Carl Hutzler’s Blog

The other day my wife, Rylan, made a fairly simple request. Could we buy a dual tuner Tivo and replace the old ReplayTV unit we are currently using? She had heard the new ones had two tuners inside and could record two shows at once and she had a handful of shows that were on at the same time. Seeing as how these machines were also being given away “free” around Christmas time (according to the ad she heard) she figured it was a reasonable request. Little did I know that it would turn into a 2 week experimentation effort! Read below (after the fold) to learn from my experiments and save yourself some time.
Well, I started looking into it and it was not clear what to do. While the new Tivo’s were “low cost” they were not free anymore. A two-tuner unit is now in the neighborhood of $70. And like all of these units, the catch is you have to pay Tivo either $20 a month or $15 a month or $13 a month depending on how long a term you sign-up for (1, 2, or 3 years). By the time you have gone just 2 years (normal lifespan of technology like this) you are out $430! Yes, you can cut it a little by paying for a 3-year plan all up front, but my point is that these Tivo machines are anything but cheap.

But with Tivo the problems continue on the feature side of things. For example, we currently have a ReplayTV 4000 series box. It does most of the same things the Tivo does. But unlike the Tivo units, the ReplayTV units came ready to plug into your Ethernet network. With Tivo you have to buy the network package and even still, its video format is not standard as far as I can tell, so you have to convert it before you can watch it. Poo. With my ReplayTV I can stream shows directly to any PC or Mac via DVArchive and a video player of my choice (VLC, Quicktime, etc). And this is something I like to do a lot….it’s nice to be able to catch up on a few Daily Shows from the laptop before bed and the ReplayTV is downstairs….so the laptop works great!

But ReplayTV is not the solution to everything either. We currently are paying $9.95 a month for the “service”. We could buy another unit (they don’t make them anymore, but Ebay sells them) but that would add another $6 a month to the bill. And to my amazement, the units are going for $200! Yuk. Plus, the ReplayTV is sorta a low end machine. I can only pull data out of the unit at about 400KB/s max. So it takes like 45 minutes to download a 30 minute show if I want to put it on a CD or transcode it to the iPod Video’s format/resolution. And although DVArchive can help script this task, it is a pain and likely not very reliable. Oh, and you can’t stream a show the ReplayTV is recording until its finished which is another thing I would like to do so I can watch shows on the “big screen” in the living room off of my laptop (I have a projector and 100” screen).

Ok, I am not complaining. I have been very happy with the ReplayTV and the service for well over 3 years now. My only issue for this project was paying even more to enable my wife to record a sum total of 3 shows that happen to have conflicting times. Nor did I want to degrade my current features (streaming shows, etc). So I started looking around at options.

I looked at MythTV and it looked like fun. Put together (or buy) a box for $400 or so and install linux, MythTV, drivers, and stuff. It did remote control and ipod export and live streaming, etc. And you could easily put terabytes of drives in it, two or more video cards, and more. It would even do HDTV if you had a beefy machine and the right video cards. But the more I looked at this, the more I was thinking that while fun, this might be a maintenance PITA. I have limited time and patience to be a system admin for a VCR ☺

I had heard that Windows PC’s can do this stuff too, but I hate Windoze.

I had also heard that a company called El Gato Systems started making Mac OS X software that would turn a Mac into a PVR (Personal Video Recorder). I had never tried the software, so I decided to buy it at the CompUSA one day and give it a whirl.

I tested a Miglio TV Micro, which is capable of receiving Analog TV (Cable or Antenna). It came with EyeTV software all for $100. I tested it on my Mac Laptop (MacBookPro) and it worked very well. The device is just a little USB thing….a bit bigger than a memory stick. But the real key is the software. And EyeTV is one of the best pieces of software I have used in a long while, especially considering everything it has to do. I was impressed.

EyeTV provides:
- Free Program Guide via TitanTV.com (saves me $9.95 a month)
- Ability to remotely program the system via TitanTV up to an hour before the show starts (my ReplayTV could not do this…newer ones can…but they can only do it up to 24 hours before the show!)
- Live TV, Pause Live TV, Stream Live TV, Stream recorded shows (stream live shows ☺ )
- Has an absolutely beautiful full screen interface for using the EyeTV PVR system with Apple’s little 6 button IR remote. This interface is very similar to Apple’s Front Row. Too bad Apple won’t allow 3rd party developers to integrate with Front Row, but that is another story.

Plus because EyeTV runs on a real computer, it can do other things like:
- Export shows at gigabit Ethernet speeds (now a show takes 28 seconds to download for burning to DVD vs 40 minutes on the replaytv!)
- Transcode video for iPod format AND put it in iTunes so that next time you sync your iPod, viola! When you schedule a recording, there is a checkbox that says “export for ipod”. All easy. All automatic.
- One button “burn to DVD” or “burn to video CD” buttons via Roxio Toast.

So I used the TV Micro for a few days and was very happy. But then I learned that a newer product called the EyeTV Hybrid was available (released late in 2006). This unit could receive Analog TV (cable and antenna) like the TV Micro but it could also get HDTV via over the air signals (ATSC tuner). I bought the Hauppauge version of the unit (the Win-TV-HVR 950) as CircuitCity had them in stock and it appeared to be the same unit as El Gato is selling on their EyeTV website. Note – the Hauppauge unit does come with EyeTV…it comes with some lame Windoze software so I knew I would have to buy a license for EyeTV which is another $79.

Anyway, I was in experimentation mode and wanted to see if HDTV worked. I hooked the device into the Mac and as expected, EyeTV thought it was the Hybrid sold by El Gato. I connected the little antenna that comes with the Hybrid in the parking lot of the Circuit City in Fairfax, VA (about 15 miles from most of the local TV transmitters). I hit scan for HDTV channels and got about 30 stations! Each one was crystal clear. Some were HDTV and others just SDTV but transmitted in digital. One thing I can say is that you can get some great quality HDTV pictures just from using a little UHF antenna. There is no ghosting, no static, nothing. You either get a perfect picture or nothing. Digital transmission….its all in the 1’s and 0’s I guess ☺

So for slightly more ($99 Hybrid + $79 for EyeTV), I now had a unit that could also do HDTV from OTA signals. (the Hauppauge was only $99 but I figured I would need to buy a license for EyeTV which would make it more like $179 – note that you can buy the Hybrid as a package [Hyrbid device and EyeTV software] from El Gato for $150).

I did some further research and have found that there is yet another unit that is due to be released in February 2006. This unit is made by Miglia and is called the “TVmini HD Hybrid”. It is $199 and includes with the EyeTV software. It will do everything the Hyrbid does PLUS it can also decode clearQAM transmissions which is what your local Cable TV company uses for its Digital Cable channels. Of course this unit can’t decode encrypted Digital Cable channels like I assume most of the stations like ESPN and Comedy Central use, but it can get un-encrypted (clear) QAM channels. And as it just so happens, our friends at the FCC made it a law that Cable companies a) had to transmit local HDTV to customers and b) could not encrypt it. From doing a little googling, I found a MythTV forum where people were sharing what stations their local Cable TV company was sending in un-encrypted format. I found that Comcast Reston transmits most of the major networks and that you only need regular analog cable service to get them (and a QAM receiver, of course).

So I ordered this unit because with this unit I could get both Analog Cable stations as well as HDTV local stations all from the same cable connection. While the Hybrid can get HDTV OTA signals as well as Analog Cable stations, it is hard for it to do BOTH as there is really no way to combine a UHF antenna signal and your Cable TV cable into a single connection (I checked on this and it is near impossible to do it right – no, a splitter in reverse is not the answer). Since the Hybrid only has one coax connector, it is hard for it to receive both HDTV and Analog Cable. The best you can hope for is an A/B switch, but of course that would be impossible for the EyeTV PVR software to control ☺

Oh, and a few things to keep in mind when using these units. All of the ones I have been talking about do NOT include a hardware based MPEG encoder. They all rely on the computer’s main processor for encoding. MPEG encoding/decoding is an intense process, which can eat 50% of my Dual Intel 2.1Ghz processor machine for Analog Cable if I am watching and also recording the station. And you would think that it would be worse for HDTV, but it is actually not because HDTV is transmitted in MPEG2 format. So the USB receiver just receives the MPEG2 data and the computer just writes it to the HDD (analog cable and OTA have to be encoded INTO MPEG2, but HDTV is already encoded in that format). Its only when you WATCH HDTV that the CPU is hammered….again, about 50% of the CPU on my machine to watch HDTV at 1080i resolution. So if you have an older machine, be aware that it may not be up to the task. They do make hardware based encoder devices which are much easier on the CPU….so maybe look at one of those. They are pricier and bigger.

I will update this when I receive the TVmini HD Hybrid. I am hoping it will be the final solution along with the old ReplayTV which I guess we will keep until EyeTV better supports two tuners. It does support it today, just not 100% feature set. When it does support dual tuners, I will dump the ReplayTV onto ebay and get my $200 (I only paid $50 for it new).

Next up, what machine to run this on as my laptop is not the right choice long term.