Take that TiVO :P

I have been wanting for some time the functionality of a DVR without the annoying part of a DVR subscription. When I had pc's I had a tv tuner in one where I could record TV to the hard drive. Well, I run all macs now and have a lot of free HDD space and figured it would be usefull for storing tv shows. Recording tv shouldn't cost money. You could do it with VCR's why not hard drives? Companies like DirectTV and TiVO would love to sell you a lovely self contained recording unit that can record and store your favorite inconviently schedualed TV shows but they seem to think they need to charge you a monthly fee to do it. Screw that noise. Nothing much like rocket science, I went down to the local Best Buy (granted not *the* "best buy" in town but hey, they had what I was looking for) and purchased a TV tuner for my Mac Pro (Pinnacle's USB HD tuner stick).

So far, I have been really impressed with it. It's small, it doesn't take up much or any of my very limited desk space, it comes with this nifty remote that even has a windowed/full screen toggle, and the software seems pretty un-invasive and well laied out. EyeTV is the software that comes stock with the tuner and I can pre-program it with any of the shows and times that I want recorded. So back to DVR's. Mac Pro + TV tuner + wifi/AppleTV = DVR I hope. I am going to get an AppleTV next and see what happens. I can get the files into iTunes and so an appleTV should be able to play them without too much greif. I would much rather deal with a little file shuffling than pay for a DVR subscription. My only choices shouldn't be DVR subscription/ VCR tape/ or paid downloads for something I can watch for free.