NYPC General Meeting: Digital Video Recording on your own computer January 17, 2008

There are many ways to record television programs. Besides Tivo, some of the cable companies, such as Time Warner, will provide you with their version of Digital Video Recording (DVR) for an extra fee. Lefty, NYPC’s Vice President, has come up with his own solutions which he will demo at our January meeting.

In Lefty's own words:

"I watch a lot of TV. So much so that I can fill up the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) that Time Warner provides with TV shows that I want to see, but just don’t have the time to get around to watching. They usually have a limit of 30 hours. I also occasionally run into the problem of wanting to record more than two shows during the same time slot, which is another limitation that these set-top DVR’s have. Another drawback that these set top boxes present is the ability to remove the shows that you have recorded onto their hard drives and get them onto your computer. Sure, you can record them to a VHS tape, but why downgrade a digital signal to an analog signal? Besides, not many of us even have a VHS player around.

What to do!? Well, not being able to change some basic rules of physics has always haunted me, but being able to configure a computer to make it do what I want is something I can do.

If you have a Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate or a Windows XP Media Center computer and a TV tuner card installed, you can now have your very own DVR. Even if you don’t have those specific versions of Windows, there are hardware devices that can be used to view and record TV broadcasts to your computer. I will be demonstrating one such device manufactured by Pinnacle that even allows you to pick up HD broadcasts with an antenna.

I will also discuss a new service called Joost that streams free TV shows over the internet."

The meeting is free and open to all.

All NYPC General Meetings are Free to all. What a bargain!

6:00PM Doors open
6:30PM Announcements, Questions and Answers
7PM Presentation

Official Website: http://www.nypc.org