The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

The game kicked off at 2am here in local UK time. I had the VCR set up, and ready to go. I even had my cowboy loving friend (you know, the smug, arrogant kind!) coming over tonight to watch the game "as it happened" after a day of avoiding the score.

So I wake up this morning, 2 hours after the game had finished to find that our cable company had made some kind of update to our system and I've got 4 hours of "fuzz" on the VCR!

Upset? You betcha! But it's all worth it to beat them!!!!!

That sucks. I Tevo'd it but there is no way to send it to you.

Ive taped fuzz before, It hurts I know.

I can top that. My DVD recorder shut off with 3:40 left in the 4th Quarter.





Anyone gonna encode the game in DIVX?

ACtually, that brings up a question I've been meaning to post. My VCR died and so I need to replace it. I don't want to do the TIVO option and have to pay a monthly fee. I looked into DVD but it seems like DVD's can only record 2 hours of time. So I'm leaning towards investing in the soon-to-be-obselete VCR technology.

Anybody have any advice on a good Non-Tivo way to record 4 hours of football when I'm not home?

OMG, what a debacle! Sorry to hear about that.

Skeletor wrote:Anybody have any advice on a good Non-Tivo way to record 4 hours of football when I'm not home?

I have a Phillips DVD recorder and it can record up to 8 hours of video depending on what setting you choose. If you choose 1 hours worth...the recording will be near DVD quality and take up the entire disc...if you choose 8 hours worth the quality will be degrading but at least you get 8 hours. I always choose 4 hours and it looks great.

Let me know if you need more info otherwise I hope this helps.

Right guys, Cowboys fan is here - I can live without the game, but please, please, please someone post a video of Sean Taylor's hit of the season! Can't find it anywhere!

Thanks!

Skeletor wrote:ACtually, that brings up a question I've been meaning to post. My VCR died and so I need to replace it. I don't want to do the TIVO option and have to pay a monthly fee. I looked into DVD but it seems like DVD's can only record 2 hours of time. So I'm leaning towards investing in the soon-to-be-obselete VCR technology.

Anybody have any advice on a good Non-Tivo way to record 4 hours of football when I'm not home?

There are alternatives to Tivo that don't involve a monthly fee, namely media center PCa. Gateway even just anounced a $600 media center PC in their eMachines line. If you are a Mac person, a company called Elgato makes PVR equipment for Macs.

There are also less expensive solutions for turning PCs into media centers, including MythTV, Sage TV, etc., etc., so have a look around. On this site there is a video on setting up a MythTV box complete with TV tuner cards and onscreen interactive guide.

IJ wrote:Right guys, Cowboys fan is here - I can live without the game, but please, please, please someone post a video of Sean Taylor's hit of the season! Can't find it anywhere!

Thanks!

It's 5:30 into this video

http://www.thewarpath.net/films/Redskin ... lights.wmv

If you did tivo it, you can copy it to a vhs, I know that some of us don't remember what a vhs is but hey, I tivo it from 4:36 in the 4th, I just watched it again with my girlfriend to prove to her why I was screaming at the top of my lungs at 12:30 on Monday night. And as Cowpuke fans said, it wasn't two hail marys in the endzone.

The monthly fee is worth it with the Tivo IMO. To me Tivo is the greatest invention of all time.

We tivo'd the game and the local news after, and additional 30 minutes. We still didn't get the end of the game because it went over so long.

This is a little silly because it costs a lot but it looks pretty cool to me. If you buy an iRiver portable media player you get a free TiVo and a free 1 yr subscription.

The player has a 20GB HD for mp3s and a 3.5" screen so you can also watch movies. They're offering this promo because the player supports TiVoToGo which means it transfers your TiVo recording to the player so you can carry the 'Skins game around with you in your pocket everywhere you go and watch it over and over! Pretty cool but I don't know how practical that is:

https://secure5.nexternal.com/shared/St ... oducts.asp

BTW, you can use a TiVo without getting a service agreement but you will not get program listings and will have to setup recordings manually.

Cable companies offer DVRs as well. I get mine for $5 a month more than normal digital cable and it's great because it has two tuners so you can do PIP and watch one thing while you record another. Additionally, if you already have a digital box you will not need another box to make things more complicated.

Finally, I think the best option may be to get a TV tuner card for your PC such as the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150. It does hardware encoding so you can easily watch TV and work on the computer at the same time without dropping frames or affecting your PCs performance. It is generally considered to have the best recording quality of ant PVR card as well. Don't be confused, the PVR-250 is an INFERIOR product even though it costs more and is more popular. The 150 was made to replace the 250 and it has exactly the same features except it uses a more advanced single chip solution to encode TV into MPEG2 files rather than using two chips that encode audio and video independantly as the 250 does. The 250 has been the industry standard for a long time but the 150 is better. The cheapest I have found it for is $84 w/ free shipping here:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=15889

There is also the 150MCE which is made for Windows Media Center PCs. It comes with a remote and has an FM tuner and works with XP but I think that then the remote and FM will not work. $63 w/ free shipping here:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... dwt=0&sp=1

Then you just need a DVD burner. This NEC one is really good with 8x dual layer burning and its only $44 w/ free shipping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827152046

So, for a lot less than a year of TiVo you could do this. However, its not as easy to use (but more flexible - you can burn to DVD easily and make your own highlight clips etc...). I wouldn't reccomend it unless you are reasonably computer literate or are willing to research and learn how to do it. It also makes sense to get a Home Theater PC made by a specialist company or HP or Gateway,... Those will be completely set up out of the box and then you can also do stuff like burn DVDs, write posts on TheHogs.net, play computer games or whatever on your TV and your whole MP3 collection can be there too. You won't need a subscription to do this either. Just laying out some options.

Woah, check this out for a crazy promotion:

Buy $100 worth of Dockers from J.C. Penney tomorrow and get a FREE TiVo and 3 months FREE service!

http://www.us.dockers.com/fal05a/docker ... t_tivo.jsp

Now that is pretty funny! If you need some new khakis you might want to jump on that.