Quantcast

tivo comes to canada

Transcend

My Nuts Are Flat
Apr 18, 2002
18,040
3
Towing the party line.
WOOO - Tivo just officially announced that they will support Canadian customers now with full information.

They won't however ship a box to Canada...weird. I will be ordering one to my Vermont address tommorow. :love:
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
great. You get to pay subscription fees and deal with their DRM and broadcast flag crap. I just built my own "freevo" and I would recommend doing that. Got a spare computer around? Like to "tinker"?
 

zahgurim

Underwater monkey
Mar 9, 2005
1,100
12
lolAsia
MMike said:
I hear that we're going to be legalizing staplers pretty soon too!
Pfft, sure.
Then we'll have to deal with mandatory registration, and have to complete a Stapler Aquisition Certificate course to buy staples for it.

You: "I need some staples."
Staplesalesman: "Show me your Sac."

Of course, the government would screw up and be retardedly overbudget trying to convince everyone to register their staplers, and half the people in the country wouldn't register because they believe they have a right to bear staplers without any hindrance from the government.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
Transcend said:
I already have a media server, thanks. I am sick and tired of dealing with ****ty hardware, ****ty configurations, and ****ty hardware.

I miss my tivo.
what's your current setup? It doesn't really take top of the line hardware or expensive software to put together a decent system.
 

Transcend

My Nuts Are Flat
Apr 18, 2002
18,040
3
Towing the party line.
dfinn said:
what's your current setup? It doesn't really take top of the line hardware or expensive software to put together a decent system.
An athlon 1800+, 756mb of ram, windows xp, happauge tv card etc.

It will not consistently record and encrypt shows, the software suite i was using wasn't properly supported (open source), it broke many times, it was too difficult to setup and maintain..etc etc.

Basically a huge pain in the ass I didnt need. Plug in a tivo box and go.

The only thing i am worried about is that i KNOW it will not work with my digital cable, as my provider (videotron) requires you use their silly decoder boxes (same reason i barely use my own media server for input).

So I may be back to either plain old cable, or buying thier $600+ pvr. I can get a tivo + 1 years service for way way under that. Think about $200.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
what were you using, gbpvr? have you considered a commercial product that is better supported and devloped? i'm using BeyondTV and so far I'm very happy with it.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
ok, enjoy your tivo. i've heard nothing but bad things about meedio, aside from how it "looks". not trying to convert you or change your mind because it sounds like you are pretty well decided but both BeyondTV and SageTV offer long trail periods at no cost. I bet you would be happier with either of those than you are with meedio.
 

Transcend

My Nuts Are Flat
Apr 18, 2002
18,040
3
Towing the party line.
I am sure I would be happier, as meedio is a flaming dog turd, no question about that.

The problem is to record properly with beyond tv for example, I need a new PVR card (as beyond tv support only on card compression). This alone will cost 3 times more what a tivo would + the software. Then I have to deal with the headaches of setting it up, a noisy server tower in the closet etc etc.

As it is i have 3 almost new PCs that I never use, as I now favour my powerbook. I don't really want to be spending more on pc hardware if I don't have to.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
you said you have a hauppauge tv tuner card. unless it's a really old hauppague card then it should be supported. you know what model it is?

let's assume it's not supported. you can find new hauppauge hardware encoding cards for under $100. i guess it would cost more than a tivo...initially. don't forget about that $13 (in the US, not sure what CA has to pay) monthly fee.

so you have 3 almost new PCs you never use? perfect, take one of them and turn it into a media center. but not sure why you would have to do that when you already said above that you have a system set aside for your media center. the specs on the system you mentioned above sound just fine, I'm running it on a P3 1ghz w/256MB of RAM. not high end by any means.
 

Transcend

My Nuts Are Flat
Apr 18, 2002
18,040
3
Towing the party line.
I just don't feel like investing in more pc hardware, that may or may not work, and I still have to maintain. The lack of needing to do anything to a Tivo is almost worth the $13 a month on it's own.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
Transcend said:
So do you have the a lifetime subscription to your internet, cable, telephone, cell phone, car insurance?

Some things are worth paying for.
trust me, if there were cheaper and better (in my opinion anyways) options for my internet, cable, telephone, cell phone and car insurance I would be going that route. Unfortunately for those I do not have a choice, unless you know something I don't.

edit: and where are you getting that lifetime subscription fee from? I just checked the tivo site and it's $300.

edit again: and if you read the fine print that "lifetime" subscription is tied to the hardware. So if something happens and you have to or want to upgrade, that "lifetime" subscription cannot be transfered.
 

Brian HCM#1

MMMMMMMMM BEER!!!!!!!!!!
Sep 7, 2001
32,119
378
Bay Area, California
dfinn said:
trust me, if there were cheaper and better (in my opinion anyways) options for my internet, cable, telephone, cell phone and car insurance I would be going that route. Unfortunately for those I do not have a choice, unless you know something I don't.

edit: and where are you getting that lifetime subscription fee from? I just checked the tivo site and it's $300.

edit again: and if you read the fine print that "lifetime" subscription is tied to the hardware. So if something happens and you have to or want to upgrade, that "lifetime" subscription cannot be transfered.
I may switch to lifetime $300 is not bad.
 

Transcend

My Nuts Are Flat
Apr 18, 2002
18,040
3
Towing the party line.
I got lifetime when I was in Colorado. We got my roommate a Tivo for xmas, and the lifetime was $160. Didn't they just recently put the price up on the monthly fees too?

As it is, tivo lifetime + box still is less then the PVR alone from my crappy cable company.
 

Spunger

Git yer dumb questions here
Feb 19, 2003
2,257
0
805
We got Tivo this year as my girlfriend "had to have it". I bought the 140hr one beacuse if you like to record any sports games it eats up the space big time. The lifetime membership was $175. I got it off Ebay and everything has worked fine since.

It's so nice to not miss any TV shows. Plus we got it hooked up wireless so you can transfer shows to your computer or laptop (so if you travel alot you have something to watch). Bewarned though, an hour long show at 3 out of 4 quality is 1.6GB.