It also has the dubious advantage of allowing me to watch TV in the background while I’m working in my TV-less home office. That may not be great for my productivity, but it is unexpectedly one of my favourite features. The downside, which I can happily live with, is that I either have to watch programs on my computer or burn them to DVD before watching them on my television.
Must Have: TV Tuner Card
The first step was to purchase a TV tuner card for the computer, so I picked up the Beyond TV-recommended Hauppage WinTV-150. The more easily satisfied could stop there and use the included software, and the more technically inclined could use the more sophisticated but free MythTV or GB-PVR. I did attempt to look at both of those, but came away convinced I would need a degree in computer engineering to figure them out.
If you don’t have a cable or satellite box, you just need access to a cable outlet. Because I have a set-top box for digital cable, the IR blaster (the, um, infrared thingamabob that changes the channel) has to be attached to both the computer and the television, meaning the two devices have to be reasonably close together - an extension proved impossible to find. For me, this required a little rearranging of my office furniture, but at least my office and living room are adjoining. The alternative would have been to forgo recording off the digital channels, which wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker, but would have been a missed opportunity hanging over my sad head.
The IR blaster simply attaches to the box with double sided tape, so it shouldn't have been an unforeseen occurrence when the tape came unstuck, causing the scheduled recording to pick up ABC, the last channel I'd watched, not the intended FOX. The tragic mishap of having Hope & Faith and Less Than Perfect recorded instead of House taught me to be vigilant about checking if the device is still attached any time I settle down to watch TV live.
The included software, WinTV, was a huge step forward from my Jurassic-era VCR setup, and would have been absolutely enough for my needs. But when we’re talking about recording television, we’re talking about wants, not needs, and I wanted the ability to use integrated TV listings to make it even simpler not to miss my favourite shows. Other features, such as more control over the format of saved shows and the ability to automatically skip commercials were bonuses I soon didn’t want to live without.
Article comments
1 - Bliffle
I must say that I admire your courage for diving into this stuff. I've worked with computers for many years, many decades, and I've been active in multimedia, audio and video, even earning money at it, and I'm still intimidated by some of the hardware/software frailties. Although I have 2 computers setup for my experiments in multimedia, for everyday TV (HDTV) watching I use Set Top Boxes (STBs) instead of PCs. Even my PVR is a STB (LG 3410A) which works flawlessly and uses the free TV Guide on the PBS OTA signal.
2 - Stu
Great little article; I am a techie, but I must confess I'm not much of a videophile. I've been using BeyondTV for over a year now, and I love it. In fact, I love it so much that I bought a DVD player with network capabilities (Avel LinkPlayer2) in order to stream my recorded tv shows to my real tv.
It would have probably been easier to just buy a Tivo, but the nice thing is I can watch my recorded TV shows in my office, on my TV, or even over the Internet (using ORB). I'm currently in Canada, watching a show I recorded last night off my home PC (located in Atlanta, GA, USA).
3 - Diane Kristine
Biffle, I'm not sure if it was courage or obliviousness, but it was more intimidating to think about setting up than to actually set it up. There were some challenges but it wasn't all that difficult once I decided to avoid the open source/free versions that didn't have dummy-proof documentation.
Stu, I didn't know such a thing existed (DVD with network capabilities). I don't need one, though. I don't. Really. Hmm, let me go Google them ...
4 - RTV Channel
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5 - pvrmaster
Personally I use SageTV and it's by far the best PVR/Media Center software out there. It's the only one with Placeshifting that lets you access your content from anywhere you want. I also love the media extenders, they're a nice low-cost way to get my SageTV on the 3 different TVs in my house. I tried SnapStream, but it was too unstable and they also heavily censor their forums which made me uncomfortable with them as a company. And SageTV also supports Linux. :)