As I understand it, some of you may be shackled to your cable company’s crappy DVR. Well, it turns out that, if you didn’t know this already, you have an option. Some would say satellite, and that is indeed an option, but what if your landlord won’t let you put a dish on the unit or even in the yard? Maybe you can’t get line-of-sight to the right area of the sky? What if your house is really only wired for cable or some craziness like that? Well, let us say that you have resigned to the cable way, but you really, really hate their DVR. Well, have you heard of CableCARDs? These little credit card-sized cards go into the back of newer third-party DVRs. The cards are essentially tuners that receive all the channels that you subscribe to via your cable provider. They are designed with digital cable in mind and will decode these digital channels, allowing you to watch and record them. DVRs you can use these with include TiVo and Niveus devices. These two companies’ devices (along with many others) are on the list of CableLabs certified CableCARD devices. This means that if the cable company says they don’t support TiVo and you can’t use it on their system, you have just been lied to. The FCC requires all cable companies to support and offer CableCARDs to their customers. You may still have to pay a “rental fee” for using the CableCARD, but research and articles suggest this price will probably be much, MUCH less than the “DVR fee” the cable companies currently charge you. So, you may have to call TiVo if the unit itself breaks, but if the CableCARD craps out, then that is the cable company’s issue.
So, now you want yourself the beauty of a TiVo HD and to dump that shitty 20Gb Motorola DVR the cable company gave you. I would suggest reading through this set of articles before you go demanding your CableCARDs and doing some research into the DVR system you are wanting to get and what CableCARDs it supports. That article focuses around the newer M-Cards or Multistream Cards, but I think the message is still very much valid. M-Cards do the same job as that dual-tuner box you watch TV through now, meaning you can watch one thing while recording another and all that. Normally, you would have to get two single stream cards to the job. This may still be the case in some TiVo boxes, so I would keep your eye out and check the specs of whatever you buy.
If you are feeling especially spry, you could try building your own PVR out of a spare computer and MythTV or Windows Media Center and use a CableCARD reader (or two), but personally, I am not that self-confident and don’t have the expendable income to experiment. If you choose this method, keep in the mind that processing HD content requires a LOT more horsepower than SD content. An Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 has a hard time decoding and processing HD. I’m not saying they can’t or won’t do it, but it will/can be taxing to the system, so keep that in mind.
There you have it. I hope this inspires at least a couple of you to give the boot to crappy DVRs and go with the good stuff. Remember, the first hit’s free.
