DVRs

Okay, I could probably just send out an email to Dave and Joe, but I decided to post again. If anyone out there has or is thinking about a DVR keep reading.

First let me say I love my ReplayTV. It has served me for over three years now, but lately I've been getting annoyed a few things and have been considering getting a new TiVO system.

1. It only has one tuner. This has seemed to be more annoying lately. There is often at least two things I want to tape at the same time.

2. I would love to be able to watch Divx and AVIs and what ever else I downloaded with out connecting my laptop.

3. I don't have an HD TV yet, but I figure in the next few years I will end up getting one. So it would make sense to get a DVR that does HD, or will be able to do HD with some sort of upgrade.

4. Even in standard def, I would like to record in higher quality (this means more storage space).

5. Commercial Advance. I've grown way to use to that to give it up.

6. Not paying a monthly service fee would be nice too.

Now given that, here are my options:

1. Get another ReplayTV off of Ebay for around $100. This would be trivial to install and could stream to my Replay with out any setup. Plus I could record in High Quality with the extra storage room. Also I just found out that the monthly service fee for your second ReplayTV is half off, about $7 a month. Cons, no HD, no streaming random file from my computer.

2. Charter's DVR service. This does not excite me at all, but it might not be a terrible option.

3. Windows Media Center. Joe - is this any good? Anyone else doing this? Does this have Comercial Advance? HD? How much is this anyways? Is there a monthly fee? I should do more research on this.

4. MythTV. Now I've tried Linux a few times before with very little success. Now I'm a nerd, but this OS is just a pain in the ass. But still I like the idea of having a server somewhere with 3 TV Tuners streaming to my TV via something like this MediaMVP. It is supposed to be super hackable with MythTV front ends already out there. However, I'm not sure about this either - I have fears that I'll buy a ton of hardware and never get it working right. But I like the idea of open source meaning no one is taking my commercial advance away and all the little things that could be very useful.

Well that's it. I'll probably just get really lazy and not do anything or just get another Replay for now. But if anyone has any recommendations let me know.

Hmm, After looking this over I'm pretty sure this post belongs on Dave's blog.