PurePVR

Welcome to part 2 of my first series, Introduction to PVRs.

In my previous post in this series I outlined a few of the major advantages to using PVRs. After reading it, you may have thought ‘Wow, I like this sound of this PVR thing. Where can I get one?’. Well the answer to that is, it depends. What does it depend on? It depends mainly on where you live and what is available.

First off, most US households can use TiVo. TiVo is one of the grand daddy’s in the PVR game. With TiVo you can purchase their equipment if you choose (they offer rentals as well), but you are also required to pay for their services. These services include things like software updates, programming content and features like Season Pass and Online Scheduling.

Another place to look for PVRs (or DVRs as the case may be) is your local cable or satellite company. A lot of these companies do offer their own digital video recorders that offer the same core functionality but may also have their own benefits. As an example, a quick list of cable companies currently offering some sort of DVR includes Comcast, Charter, Cox and Adelphia. In Canada there are companies like Bell (ExpressVu), Shaw, Cogeco and Rogers.

A third option is that you can build your own PVR. Now why would you want to do this? There are a few reasons.

Firstly, you may be a real do it yourself kind of person (like me). When you hear about something new you are immediately interested and you want to try to do it yourself.

Another reason is that you would like to build something that fits your needs more closely than a generic solution. For example, if I travel a lot for business I may not be home for a month at a time. In that time I may want to record more shows than a TiVo can hold. If I build my own, I can put as much storage as I need in there and not have to worry about it.

Lastly, another reason why you may want to build your own is to save money. Although you may still have to buy hardware and software to complete the project it may end up being cheaper in the long run.

In future posts I will start running through some of the current solutions available for those who want to build their own PVR. There are quite a few free solutions as well as some paid ones which have their own benefits.

Technorati Tags: PVR, DVR, TiVo