Operation Do It Yourself officially begins this week.
This is my months-long effort to build, install and test alternatives to TiVo. I'm already beginning to get in some of the necessary equipment and software from manufacturers and software providers that have been gracious enough to lend me review units.
I've already installed and tried out eyetv 200 from elgato. It's for Macs and it's basically a simple TiVo-like device that plugs into your Mac via a FireWire cable. It uses the Mac for hard-drive storage. I hope to have a review of it online within the next few days.
I've also been following the MythTV and freevo mailing lists. I think I can handle the MythTV installation and configuration, but I likely will skip the freevo effort (unless someone convinces me otherwise and possibly holds my hand through the process).
Meanwhile, I have a registration key for the SageTV software, so I can try that out as soon as I'm ready. And SnapStream TV is sending out one of its review units this week so I can try out Wonder TV 3. I'm also trying to find a vendor that will send me a Windows Media Center PC, but, as you can imagine, these are not cheap and that effort is a little more difficult.
So, what do you think? Will I find one of these TiVo alternatives more satisfying than TiVo itself -- or will I end up sticking with TiVo (or perhaps a Charter Communications PVR, if it's released soon)?
1. Having used both elgato eyeTV and Microsoft's Windows Media Centre I know which I prefer.
Though programming WMC is really easy and the guide search makes it much easier to find what's on the execution of WMC means that it will *decide* what you want to keep and what you want to delete, even if you set the default to "keep until I delete".
It seems to have a mind of its own.
Whereas the elgato at least does not delete recordings unless you ask it to.
I know why WMC is tryind to do what it does, but I would prefer it if a) it worked b) you can turn it off.
It use to delete files for space reasons even though I had only two recordings and 177GB of free space...
Posted at 4:19PM on Jun 16th 2005 by iFelix