<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by DCA_not_Reagan:
You might want to try ReplayTV. It records shows to its own hard drive just like a Tivo, but it has built in Ethernet networking.
There is an open source program called dvArchive that lets you move files from the ReplayTV to your computer. From there you can watch them on your computer or burn them to DVD.
This assumes you have, or can set up, a home network, and it works best with broadband.
A few important caveats:
1. It takes a while to move a show over to your computer, probably longer than the show itself (ie 2 hours to copy a 1 hour show). You can schedule this to run on its own though.
2. The MPEG files are not standard ones like you might download off the internet. You might need a special video viewer to watch them on your computer. There are free viewers that work with these files.
3. You cannot upload your own MPEG's to the ReplayTV.</font>
I've been using the dvArchive for about a week now. Love it. In terms of speed - on my switched 10/100 network (I have gig but it's not applicable since the ReplayTV is only at 10/100) I can roughly 45 mins for every one hour of show at "high quality" in terms of transfer rates. I have been very successful in speeding up the default transfer rate in moderation, to get lower transfer times than 45 mins - but only during the middle of the night when the TV isn't doing anything and the server is done with it's backups.
While you cannot upload your own MP3's to the box, you can transfer and stream back into the box those that you created earlier - essentially allowing you to create a massive archive where your only limiter is disk space
