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October 22, 2004

Just want to pause live tv

I've been looking at Tivo and Replay - all the fancy features are nice. But for me what it really comes down to is the ability to pause live tv in order to time delay and then fast forward through commercials. I would rather avoid the monthly fees and just get a basic box that can record ala VCR style to a hard drive and then be able to start watching while it's recording. Does such a product exist??
-- Pat

October 22, 2004 in DVR

Answers

You might want to try out one of the TiVo boxes that come with TiVo Free. Otherwise, I don't really know of other boxes that offer the simple feature of pausing live TV.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Nov 2, 2004 9:55:04 AM

As Matt said, there are the Pioneer and Toshiba TiVo units that come with Tivo Basic - no subscription required.

There are other non-sub DVRs on the market - the RCA Scenium for example, or a number of DVR Recorders which are also DVRs. But many of them cost just as much as the TiVo Basic units, even as much as a standard TiVo (which are down to $99, or less, now) with a lifetime ($299) subscription. Amazon was (is?) running a special that dropped a 40 hour TiVo down to around $76 after rebate - so you're looking at $375 for a unit with lifetime. Another standalong DVR may be less than that, but it would probably lack most of the features and not be as usable.

Posted by: MegaZone at Nov 2, 2004 5:21:59 PM

I am interested in a product like this too. I am sure a lot of people will be interested. A small device with just 1 gig storage would do for this purpose. All it has to do is cache the video stream and allow the user to view the cached content. When the user changes the channel, it somehow has know about it and flush the cache and start the caching afresh... So simple. Should not cost me more than $30-$40. What do you folks think?

Posted by: Anonymous at Nov 5, 2004 11:48:58 AM

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