[olug] Myth TV / Cox Digital Box questions etc

[Shawn Mattingly]

I have a Tivo HD and a Series 3 (both are dual Cablecard) with Cox
service.  The digital TV works great and HD is beautiful.  The monthly
rental is something like $3.00/each (slightly cheaper than a normal
digital box) and you can get a Tivo plan for ~$12/mo...taken together
just about what you would end up paying for the Cox HD DVR.  You also
now have the option of getting a Lifetime subscription for the unit up
front which will end up paying off in about 4 years if you plan on
keeping the unit.  On Demand stuff doesn't work but we never used it
anyway.  The Tivo-to-go feature makes saving recorded video off to a PC
a snap (it saves the files in MPEG2 format and if you use Tivo Desktop
Plus, you can have it automatically transcode to a different format for
a portable device)

I drank the Tivo Kool-Aid because of the user interface...my wife is not
a technophile and she is a very capable Tivo user (probably better than
me).  Most importantly, I am not on the hook for supporting it...the TV
is critical infrastructure in our house and I rather not be stuck fixing
the media server while my household CEO and my two kids are making
sarcastic comments about my technical abilities while they miss their
favorite shows.  I do network support for a day job, if I bring my work
home I'd rather be doing something that interests me on my own terms and
my own schedule.

I have tinkered around with Myth and it looks really interesting, but I
don't really expect the rest of the family to use it unless they want to
(my kids are 5 and 3, so they won't be ripping HD feeds of BSG and
torrenting them for a few years yet).  I'll probably set a myth system
up in the Man Cave/Home Theater but the Tivo's will remain our everyday
media systems.

Shawn

Will Langford wrote:
> There's been a few discussions on Myth TV, a few different tuners, and
> the Cox DVR over the last few months.
>
> I've got a question.
>
> My main reason for not going with a custom DVR is that the only thing
> I know of that can do digital cable is the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable
> Tuner ... and from what I've heard it can be a bit flakey... not to
> mention the $300-$600 price tag is a bit of a cause for sticker shock
> :).
>
> Why insist on a digital tuner ? Probably half (or more) of the TV I
> watch reside in channels over 100 in the Cox channel line up.  I'd
> really hate to return to extended analog cable :(.
>
> The Cox DVR is fairly functional, but not really the greatest.  TIVO
> seems like it might be an option... and I've heard of many good
> success stories on installs, assuming you inform Cox ahead of time of
> what you're doing (so as to get a newer model cablecard).... and other
> than upfront cost, the ~$20-$25 a month you'd pay in TIVO & CableCARD
> rental is prolly about a wash with the Cox DVR.  I've also heard of
> the export / rip-able capabilities of the TVIO which sounds useful.
>
> Lastly, I'm not too concerned about losing the On Demand stuff.. a
> splitter and vanilla digital box from Cox will take care of that :).
>
> Now for the questions.  First, anyone digital TIVO'd with Cox in the
> area ? How's it fair ?  Can you really get contents off ?
>
> Second, I've seen some posts here or there concerning controlling a
> Cox box (dvr or regular) via the firewire port.  Even if all it does
> is change channels and capture is done via coax, is this indeed a
> possibility ?  If so, is there any package dealy for Myth TV (or MCE,
> or whatever) to make the whole process less clumsy ?
>
> If there's an upfront cost of $300-$400, but if I get digital cable
> tuning abilities and the ability to export content (ie: to quickly
> burn to dvd or similar), then... I might be able to be convinced :).
>
> -Will
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