{"id":324,"date":"2006-04-10T03:05:12","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T02:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caliban.org\/wp\/2006\/04\/10\/finally-a-dvr\/"},"modified":"2006-04-10T03:05:12","modified_gmt":"2006-04-10T02:05:12","slug":"finally-a-dvr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/2006\/04\/finally-a-dvr\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally A DVR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As of yesterday, we finally have a DVR in the house. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s nothing as configurable and flexible as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mythtv.org\/\">MythTV<\/a> box that I was trying to build not so long back.No, this is the very pedestrian, low-intelligence Philips <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumer.philips.com\/consumer\/catalog\/product.jsp?language=en&amp;country=GB&amp;catalogType=CONSUMER&amp;productId=DVDR7300H_05_GB_CONSUMER\">DVDR7300H<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Just a few of my complaints after 24 hours of use:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.europe.guideplus.com\/\">GuidePlus+<\/a> electronic guide system covers only a small subset of the channels that we receive. Important ones that are missing are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/bbcthree\/\">BBC3<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/bbcfour\/\">BBC4<\/a>.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>The maximum number of programmes that can be queued for recording is a rather pathetic 25.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>One can not elect to start the recording early to account for imprecise broadcasting schedules.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>The steps by which one can allow a recording to overrun are too rough: 10, 20 or 30 minutes. Why not 2, 5 or a user-configurable amount?<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>There is only one tuner, so one cannot record two programmes at once.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>One cannot set a programme to record daily. A daily news programme, for example, would require three of the 25 recording slots: one Monday to Friday slot, plus a weekly Saturday slot and a weekly Sunday slot. This is just plain stupid.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>The machine offers the user no choice what to do when there is a scheduling conflict. I assume it allows the first programme to finish, rather than truncating it and commencing the recording of the next.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>The G-Link IR blaster was a pain in the arse to configure. I need it to work with a Thomson set-top box, which is what UPC&#8217;s digital cable package uses. The DVDR7300H requires you to tell it whether you&#8217;re using a cable, satellite or terrestrial set-top box, at which point it presents a list of manufacturers. Unfortunately, Thomson doesn&#8217;t feature in the list of cable set-top box manufacturers, so I tried telling the Philips that I was using a Thomson satellite box instead. Sadly, none of the infrared codes it sent to the UPC box were successful in changing the channel. Eventually, I got lucky by trying a bunch of different manufacturers at random. Telling the Philips that I was using a Motorola cable box did the trick, but it took a lot of time and energy to reach that point.<\/p><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>In spite of these and other shortcomings, it&#8217;s been so long since we were able to even record a programme from the television, that just the reacquisition of this basic functionality feels novel to me now. I&#8217;d still give almost anything to have my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tivo.com\/\">TiVo<\/a> back, though. It could do so much more than the Philips DVD-R, which is essentially a piece of rubbish (no intelligence and a very poor UI), and was much cheaper, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of yesterday, we finally have a DVR in the house. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s nothing as configurable and flexible as the MythTV box that I was trying to build not so long back.No, this is the very pedestrian, low-intelligence Philips DVDR7300H. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/2006\/04\/finally-a-dvr\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caliban.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}