My Wife Likes it!

[davefred99]

I have been putting this system together for a few weeks and my wife has been sort of skeptical about it but not totally against it either. So I told her I finally had it pretty well sorted out and was ready to show her what it could do. She says ok record a show for me thats on to late for me to stay up for. Its the new series by Stephen King called "Kingdom Hospital". So I tell her now problem and showed her how I just go the the program guide and click record and go to bed. This morning she says did it record and I say sure and tell her we can watch it together this evening. Now my wife only has a vauge idea of what Tivo and PVR's are about , just that they are computer Vcr's sort of.
I turned on the show and fed it to our family room 35" mitsubishi Tube Tv feeding it with the Svideo out and stereo t our Jvc surround system and start watching the show ans about 10 minutes later a commercial comes on and so I fast forward/skip 30 seconds a couple of times and start watching some more then the phpne rings and she says to the caller can I call you back i'm in the middle of a Tv show, I say to her no problem and pause the picture and wait for her to finish her call and she says can you rewind too! No problem I rewind to point that she says is ok and on with the show. I am sure all of this is no big deal to most of you but its real hard to get my wife excited about most techy stuff and she thinks this is the greatest. She thought the picture was going to look about like a Vcr and was surprised at the crystal clear recordings and sound. Oh By the way even though the PVr-250 cards dont support digital/disrete surround sound they do play Dolby Prologic 11 surround sound just like the original Direct Tv source and I cant tell the difference from the original.
Now my wife has whole list of shows for me to record . I told her I might need more hard drive space if she keeps this up and she said so its worth it.
Dave

[Jiffylush]

Same story here, also it is great for the kids.

My 2 year old wants to see Rubbadubbers at 8:00pm, no problem.

And the fact that it works so well with divx/xvid movies is great.

[MonsterHTPC]

WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is all that matters, course you run into a new problem that most techy guys don't know how to solve: She will take it over soon and you'll never get it back.

Course that is justification to design a new one

Always glad to see more people getting into the HTPC genre, with more people entering the market everyday hopefully it will stimulate the hardware companies to look our way and make some more leaps in the industry.

Feedback like this is always helpful keep up with the hobby it will definitially pay off.

[jmcclain]

I'm about to roll out my $1200 version to the wife as well. So far, I've just been getting all the hardware and programs setup and getting past technical difficulties. Anyway, I also have a DirecTV, and if this takes off, the biggest problem I can see, is that I can only have one tuner installed (because it is controlling the one direcTV tuner), so any programs we want to record, we need to be sure we are watching on the LiveTV so that conflicts can be resolved. And until I can get Snapstream to ALSO WORK WITH LOCAL CHANNELS, she just said "Turn it off". Didn't even want to think about it if she couldn't just type in 7<ENTER> to watch NBC. I understand. But I just know I'm going to schedule a recording, and it is going to change the channel on her tuner while she is watching something (outside of the LiveTV) and she is going to change it back and be pissed (plus I'm going to miss the recording). So, I'm sort of bummed about this situation.

Sorry for rambling.

-Jeff

[MonsterHTPC]

jmclain

can you just get another STB (Set Tob Box) tuner and drop it behind the TV so its out of the way and hidden, this will be the tuner for BTV to use and then you use the normal one hooked to the TV for every day use when you don't need all the bells and whistles of BTV. I know TWC gave me a second box at like 5 to 8 dollars a month I don't recall.

Just a thought.

[davefred99]

Originally posted by jmcclain
I'm about to roll out my $1200 version to the wife as well. So far, I've just been getting all the hardware and programs setup and getting past technical difficulties. Anyway, I also have a DirecTV, and if this takes off, the biggest problem I can see, is that I can only have one tuner installed (because it is controlling the one direcTV tuner), so any programs we want to record, we need to be sure we are watching on the LiveTV so that conflicts can be resolved. And until I can get Snapstream to ALSO WORK WITH LOCAL CHANNELS, she just said "Turn it off". Didn't even want to think about it if she couldn't just type in 7<ENTER> to watch NBC. I understand. But I just know I'm going to schedule a recording, and it is going to change the channel on her tuner while she is watching something (outside of the LiveTV) and she is going to change it back and be pissed (plus I'm going to miss the recording). So, I'm sort of bummed about this situation.

Sorry for rambling.Jeff

I have two satellite recievers so its no problem to dedicate one for Htpc and the other for live Tv in the Familiy room. Heck I even have Basic Cable from Adelphia because its only a couple dollars more per month added to my Cable DSL connection. So I can record or watch from multiple sources. When 3.5 come out with dual tuner capabilities I will probably set one tuner for cable recording and one for direct Tv recordings. Back to your situation why not just order a second direct Tv box , they dont cost much over $100.00 and your dish most likely has dual outputs for the second box. You will just need to run a second cable from the dish to the nes box and pay $5.00 month fee to mirror it.
Of course this is all easy for me to say as I have been in the Satellite Tv Business for nearly 20 years. I dont do residential anymore just Business Satellite Tv (BTV) systems and cableing.
I am kinda rambling on here too but my Htpc is on my desk in my home office which just so happens to be in the room just behind our family room tv so its no problem to run short (10ft) cables from the Htpc through a pass thru in the wall and connected to my entertainment center (JVC- AV-System). I also made an extension for my remote eye so I can change control snapstream-BTV while sitting in my favorite chair.
I'm haveing way too much fun, Dave

[jmcclain]

Because I don't want to pay the additional $5/month for each additional tuner. I mean, you don't have to pay additional money for the two tuner Tivo used with DirecTV, so why would I want to pay $5/month more on my already expensive sat bill? Hell, I'm too cheap to even pay to have a box in my computer room and only watch local channels.

Anyway, not trying to yell at you. You are correct, and that is an option, but I just wish there was a better/cheaper solution like there is with cable (especially analog cable, which doesn't need to control a separate tuner box). I wish DirecTV would work a deal with Hauppague to make a twin tuner PVR-250 DirecTV tuner/capture card. Now I would pay some money for that! Hell, I'd even cough up $5/month for a dual tuner DirecTV PVR-250.

Regards,

-Jeff

[jmcclain]

I wonder if there is any way to buy a DirecTV TIVO dual tuner unit and hack it all appart and get it working on a PCI interface in my computer? Of course, then I'd have to work with BTV to actually be able to use that card as an aquire source. Hell, it isn't even having to actually ENCODE to MPEG2, since the SOURCE is already digital MPEG2. You just have to be able to tune the source and save it.

Damn, I wish DirecTV wasn't so afraid of supporting HTPC and computer/PCI tuners.

-Jeff

[Cayars]

I don't have a dual tuner TIVO but would it be possible to feed the TIVO part directly to the TV via coax and then run the 2nd tuner into the computer. From the computer run the video via S-Video to the TV.

On the TV use the coax connection for "normal TV" and switch to S-Video for the computer.

Is it possible to do this?

[MonsterHTPC]

I didn't know Tivo had the functionality to decode certain pay channels that a PVR250 needs the STB for. Hmm interesting. Course I never have used Tivo so not familiar with its functionality.

I just use the STB for normal TV viewing and then cable into the HTPC, works great, the HTPC can record all day long and I can watch that stuff back again, but If I just want to watch normal TV I just tend to use the STB as I am not really paying attention to it half the time anyways. Course I don't subscribe to any of the pay channels as I haven't found much on them I desire. Just gimme SciFi, TechTV, and a few others and I am happy.

[snipboy]

My wife has taken to BeyondTV like bees to honey. I've never seen her so excited about a technology. Now I just have to get a second hard drive so I can record more stuff and then BTV 3.5 so I can record stuff too

[V_D_O]

Originally posted by jmcclain
I wish DirecTV would work a deal with Hauppague to make a twin tuner PVR-250 DirecTV tuner/capture card. Now I would pay some money for that! Hell, I'd even cough up $5/month for a dual tuner DirecTV PVR-250.

Well, if you get DVB signals (i.e. are not in the US), there is such a solution. Very cool.

And BTV doesn't support it.



Now, back on topic...

[oppland]

My wife loves it too, which makes it SOOO much easier to tinker and upgrade..

[richt]

My wife has told me to buy as many hard drives as I need!

[nasttcar]

My daughter is getting married in about a year, so my wife wants me to record every show that has a wedding in it or about weddings. When for some reason (conflict, etc.) one of these does not get recorded she actually gets pissed at me and claims I just didn't record it.

Nevermind that she could care less how to get to the recordings. Some folks you can never make happy.

I had to set our TV system up so that when you turn the TV on it comes on through the cable box as it always would prior to Snapstream. I have a switch on the remote that changes over to Snapstream and then you have to use the Snapstream remote. That is too much trouble for my wife. I originally had everything set so that when you turned on the TV there was Snapstream waiting for your commands. OH NO, Snapstream crashes and there is no TV and I am out of town. Phone call comes to the hotel and there is no "How are you doing, I miss you", but "What the hell did you do to the TV, it want work."

You don't even want to get me going on how she cannot locate a file on her laptop, or the wireless network doesn't work well enough or some document didn't print.

I love her to death, but for a Phi Beta Kappa, this is the dumbest woman on this earth when it comes to technology. Give her a car with roll-up windows and an AM radio and she is good to go.