Hi,
My BT PVR RECORDER has gone phut. While cruising the web for a replacement, I came across the idea of using an external drive instead. Apparently this would be much cheaper.

Now the article didn't give much info. I assume that I would be able to record the TV program I wanted, and have it labelled, and have it saved. I would need to be able to recall and watch the data and save it again if necessary.

I had a look at some external drives but none seem to come with remote controls. So I also assume that I'd have to use the remote of the TV to control the whole thing?

How am I doing? Just in case I'll inform you that my computer has the following connections: 2 USB 1 ports; 3 HDMI 1 ports; a digital audio socket; an av1 scart plug; an av2 (component/video); and an ethernet socket.

Any advice on this would be welcome, please. Hope I've told you enough...

The beauty of a (commercial) PVR is that it will have more than 1 tuner - therefor you can record while viewing FTA (via the PVR) at the same time. Of course you can always watch on the TV itself anytime if you have the aerial passed through (some don't).

If on the other hand you simply plug a hard disk (or thumb drive) into the TV itself, and it only has one tuner, you can record a show (one show) any time, but you cannot watch anything else whilst it's recording. And yes, all operations are from the TV remote. Some (most ?) TVs have pretty lame EPG menus compared to a "real" PVR in my experience.

In these days of streaming services, seems most manufacturers are giving up on true PVRs - even logitech isn't bothering with programmable remotes any more.

1 members found this post helpful.

Sygoo,

Many thanks for your post. I always get a warm glow when I'm helped. Sort of shows me that the world hasn't crumbled away away altogether. Keep it up, eh.

Clearfell

1 members found this post helpful.

Clearfell, I don't really understand what does and does not work. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

1. Your PVR is broken
2. You have a satellite dish as an input (?)
3. Your TV has a satellite tuner as well (?)
4. You want to record TV with your computer

Your PC has HDMI ports but I guess those are output ports. However you need the TV signal to get into your computer first to be able to get it out to a TV and/or monitor.

Some time ago I have used a Hauppauge TV capture card and I was content with it. They now have a whole list of possible solutions. Back in the day it was important to have hardware compression, with current hardware this might not be that important anymore - but for robustness I would still prefer it. They even have their hardware output IR signals to steer a set-top box

Check out Hauppauge's product page: https://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/prods.htm

Only downside is that their hardware is supported by Windows-only software, however they DO have a Linux support page you might find interesting: https://hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_linux.html.