Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 735

There are half a dozen cable card tuners that do exactly what you want. Caveat is you must use a PC. Why is everyone in this thread so against these cheap, simple solutions that already exist? Using DVD recorders for this kind of thing is totally unnecessary and needlessly complex and expensive, not to mention low quality.

It's not just this thread. It's not everyone. The Magnavox is not low quality, complex or expensive.

I think it's depending on your situation. IMO, What mdavej said is valid only if one already has an HTPC. It's all relative. If you don't have an HTPC, then this Mag DVDR is the best. Low power usage, easy to use like a VCR, decent picture quality, extremely convenient with the HDD ("recording while you're in jail" :-). Even though I have an HTPC I still use this DVD recorder, because of the convenience of the HDD, and chasing live TV, without needing to get a tuner card or an HDHomerun box.

No offense intended, but it is. SD is low quality compared to HD. Setting manual timers on 2 boxes, making multiple connections, switching sources/inputs, and having no guide data on the Maggie is complex. Renting cable boxes instead of cable cards is expensive.

Everything folks are wishing for here is already available on other devices. If you're happy with you DVD/HDD recorder / cable box combo, that's great. But if someone wants more (HD, integrated guide, easy access to encrypted channels, more recording space, no cable box and the ability to watch your recordings and other media anywhere), then they should at least consider what's already avalable rather than wait and hope for something that will never happen.

Yeah, you are correct. The ones with passthrough are more expensive. I was in a bit of a hurry and wasn't thorough. I did a search on component to composite with passthrough, and this one came up, with others. This was the least expensive which is why I listed it. I should have read the description more carefully.

The ones with passthrough are indeed more expensive. THIS is more what I was thinking about--WITH bypass. Of course, it's $205.

My browser at work is locked (by work security), and it appears to be outdated, so I cannot use the quote or multiquote features, and it will not allow me to send PMs any longer. I'm lucky I can still read and post.

mdavej definitely has a point. I've got both, a Magnavox 515 and an HTPC. I really like my Magnavox HDD DVDR (I like my Toshiba RD-XS35s even more, for the same reasons), but I find myself using my HTPC with WMC a lot more, for essentially the reasons mdavej gives, plus BD burning of HD content if I want to. I'd love Funai to come out with an HD version and I'd buy it right away, but for now I've already got just about everything on my wish list in my HTPC. While I love all my children the same, the Magnavox is mainly just pulling second tier backup duty on a TV in the bedroom, in case the other machines glitch up and fail to record. Hasn't happened yet, though.
Edited by plplplpl - 10/23/12 at 4:25pm

I have three Sony HD DVRs, two Magnavox units, one TiVo with cable card/HD service, a Win7 laptop with three different Hauppage adapters plus a lot of other stuff. I like stuff.

And I never say never.

I do what I can. Like maybe a TiVo?

I think there are just a lot of budget-conscious people here who are satisfied with SD recording and minimal feature set if it means they don't have to spend a lot of money. I find it hard to rationalize the trouble they are willing to put up with using these for cable any other way. Although, when you start talking about buying multiple DVDRs to do the job that a multi-tuner device does, the costs can add up and approach what you would spend for a full-featured unit.

Perhaps the biggest problems with PC-based cable-card tuners and TiVo are they are not made by funai nor sold at walmart.

Gastrof, I have two Pios. When one of them conks out, I'll probably buy a Maggy, unless there is a suitable BD DVDR available then. But, hey, I recommend Maggys to people all the time, and a good friend of mine bought one on my recommendation.


ChurchAVGuy, that Atlona component>S-Video converter you posted is one model I own.

Thank you poster 234 for asking.

I'd pay $ 750 U.S. as a price point for a HDD-BD recorder.

You have listed several optional features that are attractive, but they are in-fact "extras" to the primary mission objective: HDD with BD recording. It is vital to editing capability (cut and delete). I also especially like expandable capacity.

Suggest the Funai marketing team review the dismal U.S.A. sales history of LG-590-BD and LG-690-BD in USA. It retailed at MSRP $ 400 with close-out retail about $ 270. It had a HDD, not a burner, but yes it had Neflix, Vudu, Gracenote music index service, upload DVD or CD to HDD. Didn't sell well. I have several of them. I also have two Tivo premier XL's. Love them. But I really like the idea of disc backup.

It would be nice to CableCard support, but it is probably a lengthy approval process and probably restricts the disc's to only being playable on the originating "home" machine. Thus I could live without CableCard and rely instead on component and / or HDMI inputs.
'
HOme Theatre Personal Computer HTPC is a pain with layers of Digital Rights Management D.R.M. Would definitely purchase a stand-0alone Funai HDD-BD product.

currently have four of your products andx have given several others as gifts to family and friends. Keep them coming !

Typical recording is sporting events and musical concerts. I record a few documentaries and public affairs programing. Could not care less about popular network shows.

Thank you 234 for your time and consideration.

Do you completely reject the option to transfer the recordings from the TiVo to your PC for editing/authoring/burning a BD-R -- or network storage?
DRM can be an issue, but only with cable and cable cards. DRM is not applied uniformly across the cable-sphere and depends on the policies of your cable co. Some protect very little, some protect everything.

Let me say that I too would purchase four BD recorders, if I could find one that had HD-SDI inputs or component inputs. Anything under $1000 would be fine.

Speaking of BD, what would be the capacity (time) of one disk recording 1080i content? Just curious.

Not a fan of the CW, eh?

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1.0.42
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Maybe they could build it without any tuner or with just a single basic ATSC/QAM tuner, and include network tuner support. We could all pick whatever type and the number of tuners that we want.

Or PBS, of which two in my area (Tampa). :-p

That is a non-answerable question as asked. If you were asking that about DVD-R, someone would say it depends on what mode or "recording speed" you were operating at. Same goes for BD-R. It depends entirely on whether you are recording the transport stream as-broadcast or encoding it to a bitrate that will fit a certain amount of playback time on the disk.

As far as the transport stream goes, bitrates vary from station to station depending on the broadcaster. If we just consider the four major networks in Philly, here are typical prime-time bitrates I see for the MPEG-2 HD/5.1 transport streams and file sizes for a 1hr show with commercials removed (~42 min of content).

CBS 1080i 17Mbps 5.3GB
NBC 1080i 14Mbps 4.3GB
FOX 720p 14Mbps 4.3GB
ABC 720p 7Mbps 2.1GB

So if recording transport streams, you can fit a little over 8 hr of content from ABC on a single BD-R but only a little over 3 hr of content from CBS. I don't think most people would like that lack of time predictability in a stand-alone BD-R recorder.

As I noted previously in this thread, it is very likely that a BD recorder would have an H.264 encoder chip rather than an MPEG-2 encoder -- MPEG-2 is obsolete; BluRay is primarily H.264; AVCHD is only H.264. Along with that would come a set of profiles, or "recording speeds", that would define encoding bitrates to fit a certain amount of content time on a BD-R. H.264 is more efficient than MPEG-2 -- you can reduce the size of an MPEG-2 file to ~70% of the original size when encoding to H.264 while retaining original PQ. More importantly, H.264 degrades more gently than MPEG-2 when you starve it for bitrate. Depending on the quality of the encoder, I think 5-6 hr of 1080i/5.1 content encoded as H.264 is reasonable while retaining PQ almost identical to the original broadcast -- the BD-R equivalent of HQ recording speed. After that lower bitrate encoding profiles will give you more content on the disk for the SP and LP equivalents -- how much depends on the choices of the design/marketing team. Then there is also the option of having the encoder down-scale 1080i source to 720p which is just another way of getting more content on a single BD-R.

Hi wajo, big fan of your posts here!

I've had a 513 for a while now and although it has its glitches, it serves the purpose. We mostly record from ATSC (air) since hooking it up to cable never really worked well...all our cable channels have 3 digits as the secondary number, and they never matched those of our TV. But we are good with ATSC.

I also had an old tivo (analog) which until lately was only used to record shows when scheduling conflicts arised. For example, we like to watch Castle, Hawaii 50 and Revolution, all airing Monday at the same time, so we needed to record 2 and watch one live.

We have the 513 hooked up to the TV through HDMI, which allows us to control the 513 through the tv, which is practical - we can store away the other remote, and theoretically we can control up to 4 hdmi capable devices (without kluges! but more on that below)

The tivo started failing so we got a 533.... we have had good results with the 513 and read about the new features of the 533 so we jumped in.

However, the 533 has been giving us some problems since day 1.

1. We thought that we were also going to be able to control it with the tv remote (through the hdmi/fun control setting), but when we used the remote to change to the new one, the unit was reset to factory defaults...all channel setup and timer programming lost. Therefore, thinking that there was an hdmi ID conflict with both units connected to the tv, we disconnected the HDMI from the older one (513); but same issues, if the 533 is off, then turned on through hdmi, the 533 is reset. Not sure why they call it "fun link", resetting the 533 to factory settings when I use it is not fun at all . We finally removed hdmi from 533 and hooked it with component video which also looks good.

2. The 533 worked well after removing the hdmi, until I tried to use L2 to record something from my computer (it has SVHS+rca audio outputs). After that, although the 533 still had all its timer programming and the channels appeared to be there, none of them had any signal. It would seem as if changing the input source caused the tuner to lose all channel frequencies, as if the antenna was disconnected. After repeating the auto channel preset, channels were showing up again. Does that mean that every time I record something from L2 the tuner is somehow reset?

3. Cable support has been improved, but still not there yet. For example, we get digital CBS on channel 85.177. For timer programming it has to be entered as 85.77 (2 digits only), but when channel surfing it does show it as 85.177. Also, you cant type in 85.177 when watching. Since we use ATSC, this is not a major issue for us.

We do like being able to pre define titles and not losing timer programming info on power failures, but these glitches make me wonder whether we got a lemon, or if all new models behave the same way.

Sorry for the long post!!!

gosmily

Thank you, that was very informative. I have no need for BD storage for now, but I didn't realize the variables. It does give me something to think about. Thanks again.
Edited by JoeKustra - 10/25/12 at 4:06pm

Strange. Where does 85.177 show? I have four decimal places on the 100+ SD digital QAM channels but my HD channels are only one decimal place. All can be recorded on my 515H, which only cares about the last one or two digits.

This is the best answer about DVD and BR capacity/bit rate that I've seen! Filed it.

I usually get about 16-to-18 episodes of TV authored in a BD-R 25GB disc with the same DVD PQ, using 720p H264. Not easy to explain.

The only flaw in your post is that you state MPEG-2 is obsolete as if that means something.
It is the one and ONLY codec used for digital TV in the United States.
It will continue to be for a very long time whether you like it or not. (I do not, but I don't relish another change over happening so soon after the last.)

You can have whatever opinion you want about codecs, but the facts are:

• ALL digital broadcasts in the U.S. are mpeg2.
• Re-encoding everything with an H.264 encoder chip can ONLY degrade the quality, it can never improve it.
• Mpeg2 broadcasts are nice and compact from the start. (Even at your CBS bitrates, you could put a sitcom with commercials on a DVD5.)
• Commercial blu-rays may not use mpeg2 much anymore, but it is still absolutely part of the standard and will not be removed from it because you think it is obsolete.

Ideally any BD burner/DVR should be able to record and burn unaltered TV broadcasts to BDs, DVD9s and DVD5s. Yes I mean BD9 and BD5s. Compatibility with itself is what is important. If your other BD players can't play them, don't burn in that format. Many players can handle it, and of course THIS will. DVD-VR is a flunky format too with all that finalize/make compatible stuff, but we put up with it.

Seriously, there is nothing wrong with:
High Speed: Untouched video and audio dubbing. Can still get about 30-60 minutes of TV on a DVD5 (give or take depending on the source). More as you move up in capacity to DVD9, BD25, etc.
HQ: Encodes at a high bitrate (17-18Mbps) @ 1080i with 5.1 audio. About 1/2 hr for DVD5, 1 hour for DVD9, 3 hrs for a BD25.
SP: Encodes at a medium-high bitrate (about 14Mbps) @ 1080i with 5.1 audio. 45 minutes for a DVD5, etc.
These modes may mean 480i and 720p content gets upscaled or 2.0 audio recorded with 4 empty channels, so use wisely.

Current Philips and Maggie recorders use half D1 (352x480) for SPP, LP, EP, or SLP mode recordings.
I could easily see these modes doing the same on a BD burner.

SPP (10-ish Mbps) and LP (7-8Mbps) could use 720p with all audio mixed to 2 channels.

EP & SLP could be 480i recording in 1 hr and 2 hr bitrates comparable to our current HQ and SP modes, respectively. (Since some broadcasts are still standard definition and any analog inputs are going to be SD, it would be good to not have to upscale when encoding.)

I'd really like to see the ability to still burn a DVD as a DVD if the source is 480, or if re-encoding with EP/SLP modes.
This of course is only possible if these have an mpeg chip.

Do not lose sight that these are TV recorders, not encoders for high quality HD inputs like PCs or BD players.

If you NEED to have 12+ hours in H.264 on a BD, burn to a rewritable and do it yourself on a computer.
Don't hang the H.264 albatross around everyone's necks when having mpeg-only would be more practical and less expensive.
Edited by DoctorM - 10/25/12 at 11:07pm

hi joe...

my 2 cents on channel assignments...

for reference, i have cox cable and OTA reception in Las Vegas...

while the Funai / Mag series does not display ( in my case ) more than 2 decimal places, i DO receive carrier AND auto memory load on CATV channels with up to 5 ( count 'em 5 ) decimal places on my mits 46249 television, eg - 123.45678 . this was also the case for my 2 previous mits TV's ( that were ultimately replaced by my current model due to software bugs and panel issues ).

cablecos seem to take so blasted many liberties that it becomes impossible to keep up, although it would be nice if they would all at least adhere to SOME standard, whatever it might be. without a standard of some sort, it becomes quite difficult for manufacturers such as Funai to attempt to anticipate what every cableco might do. from what i've read here, it seems that such liberties are also sometimes taken by those folks broadcasting OTA.

my ' conspiracy theory ' side tells me they do all of this on purpose to foil folks such as us, but i also theorize that it might be simpler than that and they just choose to do things because they can, or that it might be simpler technically for them to deal with internally.

my mits tv is the only one of several in my household to auto assign these semi-rogue channel assignments. the auto-scan stuff in the mits seems to be a horse of a different color in that regardless of viewable content ( be it scrambled, unscrambled, or simply just a carrier and sufficient sub-channel designations ), the channel will be memorized. for this tv, my auto scan procedure is to complete the scan and then spend the next hour or so de-programming whatever is NOT producing viewable content.

the balance of tv's ( panasonic, lg, and toshiba ) behave more ' mainstream-like ' in that the only things they auto-memorize are channels on which there is something viewable.

occasionally, both the Mits and the Panasonic tvs seem to magically add channels that have either been de-programmed or that did not originally get memorized. i'm not sure how this one happens, but it does. it's as if something arrived from outside and told the TV to turn a channel on and memorize it all by itself.

the only DVR devices i own with digital tuners are the Philips 3576s and a Mag 513, so i cannot comment on other manufacturers.

in my market, i'm lucky enough to have found an acceptable, though imperfect work-around for the Philips/Mag channel assignment deficiencies, but i feel for those who have yet to do so.

anyhow, just my offering of small change on the subject...

rgds,
ron g

It can seem that way. Mits makes and has made very advanced televisions for a long time. I have several Mits VCRs (and one Mits car). I have a small cable company. They are very good yet strange at times. They supply TVGOS legacy for my Sony DHG. It has only been six months that my HD went to one decimal place. Now the strange part. They have three headends (offices) and each has its own lineup and services and prices. Just 8 miles from my location the same company hasn't changed to one decimal place. No feed includes PSIP and what SCTE-127 is there is bad. On the other hand, they replaced two old outside cable boxes with one new one and nobody asked them to do it. My mother only watches the old vsb channels despite having 170 digital channels.

A standard would be nice, but I doubt I will ever see it. There is only one reason they do anything: $$$$.
Edited by JoeKustra - 10/26/12 at 5:29am