Our DVD recorder recently stopped working (looks like a bad DVD drive) so I'm thinking about getting a new PC to record television. I really don't want to spend a great deal of time setting one up right now so I was looking at this Asus unit from Best Buy (I can get this locally and save the shipping): http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus - ...1218152460479&skuId=9699016&st=asus&cp=1&lp=1 I'll get a tuner card to go in it. Any thoughts? -- Elmer Tiberius Fudd <-- He's dim, Jed...Purveyor of SUYMF! remove STUPIDITY to reply, however, STUPIDITY was engaged when send button was pressed
While you're waiting for various thoughts you might search this group in Google... lots of discussions over the last few years and there are many options, none perfect for every situation IMO... My thoughts: Windows 7 or XP (don't use Vista) - for XP can be Media Center edition SageTV Media Center for EPG (Electronic Program Guide) plus all around good stuff -- good solid product for recording, great community and company support, many community-written customizations (not all for faint-of-heart however) Tuner cards - depending on type of card they can drag on the CPU, and drag on the disk system Connections to set-top boxes -- tuner cards need to be able to change channels on these, need IRBlaster capable card USB-UIRT hookups Connections to TV Connection to internet Do you want to stream from the HTPC to other TV's in the house? Additional considerations. There's my "thoughts", for starters. Bob Donald, G'Bo, and others will be along shortly to give you their thoughts. -- Sue Morton "Russ B" > Our DVD recorder recently stopped working (looks like a bad DVD drive) > so I'm thinking about getting a new PC to record television. I really > don't want to spend a great deal of time setting one up right now so I > was looking at this Asus unit from Best Buy (I can get this locally > and save the shipping):
"Sue Morton" <> set phasers on Completely Bogus Formatting and composed news:hrnvdj$i57$: > While you're waiting for various thoughts you might search this > group in Google... lots of discussions over the last few years and > there are many options, none perfect for every situation IMO... I know what you mean. I'm just feeling a bit lazy about this one so go with the Best Buy Asus unit and a Hauppage tuner card using Media Center to record if I can get it to work. > My thoughts: > > Windows 7 or XP (don't use Vista) - for XP can be Media Center edition Win 7. > SageTV Media Center for EPG (Electronic Program Guide) plus all around > good stuff > -- good solid product for recording, great community and company > support, many community-written customizations (not all for > faint-of-heart however) > Tuner cards - depending on type of card they can drag on the CPU, and > drag on the disk system > Connections to set-top boxes -- tuner cards need to be able to change > channels on these, need IRBlaster capable card USB-UIRT hookups > Connections to TV We only have an antenna, no cable right now. The only other uses I plan for this is an ftp server (best free kind?) and for the occasional bit- torrent. > Connection to internet Natch. Up to now, I had to set it up before I left for work so being able to remote in would be great. My wife never figured out how to program the old DVD recorder. > Do you want to stream from the HTPC to other TV's in the house? Maybe. > Additional considerations. > > There's my "thoughts", for starters. Thank you! > Bob Donald, G'Bo, and others will be along shortly to give you their > thoughts. That's what I figure... BTW, how did your post get so strangely formatted? -- Elmer Tiberius Fudd <-- He's dim, Jed...Purveyor of SUYMF! remove STUPIDITY to reply, however, STUPIDITY was engaged when send button was pressed
In news:Xns9D6DA090F6B29notverybrightguy@198.186.192.200 the killer robot Russ B <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > Our DVD recorder recently stopped working (looks like a bad DVD drive) > so I'm thinking about getting a new PC to record television. I really > don't want to spend a great deal of time setting one up right now so I > was looking at this Asus unit from Best Buy (I can get this locally > and save the shipping): > > http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus - Essentio Desktop with Intel® > %3B+Pentium%26%23174%3B+Processor/9699016.p?id=1218152460479&skuId=9699 > 016&st=asus&cp=1&lp=1 > > I'll get a tuner card to go in it. Any thoughts? Machine-wise, they don't say what class pentium it is, but with an 800Mhz front side bus, I'm guessing it's a P4? For about $375.95, I was able to configure a barebones machine based on the Asus P7P55D, a Core i3-530 processor, a couple gigs of Kingston RAM, and a case with 500w P/S. You'd still need an HD, OS, and optical drives. Anyway, the machine you spec'd would definately be able to do light to moderate duty video recording. To give you an idea, I have a 3.0Ghz Celeron with one gig of RAM on an Asus board as my HTPC, and I can easily record two HD programs at once. If on the same machine that's recording them, I try to watch one of the two HDTV shows as it's recording, I might get an occasional hiccup, but it's still quite watchable. If I'm only recording one HDTV show, or HDTV and SDTV, I can either watch it in progress (chasing behind so I can zap commercials), or watch anything that has been recorded in either HD or SD, and there are no hiccups at all. Also, if I'm watching from a remote machine, like in my studio, I can record two HDTV programs, while either watching one of them in progress, or watching something that has been previously recorded in HD or SD, and I get no glitches at all in the running video. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
Ok, I'll chime in, and try not to sound like a SageTV fanboy Sue did pose a bunch of good questions, there are many things to consider. If we knew exactly what your needs were, we could toss out suggestions. If your looking for a quick and dirty setup then Windows 7 media center does look pretty cool. Actually, Media Center was the only thing that really made Vista useful IMO. It will handle your TV recording, DVD playback, netflix, etc... from one UI. It has it's limitations, such as no commercial skipping <although drm-ms toolbox can be set up if you really want to go through that>, the only way to stream your shows to another tv in the house is with an xbox 360 <sagetv and beyondtv offer different hardware/software solutions for this. Lets not forget the drm issue that comes with it. A couple of years ago NBC "accidentally" sent a drm flag so anyone recording shows that night got a black screen with a drm message. Supposedly it was an accident, but I'm not too thrilled with MS or a network being able to have this kind of control. Beyond TV was a nice solution for a while, but they stopped development on it, and I was not happy with their support when I did have a problem. Glennbo has a good handle on this one, so he can give a more indepth review of it. I used it for a year and switched to Sage. SageTV rocks! I started with the one program with a couple of tuners, then ended up building a q9300 quad server with 7 tv tuners in it <5 atsc, 2 satellite>. They offer a couple of different softsled <software that connects to the server so that you can watch the recorded shows across your network>, as well as a hardware box. I added one of the hd200's to my main tv, and now I can not only access the tv shows <with automatic commercial skip>, but my music, DVD's, Blu Ray's and pics and videos that I dump on the server. I'm getting ready to add a second one for the bedroom. I also have a couple systems that run their placeshifter which lets you watch everything but the blu-ray's from any computer on the network. You also have online services like hulu, netflix, comedy central, cnet tv, etc.... You can also dump the shows to DVD, and edit out the commercials. Once it's set up it's an awesome all inclusive network media setup, but as Sue stated it's not for the faint of heart. Hardware wise, this system looks like a good starting point if it's just being used as a PVR. You can start off with the w7 media center, and move to BTV or SageTV later on. Personally I like the hauppauge 1600 for a tuner card since it is a dual tuner and comes with a blaster to control a set top box. I havent found a usb tuner that has IR control to do this. You could probably get by with something like the Revo, but this definitely gives you room to expand if you want to take it further than a basic video recorder. Remember that you will need to buy a MCE remote with the usb reciever, but those can be had for 20 or 30 bux. This system also gives you the option to add a blu ray barebones drive to it. Bob "Sue Morton" <> wrote in message news:hrnvdj$i57$... > While you're waiting for various thoughts you might search this > group in Google... lots of discussions over the last few years and there > are many options, none perfect for every situation IMO... > > My thoughts: > > Windows 7 or XP (don't use Vista) - for XP can be Media Center edition > SageTV Media Center for EPG (Electronic Program Guide) plus all around > good stuff > -- good solid product for recording, great community and company > support, many community-written customizations (not all for > faint-of-heart however) > Tuner cards - depending on type of card they can drag on the CPU, and > drag on the disk system > Connections to set-top boxes -- tuner cards need to be able to change > channels on these, need IRBlaster capable card USB-UIRT hookups > Connections to TV > Connection to internet > Do you want to stream from the HTPC to other TV's in the house? > Additional considerations. > > There's my "thoughts", for starters. > > Bob Donald, G'Bo, and others will be along shortly to give you their > thoughts. > -- > Sue Morton > > "Russ B" >> Our DVD recorder recently stopped working (looks like a bad DVD drive) >> so I'm thinking about getting a new PC to record television. I really >> don't want to spend a great deal of time setting one up right now so I >> was looking at this Asus unit from Best Buy (I can get this locally >> and save the shipping): > >
> > Machine-wise, they don't say what class pentium it is, but with an 800Mhz > front side bus, I'm guessing it's a P4? It says it's an E5400, 2.7ghz dual core. As long as you arent trying to watch it while it's recording 2 shows and doing the comskip it should work out pretty well. I now use your Celeron example when advising others about HTPC's when they want to cut costs
"Bob Donald" <> set phasers on Delicious Ranch Dressing and spewed news:: > >> >> Machine-wise, they don't say what class pentium it is, but with an >> 800Mhz front side bus, I'm guessing it's a P4? > > It says it's an E5400, 2.7ghz dual core. As long as you arent trying > to watch it while it's recording 2 shows and doing the comskip it > should work out pretty well. I now use your Celeron example when > advising others about HTPC's when they want to cut costs Most of the time, I expect to record 1 show at a time with the recorder and be watching any shows directly off the antenna. There may be an occasional need for 2 recordings at the same time. My wife is not Sue Morton when it comes to technology-she may balk at this idea unless I make it pretty simple for her. The DVD recorder worked ok except for the time limitation-only about 4 hrs on a disk at decent quality. Be nice to hack it to a HD recorder...has anyone done that? -- Elmer Tiberius Fudd <-- He's dim, Jed...Purveyor of SUYMF! remove STUPIDITY to reply, however, STUPIDITY was engaged when send button was pressed
In news: the killer robot "Bob Donald" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... >> Machine-wise, they don't say what class pentium it is, but with an >> 800Mhz front side bus, I'm guessing it's a P4? > > It says it's an E5400, 2.7ghz dual core. As long as you arent trying > to watch it while it's recording 2 shows and doing the comskip it > should work out pretty well. I now use your Celeron example when > advising others about HTPC's when they want to cut costs It goes a heck of a lot further than I would have expected it to. I think HDTV is less of a task (processor wise) than SDTV, which has to be encoded on the fly. HDTV is already mpeg transport stream, and you only have to record exactly what's coming in, with no re-processing required. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
In news:Xns9D6DB580F27BDnotverybrightguy@198.186.192.200 the killer robot Russ B <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > Most of the time, I expect to record 1 show at a time with the recorder > and be watching any shows directly off the antenna. There may be an > occasional need for 2 recordings at the same time. My wife is not Sue > Morton when it comes to technology-she may balk at this idea unless I > make it pretty simple for her. > > The DVD recorder worked ok except for the time limitation-only about 4 > hrs on a disk at decent quality. Be nice to hack it to a HD > recorder...has anyone done that? If all you did was to go from a DVD recorder to the most basic computer based HTPC, you would likely be very impressed. A dual tuner card or two low priced tuner cards will get you hours on end of digital fun. With a single tuner, you can still use your TV's tuner as a source for watching live, while other stuff can be recording on the HTPC. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
"Russ B" <> wrote in message news:Xns9D6DB580F27BDnotverybrightguy@198.186.192.200... > Most of the time, I expect to record 1 show at a time with the recorder > and be watching any shows directly off the antenna. There may be an > occasional need for 2 recordings at the same time. My wife is not Sue > Morton when it comes to technology-she may balk at this idea unless I > make it pretty simple for her. Well, this machine will go above and beyond that. If you are going off of the antenna, you can toss extra usb tuners as you find deals on them. I've ran into various usb tuners for 20 or 30 bux, so that's not an issue. We were running into the issue of ABC, CBS and FOX all showing some good shows at the same time, so I just loaded it up with a hodge-podge of different tuners. I've had this q9300 recording 4 hi-def shows at the same time, while processing the commercial skipping and it was taking less than 30% of the cpu. It will be remote/menu driven, so I doubt she will have a problem, will probably fall in love with the interface after 5 minutes, mine did. She has no computer experience other than AOL, and now she's a wiz at it. Just turn the tv on, hit the up/down/left/right arrows on the remote, and your golden. > The DVD recorder worked ok except for the time limitation-only about 4 > hrs on a disk at decent quality. Be nice to hack it to a HD > recorder...has anyone done that? The nice thing about this is that you wont need to dump it to DVD, unless you want to take it from TV to TV, or go mobile with it. Now, when you say HD recorder, do you mean HD-DVD or Blu-ray? It will get expensive, not to mention cumbersome as you would have to go to an external program like Nero or Total Media to create the content. If you are looking at backing up the mpg files to these mediums, you'll go broke between the price of the burner and blank media. It's cheaper just to have it record to a big drive. I set mine up with 2 1tb drives in a raid 1configuration so we dont lose all of the shows if a drive fails, but even I'll admit that it's probably overkill So far we havent gone over 400 gig, and that's with recording a bunch of shows that I MAY want to watch someday. Between that and the image of the main drive, I can have the full system with all the shows back up and running in an hour or two. You can go as simple or as complex as you want. The programs will reside on the hard drive from Media Center <or any other htpc software> and you can watch them whenever, or copy them to flash drive, portable drive, etc..... I only make DVD's when it's some show/series that I want to archive or share, and want to free up hard drive space.
In news: the killer robot "Bob Donald" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > Yeah, that thing has been cranking constantly for you for what, 2 and > a half years? I think HDTV would be harder on the cpu though, wouldnt > it? Since it's software encoding, and most cards that record SDTV > have the encoders built into them, at least the ones I've seen. I > know that there is no re-processing, but isnt the initial recording of > the stream hitting the cpu pretty hard? I believe the digital stuff being already digital, only needs to be written to the HD, which is fairly independent of the CPU. Recording an analog source like SDTV requires converting it from analog to digital, and many cards have onboard MPEG encoder chips to take the stress of the CPU. I don't know how much the CPU gets involved with hardware chip encoders, but I'm pretty sure the CPU does almost if completely nothing to simply record a byte of incoming data to the hard drive. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
Yeah, that thing has been cranking constantly for you for what, 2 and a half years? I think HDTV would be harder on the cpu though, wouldnt it? Since it's software encoding, and most cards that record SDTV have the encoders built into them, at least the ones I've seen. I know that there is no re-processing, but isnt the initial recording of the stream hitting the cpu pretty hard? > It goes a heck of a lot further than I would have expected it to. I think > HDTV is less of a task (processor wise) than SDTV, which has to be encoded > on the fly. HDTV is already mpeg transport stream, and you only have to > record exactly what's coming in, with no re-processing required. > > -- > Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email > ________ __ > / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ > / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ > / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / > \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo > Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits > Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
"Bob Donald" <> set phasers on Delicious Ranch Dressing and spewed news:: > Well, this machine will go above and beyond that. I hope you mean the one from Best Buy... >> The DVD recorder worked ok except for the time limitation-only about >> 4 hrs on a disk at decent quality. Be nice to hack it to a HD >> recorder...has anyone done that? Hard disk, not Hi-Def. Dang, didn't even think about what HD means with video... > The nice thing about this is that you wont need to dump it to DVD, > unless you want to take it from TV to TV, or go mobile with it. Now, > when you say HD recorder, do you mean HD-DVD or Blu-ray? It will get > expensive, not to mention cumbersome as you would have to go to an > external program like Nero or Total Media to create the content. If > you are looking at backing up the mpg files to these mediums, you'll > go broke between the price of the burner and blank media. It's > cheaper just to have it record to a big drive. I set mine up with 2 > 1tb drives in a raid 1configuration so we dont lose all of the shows > if a drive fails, but even I'll admit that it's probably overkill > So far we havent gone over 400 gig, and that's with recording a >:bunch of > shows that I MAY want to watch someday. Between that and the image of > the main drive, I can have the full system with all the shows back up > and running in an hour or two. You can go as simple or as complex as > you want. The programs will reside on the hard drive from Media Center > <or any other htpc software> and you can watch them whenever, or copy > them to flash drive, portable drive, etc..... I only make DVD's when > it's some show/series that I want to archive or share, and want to > free up hard drive space. I might want to record some things to higher quality for editing in Vegas but I'm still lost with all the freakin' video codecs. -- Elmer Tiberius Fudd <-- He's dim, Jed...Purveyor of SUYMF! remove STUPIDITY to reply, however, STUPIDITY was engaged when send button was pressed
Russ - > We only have an antenna, no cable right now. The only other uses I > plan for this is an ftp server (best free kind?) and for the > occasional bit-torrent. Since you only have antenna extra CPU should not be necessary unless you try to do too much at once (more likely to overload the I/O). If you end up taking in any analog sources you will need extra CPU muscle, doesn't sound likely that you will from what you've described. I use ZFTPServer free version for my personal use (I'm the only one connecting other than the occasional authorized guest). And there is always the ever-popular FileZilla (server and client available). I wouldn't recommend FTP or P2P unless you're positive nothing else (recording or watching-wise) is going on that box. Too many TCP/IP connections (P2P) and disk I/O (FTP) and the box will hiccup and/or lock up... you'll miss recordings and/or your SO will not be able to watch something and you'll be in the doghouse for buying the thing (ask Bob Donald ) > BTW, how did your post get so strangely formatted? It's just plain text, nothing to format... not sure what you're seeing? I do use a few different newsreader installations, some are configured for mime plain text and others are configured for uuencode plain text. Check your XNews setup for this group? Perhaps it's not interpreting one or the other as plain text? -- Sue Morton
G'Bo's correct, there's no CPU involved on the inbound HD because it's already MPEG-2 video (DVD) format. It does hit the I/O hard. The compressed streams help a bit. But multiple streams are often carried in the signal and that adds up to a lot more data. IIRC G'Bo cut out the streams he doesn't need to record...? -- Sue Morton "Glennbo" > "Bob Donald" >> Yeah, that thing has been cranking constantly for you for what, 2 and >> a half years? I think HDTV would be harder on the cpu though, >> wouldnt >> it? Since it's software encoding, and most cards that record SDTV >> have the encoders built into them, at least the ones I've seen. I >> know that there is no re-processing, but isnt the initial recording >> of >> the stream hitting the cpu pretty hard? > > I believe the digital stuff being already digital, only needs to be > written > to the HD, which is fairly independent of the CPU. Recording an > analog > source like SDTV requires converting it from analog to digital, and > many > cards have onboard MPEG encoder chips to take the stress of the CPU. > I > don't know how much the CPU gets involved with hardware chip encoders, > but > I'm pretty sure the CPU does almost if completely nothing to simply > record > a byte of incoming data to the hard drive.
Russ... one more thought... If you want to start out "free" on the software front, you could consider linux and Myth TV, if linux drivers are available for your tuner card, NIC, etc. I used SageTV on Linux for a few years for my tuner farm server and it was great (server only, no client). When I changed hardware on that box there were either no linux drivers or the ones available didn't work well. If you're lucky on that front you could give that a try before investing in SageTV. You will need to cover the WAF while you experiment however. OTOH, basic SageTV with few or no customizations can be up and running very quickly and most SO's like OOB. -- Sue Morton
The killer robot "Sue Morton" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > If you want to start out "free" on the software front, you could > consider linux and Myth TV, if linux drivers are available for your > tuner card, NIC, etc. There is also GBPVR for Windows that's free. I've never used it, but it's free and here. http://www.gbpvr.com/ -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
The killer robot "Bob Donald" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > It says it's an E5400, 2.7ghz dual core. Well, that should outperform my 3.0Ghz Celeron. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
The killer robot "Sue Morton" <> grabbed the controls of the spaceship cakewalk.audio and pressed these buttons... > G'Bo's correct, there's no CPU involved on the inbound HD because it's > already MPEG-2 video (DVD) format. It does hit the I/O hard. The > compressed streams help a bit. But multiple streams are often carried > in the signal and that adds up to a lot more data. IIRC G'Bo cut out > the streams he doesn't need to record...? Because I'm recording HDTV from cable using QAM, the other streams are already stripped out, as they appear on different cable channels. For my one tuner that grabs HDTV out of the air, it gets the sub-carrier stuff stripped out *after* it's been recorded IIRC. I only use the OTA tuner when I need to record a third HDTV program at the same time as my HD Homerun is recording two other HDTV programs using QAM on cable. -- Remove YourHeadFromYourAss to Reply by email ________ __ / ____/ /__ ____ ____ / /_ ____ / / __/ / _ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \/ __ \ / /_/ / / __/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / \____/_/\___/_/ /_/_/ /_/_.___/\____/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Glennbo http://www.soundclick.com/glennbo Non-Linear Sound http://www.soundclick.com/jambits Hear My Music http://www.soundclick.com/ThePseudonyms
LOL. Yeah Russ, the one from Best Buy. > I hope you mean the one from Best Buy... > Hard disk, not Hi-Def. Dang, didn't even think about what HD means with > video... We've all been there, did you mean hard disk or Hi Def! Now we try to include HDD and HDTV to avoid confusion > I might want to record some things to higher quality for editing in Vegas > but I'm still lost with all the freakin' video codecs. You will definitely have this option. I just did that with the super bowl performance of The Who. My drummer couldnt watch it and didnt have a method to record it. I just told sage the starting point and duration, and it chopped it out and into a video file for me. I didnt even need to fire up Vegas! As Glennbo said <and I'm paraphrasing>, you will be amazed with the differences between an HTPC and a DVD recorder. Bob
