Thinking about cutting the cable but ????s

[Bokaj]

I'm getting tired of paying ATT and thinking about cutting the cable but I have some concerns that I would like addressed first.

I love my DVR and am wondering if there is a DVR that works with antennas, also would we need a dvr on each tv in the house or do any of them work like the uverse dvr, 1 box records and all the others connect to it to access the recordings?

We have 3 tvs at the moment and would like to continue to use them all, possible?

Netflix tie it?

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by Bokaj

I'm getting tired of paying ATT and thinking about cutting the cable but I have some concerns that I would like addressed first.

I love my DVR and am wondering if there is a DVR that works with antennas, also would we need a dvr on each tv in the house or do any of them work like the uverse dvr, 1 box records and all the others connect to it to access the recordings?

We have 3 tvs at the moment and would like to continue to use them all, possible?

Netflix tie it?

The ChannelMaster CM7000 PAL dual tuner HD DVR is a strictly over-the-air DVR. It is compatible with TV Guide On Screen wherever it is available. TVGoS is available just about anywhere that you can receive either a PBS or CBS station. This DVR is out of production, but not been sold out everywhere. I would not worry about the fact that it is out of production. It is being replaced by the Channel Master TV CM 7400 HD DVR, a dual tuner ATSC/Clear QAM DVR that with either unscrambled cable or over-the-air. It also supports such Internet TV sites as VUDU, FaceBook, DailyMotion, and others. Unlike its older sibling, the CM7400 does not support TVGoS. ChannelMaster offers a subscription-based guide. The bottomline is that the older CM7000 PAL required that you pay the purchase price and nothing else, whereas the CMT7400 has a higher purchase price. You are not required to subscribe to the guide, but the DVR will give a better experience if you do. Boo-hiss. As of this writing, the CM7400 is still on pre-order.

The Brite View BV-980H HD DVR has a price half that of the CM7400, but appears to be much less than half as good. It is also has a ATSC/Clear QAM tuner.

[elmo]

Another option is to leverage Windows Media Center. Given a tuner card, or in my case, a device called an HDHomerun, you can dload listings for your channels and record to your hard drive capacity. The HDHomerun takes your antenna signal and puts it on your home network, so you need a network router, which I'd guess you probably do. The cool thing is that any PC can now become a TV. I can watch out on the deck or in my office or garage, where I don't have a TV, but I have wifi coverage.

You mentioned Netflix. There's a Netflix plug-in for WMC. At one time, I was tuning TV, Netflix as well as serving up my own movies collection, all from WMC. Have since dropped Netflix.

[hdtvfan44]

I know this is an older thread but I am new here and have found a lot of good advice from my questions so I wanted to help you out in return.

Tivo also is a good option to use as a DVR. Tivo works with OTA or Cable. It works very similar to most cable DVRs, record two shows at once. I have the Tivo HD DVR, it holds 20 hours of HD recording. You can buy external storage to store more. As long as you have an antenna that gets signals you hook the coax up to the back of it and scan for channels and your set. I think newer Tivos can record more shows than 2 at once and have bigger built in hard drives and other features, you can check out the products at www.tivo.com

It requires internet to pick up the guide, and you can get a wireless connection to it as well.

Other features that Tivo has is you can stream Netflix through it, Youtube, and Amazon. I believe the newer Tivo Premiere also has Hulu plus.

Tivo can be costly but they run specials on the equipment. You do have to pay for service, which can be monthly, yearly, or lifetime (lifetime is expensive, I've seen it from $299.99 on special to $499.99 currently). I first bought my Tivo in 2008 and have since gotten my money back. In having cable for 3 years, instead of paying month $11.00 for the box, $8.50 for DVR service and .70 cents for a remote, totaling $20.20 a month, $242.40 a year, three years of $727.20. The cable company charged me $2.00 a month for a cable card.

Tivo works with Antenna or Cable only (not Uverse) (there is one that is designed to worked exclusively with Direct TV as well). If all you want is analog cable you just connect the cable coax to the back of the Tivo (it has another connection for Antenna, can have both connected at once). If you want digital cable, the cable company will provide you with a cable card, about the size of a credit card that is inserted into the Tivo, and a Tuning Adaptor to pick up the Switched Digital Video (SDV) channels. The only thing that the Tuning adaptor cannot get is on demand channels.

Also if you have more than one tivo you can transfer programs from one to another (as long as it isn't currently recording). Some cable companies have copy control where you can only transfer broadcast channel programs, not cable channels. I know Time Warner does this, not sure about others.

So that sums it up, a lot of info to throw out there.

[thom]

I went through a similar evaluation process and wound up with Tivo as well. One minor difference was I settled for the previous model (Series 3 HD) with lifetime service from eBay (~$300). It's a nice unit, works great with OTA, and even gets YouTube. Our Panasonic DVD gets Netflix and Amazon Prime, so that rounds out what we need.

As an added bonus, the Tivo remote ties together our soundbar, TV, and Tivo much better than the cable "universal" remote ever did.