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Bikerdude

By Bikerdude
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lost_soul

lost_soul

Posted
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That's something else I've wanted to see. Back in the day, we had VHS units. Now we have digital TVs with USB ports or SD slots. Why can I not stick a USB drive in there and capture the TV shows onto it? Why do I need an extra bulky box with a subscription like Tivo to do that? I've been meaning to get an ATSC tuner card for the computer. I have an old analog card, but it is almost useless now.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Fidcal

Fidcal

Posted
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That's what a couple of my pvrs provide but the tv shows are encrypted so although the files can be viewed on a pc, the shows can't be viewed.

 

I had considered getting another pc with a tuner card purely to use as a more flexible pvr but my living room power points, although not power-overloaded, they are overcrowded with low-power items. It's crazy. Also, I watch tv less and less so I've lost the motivation to record crap. And to think that Panasonic encrypt that crap. Yeah, like anyone would want to copy it. :D

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lost_soul

lost_soul

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I found a device on Amazon called a "HomeWorx".

 

This seems to be the ideal device. You connect an antenna to it, a USB hard drive, and it can capture OTA tv to said hard drive for you. I was originally looking for a USB tv tuner, but this would be a better option because of tiny power usage compared to a huge PC. The users say that VLC can play the files that this thing generates, so that implies there's no American malware (aka digital rights management) involved.

 

My goal is to be able to put TV shows on my tablet. From what I gather, I can either copy them from here to the SD card, or use my PC to encode them into a more suitable and compact format for the tablet. It doesn't seem to require any net connection, or subscription, or any of that.

 

Like you, I watch very little TV, so subscribing does not make sense. It would just capture literally a couple of shows.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Fidcal

Fidcal

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Looks good. I checked Amazon UK. It's listed but not available. I downloaded the manual from Mediasonic.

 

It got me searching for similar devices on Amazon UK and there seem to be quite a few which I'll check out over the next few days to see if any of their usb recordings can be played on a pc.

 

I should have anticipated this sort of thing. After all, some pvrs with their own disk offer usb recording too so makes sense that there'd be simple Freeview boxes without drives but usb recording really cheap. Just a matter of finding one without DRM so I can manage the disks better via pc. I use the free GOM video player. I think it's better than VLC but that's a matter of taste, I guess.

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lost_soul

lost_soul

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Yeah, but it seems like such a trivial thing to build into the TV if it already has USB. It does not require a lot of processing power to just dump the stream to a drive. This isn't like the old days, where a machine had to convert the TV from analog to digital.

 

Still, that's a very reasonable price.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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