As long as Sujal is going to describe his AV setup, I might as well pose a question to the team.
Hypothetically, wifey and I might move to the suburbs, which will result in us having more TVs (3-4) than residents (2). We’ve gotten accustomed to our setup now with a TivoSeries2 in the bedroom and a TivoHD in the living room. They’re networked, and we can move recordings from one to the other.
If we go to 4 TVs, I hesitate to buy 2 more TivoHDs. There’s got to be a better way to manage content around the house. Any ideas?
Categories: In the News
2:31 pm | 8 comments
January 16th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
God, I can’t wait until Heidi reads the part about 4 TVs. That ought to be funny (we have a recurring argument (friendly) about having a SECOND TV in the house. I’m not kidding.
That being said, why do you need 4 TVs? two offices?
My suggestion is to skip the TV, go with the slingbox connected to the Tivo in the bedroom and that way save yourself a TV and a Tivo.
The Series2 should let you download the shows, as well, to the computer.
Beyond that, if your requirements are firm (TV, Tivo) then you’re pretty much screwed.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
We’ll have at least 3 TVs: living room, bedroom, and office. If I slingbox (which I have), we’re either watching on a laptop monitor, or we need a new computer.
Funny thing about this problem…it’s almost more a Client problem than a Server problem. Even if I centralize content on one device, I need to get that content to a monitor.
Requirements aren’t TV or Tivo or slingbox…I’ll take whatever works. If I could figure out the issue of getting content moved around, I wouldn’t be averse to the Windows solution.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
DRM, baby. Who cares about interop? Oh, you mean the consumer? sorry, you don’t count.
That’s the first thing that popped into my head when I read your original post. Since it’s not very helpful, I didn’t post it, but reading your comment it’s worth mentioning. You could make your incomes go further if you didn’t have to buy 4 devices to play back the crap you already have a right to play back.
In this particular case, you really just want a Tivo extender device that is the dumb client to your TivoHD but hooks into the TV.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
DRM isn’t the core problem here. Location is. I need a client on each screen, to view content from a central server.
Is there such a magical device as a dumb Tivo Extender client?
January 16th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
no, there isn’t. If there was no DRM, however, you can bet that there’d be a half dozen options…
January 17th, 2008 at 12:53 am
My father uses two modulators to move the output from his DVRs to unused channels and thus distributes them to all the TVs in the house that way. Currently, there are no HD modulators on the market, however that will likely be remedied in the near future.
January 17th, 2008 at 8:01 am
How does he control the units? IR Repeaters?
January 17th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I don’t recall. At one point he was buying RF remotes, which have a much longer range and aren’t line of sight. I’ll have to ask him next time I talk to him.