cdevidal wrote:
Here's something to consider, RedJeep. It's easier than ripping a bunch of DVDs. Another member mentioned getting an OTA device and recording live TV. So I just bought this, 30 minutes ago: KWorld Hybrid TV Tuner with FM Reception and Video Capture UB445-U2 That has coax and RCA inputs, but there is also a version for $22 that only has coax input.
I am about 1 month away from our 2,000 mile trip, so I'll start recording shows now. The trick is to not use the software that comes with it. Apparently it's buggy. Instead, I'll use Windows Media Center, which now is bundled with Windows.
That's all and good, but it makes for rather large videos. From 2 to 3GB per hour. Since I'm a bit low on space and would rather not drop another $50 on a 2TB drive if I don't have to right now, I'll use MCEBuddy to transcode the video to a lower bandwidth. And it can transcode on a schedule, after hours, automatically watching a folder to transcode new recordings that get deposited there. All that, for free. Pretty cool.
It looks like I'll be able to get the same 1MB/minute or 60MB/hour compression as with DVDs, so a month's worth of recordings (that's 24 hours x 30 days, mind you) is 40GB. If I want to double the quality I can still carry oodles of shows in less than 100GB. Pretty neat.
Well RedJeep I thought you might like an update. This really is a frugal way to get the kids a lot of movies and shows, fast! I do think you'll want to look into doing this yourself.
I've been recording almost non-stop for both the wife and the kids (and one or two for myself) for the past two days now. There's oodles to see on free TV; The lineup had improved in the interim 7 years since I've had a TV. In fact, I almost want two tuners for the inevitable conflicts.
I told the MCEBuddy program to automatically transcode the large files down to a Blackberry-sized screen, which is 180x240. Thus after compression, 24 hours' worth of shows take up about 1.8GB, which means I'm on track to use about 54GB for 30 day's worth. So it's a teensy bit higher file size than I was getting with my DVDs, but it's much improved in quality. Even when I full-screen it on my 22" desktop monitor the picture is quite clear. Surprisingly little pixelation and artifact.
Setup was pretty painless, and took about an hour or two all told. I plugged in the TV tuner to a USB extension cord so I could put the antenna in a window. Then I installed the drivers from the install disk. I had to use the install disk even though there are drivers on their website; For some reason those didn't work.
I didn't need to install the TotalMedia PVR software because used Windows Media Center instead, which comes with Windows Vista or newer. That's a very slick package. It found the tuner, discovered my local channels, then downloaded the program guide/TV listings. I then went into the guide and chose which movies and TV series I wanted to record. Yes, it is smart enough to record entire series. So my wife's Downton Abbey and Walking Dead will get picked up automatically every week.
And it handles conflicts and bad reception intelligently. I scheduled recordings for all of the series I thought they might like. When there are conflicts, it asks if you'd like this one to have priority, or if you'd like to allow some recordings to be missed when there is a conflict. I just scheduled lots and lots of series and will let the computer sort out which gets recorded when.
One of the channels we have has poor reception, and when I scheduled a recording on that channel alongside some recordings on other channels, it recognized that there was no signal and switched to the other station to record that.
After selecting all the programs for the upcoming week (and beyond, when considering series), I then pointed MCEBuddy to the proper directories, played with its settings a bit, and set it off to the races. That program can be set to transcode overnight when you're not using the computer, but I found today that recordings were getting backed up. Not sure if that's because the "Don't go to sleep" box wasn't checked, or if it's because it's too slow. So I just told it to always transcode 24x7. I'll play with the settings later. Also I had to tell set its priority to low, and told it not to use more than 2 CPUs. So that it wouldn't hog the system. All of these settings are easy to find and plainly marked. Oh and by the way, it also removes commercials. Great program.
The newest version of MCEBuddy is donation-ware but older versions (I am using 2.3) are free.
Next step will be to setup something like Plex to serve the media. I tried a few freeware DLNA servers but didn't like them. And Plex seemed to require an internet connection, which I may not always have.
So there's more exploring to do. But I'm almost there. Quite painless, very inexpensive, and much more entertainment than my kids will possibly be able to handle over two weeks.
Hope this helps.
