COMPUTER WORKS AS A PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDER
Every television set in the home should have a Personal Video
Recorder or PVR connected to it. Trust me when I tell you that a PVR
will change the way you watch television. There are literally
hundreds of channels on cable and satellite that are available to us
these days. Trying to keep on top of what's playing, when it's
playing and all of the new things that will be playing almost
demands that you have some kind of computerized assistance.
Otherwise you're probably just going to keep watching the same few
programs on those few channels with which you're already
comfortable.
The two most popular PVRs are the ReplayTV and TiVo. These
set-top boxes connect to your television set and along with a some
kind of subscription fee, they continuously receive around one or
two weeks worth of programming via phone, Internet or satellite
depending on the make and model. By merely looking at the
programming grid displayed on the screen, you can easily tell the
PVR what shows you wish to record with the push of a button. All
shows are recorded onto the PVR's internal hard disk drive. You can
also pause live TV and ask the PVR to recommend shows that it thinks
you might like based upon your viewing habits. It can also search
for programming with your favorite actor for example. Many of these
enhanced abilities help you to discover programming that you might
ordinarily have missed.
How many shows you can record mostly depends on the capacity of
the hard drive along with the quality of the recording that you
choose. Higher quality takes up more hard disk space. The PVR will
tell you exactly how much you can record based upon these two
variables. But whatever the amount, you are limited by the hard
drive capacity. And so far, neither company will let you add or
expand the storage capacity of their PVRs after purchase without
voiding the warranty.
But you do have another alternative to these set-top PVRs and
it's probably already sitting on your desk or somewhere near it.
Your personal computer can be converted into a fairly sophisticated
PVR with the addition of at least one TV Tuner card and the right
software. And both of them are available from a company called
SageTV (www.sage.tv).
If you already have one of the supported TV Tuner cards in your
computer, you just need to install the SageTV software. SageTV also
makes available several different packages that include the software
and tuner cards. Check their website for more details. After
installation, SageTV works much like the other PVRs. You get an
integrated 14 day programming guide that lets you select or setup
most any kind of recording schedule. You can customize your search
options via actor, title, or description and make your selections
accordingly. But what sets SageTV apart from its set-top box
competitors is its ability to support multiple tuners. You can
simultaneously record multiple shows from multiple tuners from
within the computer or within multiple PCs across a network. This
ability gives you virtually limitless control of the available
resources, plus you can always add more computers or larger hard
drives to the existing ones. And given the relatively inexpensive
cost of the newest SageTV 2.1 software at $79.95 with no
subscription fees, your expansion will be a lot less costly than
adding more PVR set-top boxes.
But whatever kind of PVR you eventually decide to buy, know that
your new found ability to free yourself from the bonds of network
programming schedules makes your new PVR worth every cent you pay
for it.
So far, SageTV works only on Windows-based computers but the
company is looking into Macintosh and Linux versions. Check with
their website to insure that your current TV Tuner card is
compatible with the SageTV software.
www.sage.tv |
