Recording advice needed

[waterhead]

As long as your digital tuner has BDA drivers, BeyondTV should be able to work with it. You can download a thirty day trial of BeyondTV.
http://www.snapstream.com/download/beyondtv/

BDA drivers are often referred to as Windows Media Center Edition 2005 drivers. So, if your tuner is listed as being WMCE 2005 compatible, it should work just fine.

There is a free, open source program called Media Portal. I have used it, and it is more like a Windows version of MythTV. You have to do a lot of configuring to get it to work. If you wanna try it out, you can get it here:
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

NOTE: You will need a subscription to the Schedules Direct service for a TV schedule guide in MP. This however is NOT free.

Paul

[StarvingForHDTV]

I wonder why the software can't get the guide data that is included with the digital TV signal?  It seems so odd to not even know what show you are watching.  With my regular set top box I used the "info" button on the remote quite often.  Except with 58-1 of course......

Thanks for all of your help and advice.  I will let you know what I end up with for software.

The remote for my USB HD tuner arrived yesterday.  It works well.  Not bad for $13 with shipping and batteries included.

[waterhead]

BeyondTV provides a guide that is usually pretty accurate. The open source software like Media Portal (Windows) and MythTV (Linux) don't. That is because commercial programs pay for the guide data. For free programs, you have to pay for the guide.

This is actually a fairly new twist to open source PVRs. The USA provider had been Zap2it, a division of Tribune Media Services. They did this for free, because people were using "screen scrapers" to get the data from their web based guide. This was causing problem for legitimate users, so they started the free service.

As of the first of the month, they discontinued the free service. They cited continued misuse of the service by commercial ventures. The developers of MythTV quickly started negotiating with TMS, and started a non-profit venture called Schedules Direct. Cost is currently $15 for six months of data. They are aiming at lowering the price to $20/year, if enough people sign up.

I am currently running MythTV without the non-free guide data. I set it up to read the on-air data, but that doesn't seem to work. It just like watching analog TV again.:rolleyes:

[Bebop]

USB HD turner for $55

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=203200158&SearchEngine=PriceGrabber&SearchTerm=203200158&Type=PE&Category=Comp&dcaid=15890