Isn't there any external tuner with option to add hard drive?

[hyedipin]

Are there any boxes being sold that is a standalone TV Tuner box where you can hook up an external hard drive and the unit has coax input, and hdmi output, so basically we won't need a computer watch TV with?

[Miller]

Sure there are. They can be rented from your cable company or purchased from Tivo. But those have a computer inside them. It's just very specialized. If you want to build one yourself you'll need to use computer parts.

[hyedipin]

Arent there like small boxes similar to WD Media Boxes or something like that with a tuner in it?

[Craig]

Check out Moxi.

[hyedipin]

Thanks, I forgot about Moxi. Although, it's $500 and it doesn't seem to work with Analog.
There are a lot of external TV tuners for computers, I was hoping there could be one where you could just plug a USB drive to it and record.

[Miller]

Not that I've heard of. Becaause then you would just have the file saved. You would still need to have a way to play it back and that's a bunch more chips. What are you trying to do exactly? It might not be that hard to build/buy your own and make it fit what you want.

[hyedipin]

I think you replied to me under the other topic: http://forum.byopvr.com/dvr/index.php/topic,10849.msg57750.html#msg57750
I just need something that I can schedule & record and playback later to replace my time warner samsung HD-DVR box.
I would like it to record in HD, but if it is too much, I can just try SD.
Do you know any cheap tuner that is compatible with both OTA (ATSC) and Over cable Analog and Digital (CQAM/NSTC) that I can try with my old computer to see how it works. I can just use VGA to connect to TV.

[Miller]

Your best option is the hvr1600. Remember though iff you're using an old computer recording is easy, it's the playback of HD that takes a good computer. So while you can record just about anything with that tuner, playback might be harder sometimes.

[hyedipin]

Thanks Miller.
Do you have anything captured in HD that I can download and try on my computer to see if it can handle it? Commercial or something, anything should be fine.
The tuner is really not cheap. $90. I don't want get a tuner that is HD capable if I cannot play it back. In that case, Maybe I can just by an SD tuner that can get CQAM singals.

[Miller]

I don't have anything, sorry. I'm sure a quick websearch will turn up something though. (And download a lot faster than from me.)

As for the tuner, just to be clear. It is an analog tuner. That's what makes it more expensive. Analog tuners (the good ones anyway) have a hardware chip on them to handle the encoding needed so that you don't tap oout your cpu when you're recording a show. A digital tuner is cheap as it basically just writes the show to your hard drive. SD and HD can come in different formats. If you using an antenna then you can capture digital only. This could be SD or HD, but it's digital. You can use a cheap digital tuner for this. If you get cable (or satellite, etc - doesn't really matter) and you want to capture in SD most of the time that will be analog. You can capture digital QAM channels from cable (not satellite) with a tuner card, but the channels vary from region and provider. If a cable company switches over to digital (which few have so far as far as I have heard) then you can switch to a digital tuner and still be ok. Most of us use analog though unless it's with an antenna.

Finally, if you want to record in HD from your box, this would be an HD analog source and the only tuner that does that is the HDPVR from Hauppauge.

So all that to say, I would still get the hvr1600. It will do SD and HD, analog and digital. If you're tv can't handle the HD part, then just stick to the SD. Even if you end up getting a new computer (for whatever reason) the tuner can be easily moved to that computer too.

[hyedipin]

Thanks. I didn't know there was a big difference between the tuners.
I checeked my provider, Time Warner Cable. Without their converter box/DVR, they provide about 50 channels over the coax. Half of them Digital, other half is Analog. I can easily see the difference on my TV, since most digital broadcast in regular numbers, while digitals are in #.# format.
What I meant with my comment above about HD/SD was that
If my computer cannot handle HD, I can still record the channels in SD using analog broadcast. I can always watch the digital real time directly on my TV anyway, so I don't need the computer to be recording/playing back digital or HD channels all the time.

I will look for some HD samples online and try to watch them, but I thought there might be difference in compression, etc what TV Tuner would record.

[Miller]

I still think the 1600 should work for you. It will do the analog stuff just fine and you can always try the HD digital stuff with it and see how it goes. (Digital SD should be fine too.)