David Johnson asked:


On those days when you just can not make it to the game and you have to watch the sports game on your television do you feel like you are missing out on something? Is it just not the same watching the game from the sidelines at the field rather than from your couch? Well, of course it is not the same because at home in front of your television you can get static lines and commercials. Even after that loud and noisy housemates may still interrupt you. These issues can completely ruin a great game so how can you avoid running into these problems when you have no choice but to watch the game at home? With Dish Network you and your sports games are well taken care of.

With Dish network you do not have to worry about missing the game and having to watch it on fuzzy old static filled television because Dish Network offers you great satellite television and sports in high definition. With your games being broadcasts to you in satellite version you do not have to worry about as much static because satellite transmissions are not easily interrupted by many things unlike antennas that can be clear on second and static filled the next. Than adding high definition on top of that and you are set. What high definition is, is the next generation of television presentation, as we know it. High definition brings to your living room clarity like you could never imagine and crisps sounds like it is right there in your living room. The high definition sports games will make you feel like you are right there at the game with its amazing images. Heck, you only need to open all the windows and have your kid play the peanut seller and you are all set. The high definition satellite television is the only way to view your sports because with high definition you get the best quality that technology has to offer today.

Then to fix the issue of noisy people that make you piss that great pass there is another great technological addition that you can have for you home sports entertainment set up and that is TiVo. With TiVo you do not have to worry about missing anything because the game is at your fingertips. You can fast forward, rewind and even pause your game. If you want to see that great tackle or brawl 3 times more all you do is rewind and if your little kids are a bit too noisy and you can not hear just pause and once you usher them into another room it play and you are back in the game with out missing a moment. With the high definition viewing pleasures with Dish Network and topping it off with TiVo you have an unbeatable sports entertainment set up. You will have every angle covered and everything you need for a great game and best of all it is all insanely affordable.



SonySlim.com Forums

David Johnson asked:


If you have not heard much about the TiVo and DVR units offered from DirecTV than it would be a good time to look in to it. If you are still using a VCR to record all of your favorite television shows, then chances are that you have gotten frustrated with VCR timer malfunctions and or recording at the wrong speed, some time recently. These two problems are two of the most common problems people have with their VCR units. This of course stands on top of the basic problem of the VHS tapes cumbersome size. If you yourself do not have bookshelves filled with ugly VHS tapes in your home than chances are that you know a few people who do. If you do not than you probably have boxes of them in your garage. With the TiVo and DVR units offered from DirecTV, you will never have to worry about any of these problems again. In fact, you can just toss your old and obsolete VCR and get ready for trouble free television recording and re-watching bliss! You probably have heard of the device that allows you to actually rewind and pause live television. This is just part of the TiVo and DVR system. In fact, what the TiVo and DVRs actually do is temporarily digitally record everything on television so that you can pick a channel and rewind to a certain time and watch a show. That is right, no more rushing home from work with the worry of missing your favorite television shows! Actually, you can even pause your favorite show or even the live football game when you have to use the bathroom or get something cold to drink! If you leave it paused for a few minutes, then you are basically saving up that time for when the commercials come. Meaning more specifically, that when you have it paused your TiVo unit is continuing to record the show that is still being aired live so by the time the commercials come you can actually fast forward through them! If you are an avid television viewer and you have not yet experienced TiVo and the DVR, you are in for a real treat. Television will never be the same for you afterwards!

DirecTV also offers, what is considered by many, one of the best customer service available from television in the modern day. If you have ever dealt with another television companies customer service, chances are that you have had plenty of bad experiences. Waiting on the phone for an hour and a half just to talk to an unpleasant and incompetent customer service representative is really not a very pleasant experience. Thankfully, this is a problem you will not have with DirecTV’s customer service. DirecTV’s customer service associates are friendly and are highly knowledgeable people with the single goal of fixing your problem as soon as possible, as well as keeping the experience as pleasant as possible. And because DirecTV’s customer service hotline is available 24 hours a day, all week long, even if you have a problem with your service in the wee hours of the morning, you will be able to speak to a friendly customer service associate that will get your service up and running again in no time.



Written by David Johnson. Find more information on cable tv offers as well as satellite tv



ebaylaser Forums

☼☼sunny_girl☼☼ asked:


Just regular TIVO. I am thinking of getting it because I have DVR and I can only watch what I am recording. I saw on TIVO you can get a splitter and watch something and record somthing else. I just wondered how do people like the TIVO service and if I should switch. Let me know. ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE REGULAR TIVO..NOT DIRECT TV — I HAD THAT BEFORE I KNOW ABOUT THEIR SERVICE.
My cable company does not have anymore that will let you record and watch. They have a waiting list right now and I have been on it since well before Christmas. Thats why I am switching. There is no other cable sevice in my area!

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yo mama asked:


I hooked up Direct Tv, but cant seem to get my Tivo to work with it. What do I do?

SonySlim.com Forums

Robert Rogers asked:


DVR is a great idea. It let’s you record TV shows like a VCR, but instead of VHS tapes, it stores video onto a hard drive. These units run about $300. You get something like 30 hours of recording and you can selectively record the TV shows you want to watch. The DVR unit is basically a specialized computer.

I figured with all the stuff out today for home computers, I could build these functions on my home computer and not have pay a monthly subscription fee or spend $300. Here is a list of things I did to get this project to work. I know many of you probably could figure this stuff out on your own. I just wanted to share what worked for me.

Here’s what I started with.

* Pentium III, 733mhz on Apollo Pro Motherboard with 512meg 133mhz sdram. * Sony 8x CDRW, 80gig Western Digital Hard Drive, 32meg ATI Rage Pro video. * Windows 2000 Professional

By today’s standards, this is an antique computer. I’ve had this computer for about 5 years, but hey it still works. You could buy a system about ten times as fast as this one for like $500 now. Amazing.

Here’s all you need to turn your computer into a DVR.

ATI TV Wonder VE. $39 with $10 mail in rebate.

I just installed the card and loaded the software. The card plugs into an open pci slot in your computer. One ***** and you’re done. It’s that simple. I have basic cable and plugged the cable into the back of the card. I don’t think digital cable works, since the ATI tuner takes analog signals.

It comes with GUIDE+, which downloads all the TV listings in your area. You can then sort the listings by show name, channel, and times.

The software GUIDE+ is great. I love just typing in the first few letters of my favorite program and GUIDE+ lists all the times and channels that show is showing. You can also search by actor, subject, or channel. Type in “Raymond” and one of my favorite shows “Everybody Loves Raymond” is displayed with every channel, show time and a short synopsis of the episode.

I click on simple record icon next to each episode I want to record. Highlighting the show gives you an episode synopsis and who’s starring in it. Really COOL!

The shows get recorded to your hard drive and listed in a library folder. Each day after work or a long vacation, I just click on “Library” and it shows me all the shows it recorded while I was away.

Now I can either watch these on my computer or copy them to cd and play it on my DVD player! The record quality is a little better than VHS. Remember those?

Technically the shows are recorded at 480×240. When you copy this to a CDRW, it plays on your on your TV from the DVD player like any other movie you’d rent from the video store! Believe it or not, the quality is clearly better than VHS.

There are even higher quality settings, but you’ll get few hours of record time and given the quality of standard TV, just a waste of hard disk space. I tried it just to see and found the quality really didn’t improve that much. A 30-minute program takes about 650 Meg at a standard setting. The higher quality settings use about 1.7gig for 30 minutes.

So that’s it! For around $40, I built a DVR equivalent. I burn my favorite shows to CDR, which cost about 10 cents each. I can now record the entire season of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and make my own season box sets! Applying simple math, 100 episodes will cost me about $10.



Source Forums EbayLaser

Argyleduke asked:


If so, how do I get there?

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Rikounet asked:

OK, I have a Tivo, Series 2, and a Mac. I can get the .tivo files out of the tivo onto my Mac and I can decode these to be played on the Mac. I also found a way to copy movies from the mac onto the Tivo, but those simply won’t play!
My question is, how do I properly encode my movies for them to be playable on the Tivo.

Thanks,

EE

SonySlim Forums

JR Lang asked:


As technology continues to progress, newer and more complicated media equipment is available to the general public. Digital video cameras are no exception. Just as quickly as the film-use camera has been rendered obsolete for your average shutterbug, VHS camcorders also have gone the way of the dinosaur. Everything, it seems, has gone digital and convenience is only one of many reasons. Newer digital camcorders also offer compactness, better image quality and quicker viewing capabilities.

The same activities that were recorded with the bulky video cameras of the 1980s and early 1990s are still popular today. Children’s sporting events, awards ceremonies, family gatherings, performances and other special moments are memories people want to preserve. The difference now is the accessibility of the images and the ability to share them with people around the world in a matter of seconds. But how do digital video camcorders work?

For gearheads and technophiles, there’s no mystery to the workings of most digital gadgetry. But for the average consumer, even basic operation can be perplexing. Here’s a look at how a few different types of digital video camcorders work.

As with film cameras and analog camcorders, digital camcorders use a lens to see the images they record. These lenses transform the various elements of the image in front of the camera into information that can be processed and recorded. In a video recorder, these lenses focus the light-intensity colors onto a semiconductor image sensor. This sensor is called a charge-coupled device, or CCD. The more of these a camera has, the better the picture quality. The final step in digital video camera operation is what separates them from older camcorders. The information is turned into bytes of data. The contrast and colors become binary code (1s and 0s), and this data is stored as digital video.

Most digital camcorders on the market from major brands use a MiniDV tape, which processes and records information digitally. These tapes are a fraction of the size of old VHS cassettes. Digital video is the standard for home and semi-professional video production and is sometimes used by the news media. Beginning-level professional digital camcorders have three CCDs and record onto DV CAM or MiniDV tapes.

Digital camcorders have a FireWire port on the back of the camera that plugs directly into your computer. The data from the camera is sent to the computer’s hard drive. The video files can then be edited with the appropriate software, if desired.

There are extremely compact digital video camcorders with limited recording length (approximately 60 minutes) and lens capabilities. These are handy for quick and convenient video sharing and allow for very easy transport. They require no memory card and plug directly into your computer with a USB plug. For lengthier recording or better image quality, the MiniDV camcorders are a better choice.

Lower-end digital systems that don’t use tapes record in MPEG-4 format as digital memory. Some higher-end versions use hard disks or memory cards instead. This allows for more data to be stored, hence the better image quality.

Most digital video camera manufacturers focus on the most commonly used computer operating systems. Windows- and Mac-based computers are usually compatible with most cameras on the market. Beyond these, consumers may run into trouble. Some tape-less recording devices are not compatible with anything but Windows, so consumers should be sure to check the details before making a purchase.



TiVo.com FAQ blog

Brooke Yan asked:


At the highest-quality setting, the quality of most DVD video recordings is better than that of a VCR. DVD recorders also offer more ways to navigate recordings, with no need to rewind or fast-forward. With certain disc types, DVD recorders can perform functions that no VCR can match, such as letting you watch a program from the beginning while recording is already under way. They also offer a way to convert camcorder tapes or homemade VCR recordings to a digital format. The DVD recorder market is still in its early stages, so it’s likely there will be further changes involving disc types, and prices for machines and for blank storage media may drop further.

As of August 2005, there were no DVD recorders capable of recording high-definition (HD) content. HD DVD recorders are in development and could be on the market in 2006. (There are some digital video recorders capable of recording HDTV programs. They are mainly available from satellite and cable companies. However, these use hard discs, not removable DVDs.)

WHAT’S AVAILABLE

DVD recorders are available from many of the same manufacturers that make DVD players. Apex Digital, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, and Toshiba are among the biggest brands. Some DVD recorders store content only on DVDs. Others can also use VHS tapes, hard drives, or both. Price range: DVD-only recording, about $150 and up.

IMPORTANT FEATURES

As with any other video recorder–including digital cameras–a recorder’s storage capacity varies in actual usage. DVD recorders store content at different compression settings and thus at different quality levels. For the best image quality, you have to record programming at the device’s lowest level of compression, yielding as little as one hour of recording time. To get the maximum capacity advertised–typically six or eight hours–you have to use the highest level of compression, which gives the lowest quality.

All rewriteable DVD formats let you edit, to varying extents, what you’ve recorded. DVD-RW (in VR mode) and DVD-RAM recorders let you edit more extensively than does DVD+RW. Besides letting you watch one program while recording another, recorders with DVD-RAM capability and some with DVD-RW in VR mode let you watch an earlier section of a program while you’re still recording it.

As with VCRs, DVD recorders may use VCR Plus to ease the setup of time-shift recordings. Some also come with Gemstar or TV Guide On-Screen, free interactive program guides that get three days of listings at a time from your TV signal. They offer point-and-click setup of recording events.

In addition to commercial DVD titles, DVD recorders often support playback or display of numerous other disc formats. They include CD-R/RW discs containing standard CD-audio information; the recordable DVD formats DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD-RAM; Video CD (VCD); and DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD (SACD). They can also play CD-R/RW discs containing MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files and JPEG picture files. Make sure a model you’re considering plays the discs and formats you use now, or may want to use in the future.

DVD-based movies often come in various formats. Aspect-ratio control lets you choose between the 4:3 viewing format of conventional TVs (4 inches wide for every 3 inches high) and the 16:9 ratio of newer, wide-screen sets.

A DVD recorder gives you all sorts of control over the picture–control you may never have known you needed. Picture zoom lets you zoom in on a specific frame. Black-level adjustment brings out the detail in dark parts of the screen image. If you’ve ever wanted to see certain action scenes from different angles, multi-angle capability gives you that opportunity. Note that this feature and some others work only with certain discs.

A DVD recorder enables you to navigate the disc in a number of ways. Unlike a VHS tape, most DVDs are sectioned. Chapter preview lets you scan the opening seconds of each section or chapter until you find what you want; a related feature, chapter gallery, shows thumbnails of section or chapter opening scenes. Go-to by time lets you enter how many hours and minutes into the disc you’d like to skip to. Marker functions allow easy indexing of specific sections.

To get the best picture quality when playing DVDs, you need to hook up the recorder/player to the TV with the best available connection. A composite-video connection to the TV can produce a very good picture, but there will be some loss of detail and some color artifacts such as adjacent colors bleeding into each other. Using the S-video output can improve picture quality. It keeps the black-and-white and the color portions of the signal separated, producing more picture detail and fewer color defects than standard composite video.

Component-video, sometimes not provided on the lowest-end models, improves on S-video by splitting the color signal, resulting in a wider range of color. If you connect a DVD recorder via an S-video or component connection, don’t be surprised if you have to adjust the television-picture setup when you switch to a picture coming from a VCR or a cable box that uses a radio-frequency (RF, also called antenna/cable) connection or a composite connection.

Two newer outputs found on some models, Digital Video Interface (DVI) and High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), are intended for use with digital TVs with DVI or HDMI inputs. They may be used to pass digital 480p and up-converted higher-resolution video signals. Those outputs potentially allow content providers to control your ability to record the content.

Another benefit of DVD recorders is the ability to enjoy movies with multichannel surround sound. To reap the full sound experience of the audio encoded into DVD titles, you’ll need a Dolby Digital receiver and six speakers, including a subwoofer. (For 6.1 and 7.1 soundtracks, you’ll need seven or eight speakers.) Dolby Digital decoding built-in refers to a DVD player that decodes the multichannel audio before the audio receiver; without the built-in circuitry, you’d need to have the decoder built into the receiver or, in rare instances, use a separate decoder box to take advantage of the audio. (A Dolby Digital receiver will decode an older format, Dolby Pro Logic, as well.) Most recorders also support Digital Theater System (DTS) decoding for titles using the six- or seven-channel encoding format. When you’re watching DVD-based movies, dynamic audio-range control helps keep explosions and other noisy sound effects from seeming too loud.

DVD recorders also provide features such as multilingual support, which lets you choose dialog or subtitles in different languages for a given movie. Parental control lets parents “lock out” commercial films by their rating code.

HOW TO CHOOSE

Decide whether you want to record on removable media. DVD recording is the best option for those who want to share video recordings with other users or to have unlimited storage, allowing recordings to be saved indefinitely. They’re also space-efficient, since they can play pre-recorded movies, replacing a separate DVD player. But if none of these attributes is important to you, consider a hard-drive-based DVR instead. If you’ve decided on DVD recording, here’s what to consider in selecting a unit:

Choose between a DVD-only recorder or a combo unit. DVD-only models can cost about half the price of units with a second recording platform such as a hard drive or VCR. The combos are pricier and bulkier but more versatile.

Look for “time slip” capability. It allows you to pause your viewing of a TV program you’re recording, while the unit continues to record. You can resume viewing where you left off. Time-slip models also let you view a previously recorded program while recording another. An inherent feature of all hard-drive-equipped recorders, time slip is also available on stand-alone DVD recorders that record to DVD-RAM discs, one of five disc types recorders use. (All models use at least one write-once and one rewriteable disc type; DVD-RAM discs are rewriteable.) But there’s a downside to DVD-RAM discs: They can be played on fewer other recorders or players than discs using formats that are more widely compatible. Some models that record to DVD-RW discs in VR mode also have time-slip capability.

Decide what kind of TV-programming capabilities you want. When it comes to programmed recording, a typical DVD recorder can do everything a VCR can. And as with VCRs, some DVD recorders can control a cable or satellite box, allowing you to program the unit to record from various channels without setting the box to the correct channel before each recording. DVD/hard-drive recorders designed to work with TiVo, the subscription programming service, also offer automatic recording of your favorite shows (or performers) whenever or wherever they’re on. But that added functionality has a cost: a monthly fee of about $13 or a one-time fee of about $300 (at time of publication). TV Guide On-Screen is a free interactive program guide that is available on some models. While not as versatile as the TiVo programming guide, it does offer point-and-click recording ability.

Decide the importance of video editing. A DVD-only model that records to DVD-RAM discs or to DVD-RW discs in VR mode allows scenes to be subdivided and rearranged onscreen. But the discs aren’t compatible with all players, and even if they do play, edits you make on those discs might not show up. DVD/hard-drive models, except for tested models allied with the TiVo service, give you the ability to edit video on the hard drive. You can then burn images to a range of disc types for maximum compatibility with other players.

Copyright © 2002-2006 Consumers Union of U.S., Inc.

For the latest information on this and many other products and services, visit www.ConsumerReports.org.

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ebaylaser Forums

ak7118 asked:

I have not been able to successfully be able to burn a show onto dvd because of Tivo making it so difficult in doing it. I know they mention Roxio which I have tried and quit after it being so hard. I would love to know if there is a easy and possibly a free way in solving this mission.

SonySlim Forums