World's Smallest PVR? TiVX 2230 Review 19
Dave writes "GadgetZone takes a look at the DViCO TiVX 2230, the world's smallest PVR. The internal notebook drive means it can be used as a portable hard drive, then installed in the living room and used as a full media player and PVR. It's definitely a nifty little gadget."
Re:HD for Cable subscribers (Score:5, Informative)
Check out the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It records HD via component video and I think the newest firmware enables 5.1 audio. It is a hardware encoder and requires almost no CPU to record (you just save the video strem to disk). Playback on the other hand requires a very beefy system. Under Linux a 3.0GHz is about the minimum requirement. Windows users may be able to offload some of the video decoding to their graphics card.
Linky: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html [hauppauge.com]
Re:HD for Cable subscribers (Score:1, Informative)
The problem with these and other non-cable co DVR's is that you're limited to OTA HD content or unencrypted QAM (OTA HD that's re-broadcast pretty much). I hate to say it, but you have to get your DVR from the cable company of you want the full feature set.
I love my HTPC, I wish I could record (or at least watch) HBO-HD on it.
The HD Tivo accepts cable cards.
Re:HD for Cable subscribers (Score:1, Informative)
"It is basically a hardware HD x264 encoder"
H264, not x264. x264 is a free software implementation of the h264 standard.
Re:HD for Cable subscribers (Score:3, Informative)
>you have to get your DVR from the cable company of you want the full feature set
That is not completely true. TiVo HD supports cable cards and can tune encrypted HD cable, as well as analog and digital OTA. For the moment, it can't deal with SDV, though.