will then try to record as many of the programs as possible, skipping programs with lower rankings in order to get programs with higher rankings. This is done very well! Secondly, the interface is very well done. It is responsive to the remote and is laid out fairly well.

What is Tivo missing? First of all, there is no way that I can find to actually determine what percentage of the internal hard disk is currently used. Being a computer person, I would rather know that 78% of the disk is used instead of the Tivo way, it will just eventually say that it can not record anything because the drive is full or delete items that you marked to be deleted when space is needed (but it does not tell you when those programs will be deleted). Secondly, from what I know, if you have two Tivo units, they do not share a common favorites list. This would allow the two tuners to work together to record shows that may conflict because of time overlap. Finally, there is no way to load video files from your computer to view on your Tivo box (MP3's and JPG images can be viewed).

What is SageTV?

SageTV is a software that allows you to run a DVR on your own computer, more information can be found on their site (www.SageTV.com). SageTV is not a complete solution by itself, in order to run SageTV, you also need a hardware TV turner card for your computer. Me personally, I like using the Hauppauge TV turner cards because they do all their encoding of the files in the hardware thus not draining system resources. Like Tivo, you can pause live TV, record programs that you want to watch and many other features. The major difference is that SageTV is much more customizable and flexible. First of all, there is a large support community that has created several interface designs for SageTV that range from something like looks like Tivo, to something like Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) to SageTV's own interface. One of the other major benefits is that SageTV will play AVI files from your computer in your current interface. Finally, the best feature of all is the ability to use SageTV over the network, I will explain more..

With SageTV, you can have one computer that runs as the TV sever for your house, this is the computer with some large hard drives and your TV tuner cards (which you can have many of). So this computer sits in some computer room or basement, humming away making all sorts of noise. Then you have other computers around the house connected to various TV's that are running just the SageTV client program. This program connects to the server and gets all the data it needs from this computer. This includes being able to add programs to be recorded as well as viewing both Live TV, pre-recorded content, and other video files that the server has access to (including AVI files). This allows many clients to all connect to the SageTV server at the same time and get any of the content.

Another plus for SageTV is the ability to use multiple tuners and also add new ones as time goes on. With Tivo, what your unit comes with is the way that it will stay but with SageTV since it is software, you can keep on adding hardware to your computer without any problems. Myself I have added another tuner and more hard drive space for storing recorded programs. Back to multiple tuners, SageTv has a favorites manager much like Tivo, but the nice thing is that when you have multiple tuners, the program will check to if one tuner is busy and try to record on the other tuner. The result is a lot less conflict occurring.

SageTV sounds great, but there are still some downsides. First of all, it is a little more expensive to get running. I am the type of guy that has many computers sitting around the house that I can use for this, but most people do not. Secondly the TV Tuners that I am using cost about $100 to $150 per tuner. Next, the interface is not as refined but it does continue to improve. There is still some lag when clicking various screens. This may be do to the fact that I am using some old computers, and thus they can not keep up as well.

What do I have?

So you want to know what I have. I will first tell you what I currently have, then I will tell you what I would like to have. First of all, in the living room there is a Tivo unit (with DVD-r) connected to the rest of the stereo equipment. I also have a new computer that runs the SageTV Client and is connected to the network for content and tied into the rest of my AV system. In the bedroom there is an old laptop that I had where the screen was blown-out, but the video output still worked. This is connected to the TV in the bedroom providing access to the SageTV server. In the computer room, I have a regular desktop computer that I use for most of my work that also connects to the SageTV server so that I can watch TV while working. Finally I have the Sage TV server with two Hauppauge tv cards (PVR 250 and USB2 PVR both of which have onboard hardware encoding). All the computers are connected via ethernet cable (the wireless connection seems to have trouble keeping a high enough data rate to play back the various files). I also have scattered on various computers video and audio files that are shared with the server for play back at any of the SageTV connected machines.

So what would I like to have? First of all, I would probably choose the SageTV method, since it does allow for better expandability and more features. The server I would boost up with more processing power and more hard drive space (I recode all the TV shows into AVI format to help save space and more processing power would help a lot). For each of the clients, I would use a small form factor computer, based on the Shuttle PC case, with a remote. These would also have additional hard drive space to help increase the total storage across the entire network. There are currently under development stand alone media devices that can connect to the SageTV server and provide a smaller footprint in the living room along with less noise. Currently these devices do not support all the features of SageTV (playing AVI's in particular). Hopefully this will get fixed soon so that I would not need full blown computers along with every tv.

Here is a picture of what my setup looks like right now: (note that Black is Cable, Blue is RCA type cables and Green is Ethernet, wireless does not work well for this type of application)

My thoughts and comments..

My final thoughts and comments. Tivo has a great interface, but some of the features are starting to fall behind the pack. When Tivo came out, it was pretty much the only thing like it and other companies were playing catch up, but since then other companies have caught up and surpassed Tivo while they sit there resting on their laurels. SageTV is a great product with many benefits. The interface could be cleaned up a little bit and be a little more responsive. Also, this is a solution that is better for someone that likes playing with computers and is willing to spend some time getting things running just right.

There are also some other products that I have looked at worth mentioning:

• Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) This is Microsoft's software for doing DVR type functionality but it only ships with new computers designed for doing this. Microsoft probably did this so that they could help control the hardware and ensure a better operating environment. I played around with this a little bit but the biggest problem that I had was that the scheduling was not as flexible. When you add in a series that you would like to watch, it asks you then when conflicts arise what you would like to do. It does not try to do the best that it can. I also ran into the problem that my hardware was not sufficient enough to run Media Center (i.e. my processor is not the fastest and I do not have the newest video card..)
• WinDVR (from the makers of WinDVD)
• PC world: This is an article that PC World wrote about various PVR technologies. This is a very good article.
• GB PVR: This is another PVR Software that I have never heard of, but I am interested in looking more into..
• My PVR Blog
• InstantCake: This is a software program for creating a Tivo hard drive so that you can upgrade the one that came in your Tivo Unit. I have not tried it, but I have heard good things about it.