recording sports whyle at work

[drewmitch44]

I recently took a new job that requires me to work on a rotating scedule. This means that i work some nights and some mornings and alternating days off. Im a flyers fan and last year i didnt miss a single game. Im wondering what i can use to record the games for the nights when i work 2-11 at night. I have a VHS but that sucks. Im not sure if i can use a dvd recorder because the games are sometimes 3 hours or a little more and i would be mad if i missed a overtime or a shootout after the overtime. Im not trying to spend a crazy ammount of money on anything but cant stand missing the games. What do you guys sudjest? Also i want to add that i have the ability to use my PC to watch movies on my TV. My video card has a s-video out and i use it a lot to watch my downloaded divx movies. Not sure if there is a way to store the games on my pc or what i would need to do that. I dont have to do that i just wanted to add that as a possibility. Thanks

 

[Drowned Rat]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

Buy a digital video recorder like Tivo or rent one from your cable company. Easiest thing in the world to operate and you'll never miss a game. Plus you can bypass all the commercials and stuff you don't need to see if you're in a hurry.

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

would something like this work for my pc?? Just wondering. If i can figure out a way to get a video and audio in on my pc i think i can do it that way. I dont know the best way to do it.

 

[rogerwa]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

If you want to do in on a PC, check out a Hauppage tuner card like a 150. You can use this in this in combination with Beyond TV. Doing this will eat up around 2.2 Gb drive space per/hr of recording. BTV has a lot of nice features such as being able to transcode for Ipod and a plug in to burn directly to DVD. If you have a hefty enough system > P4 3.0Ghz and tons of disk, you could pop an HDTV tuner (~10Gb/hr) in and pull the digital signal over the air.

BTV sells combo packs. If you have a set top box for a tuner, this makes the PC idea more difficult as you need to be able to control the box to tune in the channel (they something called an IRblaster). Straight cable and OTA (antenna) is pretty straightforward.

I currently have a Mythtv Linux box with three tuners (1 haup 150 and a Haup 500 dual tuner) that works out real well..

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

I have direct tv BUT for watching flyers they are owned by the cable company. I have a cable feed but its only the coaxel type. I have to change the channels with my tv to watch the cable so there is no box if you know what i mean. If i get one of those tuner cards and record that way, how do i hook it up? would there be a input on the card for the standard cable wire? Also after i record it can i watch it in media player? If not the media player what i would like to do is watch it on my tv instead of my pc. So can i just use the s-video out on my video card and send it to my s-video in on my TV? thanks for the help. I just want to pick the right method.

 

[ezmobee]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

BeyondTV is AWESOME!!!! It has changed our TV lives. We never watch anything live anymore. It records a show and then runs a job on the recording overnight and picks out the commercials. It doesn't remove them (since it isn't 100% accurate) but it marks them allowing you to skip past them in one click. The FireFly PC remote that comes with BeyondTV is also really great. I can't recommend it enough. It's easy enough to use that my wife can handle it.

 

[vess]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

As Drowned Rat stated, the DVR is the easiest to use, especially with your satellite reception. I have Road Runner and a 40 hour DVR, and it works great. Will even tape things when the time changes- I don't usually have to reset it. And I understand that TIVO works the same way. My DVR is 9.95 extra per month, but I didn't have to pay for the unit. Think it over.

 

[tommays]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

The BIG issue is NONE of them are smart enough to record OVERTIME and with ABC amoung other networks doing this STUPID 62 Minute show thing it can cause conflicts when shows overlap


I use a DVR and also record on the computer with a TV card


The IR blaster(from computer) will change chanels on the Cable or SAT company box which you could feed to your computer and just set up a block of time to record on and input like the S-video

If your worried about missing overtime you can just record and extra 30 minutes or hour


Tommays

 

[i386]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

When we had DirecTV we had their Tivo receiver/dvr. I loved it. Now we have Dish Network receiver/dvr. It gets the job done but is nowhere near as friendly as Tivo. I've never used the PC based dvr units but any device that has Tivo's name on it should be very easy to use.

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

this is not the direct tv m trying to record. I have tivo box rented from direct tv. The team im wanting to record is on the cable locally. I have a cable line but no box. It works if i just hook it to the tv. I can watch or record on vhs. Im not trying to record the diret tv its the cable im trying to record. Thanks

 

[rogerwa]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

If you buy a capture card as mentioned previously, you should be able to hook the coax directly or through a splitter into the TV-in connector on the tuner card. With something like BeyondTV, you will identify you region and cable provider and that will provide the right listings and channel information.

If you want to do it simply, you may even use the included software withthe tuner card to do basic time based recording.

 

[jeeperman]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

or you can get a dvd recorder for under $90, set it to record up to 6 hors or more on a 23 cent dvd.
At those costs, so what if the game does not go into overtime and you have hours of junk on the dvd too.

 

[PierBridge]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

Tivos's or DVR's record the whole game you just have to set it to record for a set amount of time like 5 hours....hint hint.

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

I just have a coaxle in from the cable line. There is no cable box. The games come on comcast and i have direct tv. But since i got comcast cable internet i guess they turned on the cable line as well so i get tv. Shhhhh!

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

So i cant rent tivo from them. Thanks for all the replies guys

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: recording sports whyle at work

Hey everyone it took me a whyle pricing and reading, but I GOT IT!! Im using the DVD Express DX2, to record the games onto my PC's hard disk. http://www.usb-ware.com/ads-dvd-xpress-dx2.htm. It works great. It allows you to choose what format to record. U can use dvd, svcd, vcd, mpeg-4(ipod), mpeg-4(sony psp), and mpeg-4(divx). You can even burn directly to cd or dvd whyle your program is running. Its so easy to set up and the software that is provided with it works great. The best thing about it is, its hardware based so it does all the encoding and decoding so my pc dosent have to do verry much. I can play high end games at the same time as record and i notice no difference in preformance. I got it from wallyworld for 59 bucks. I did a lot of reading and pricing of different models before i bought it, so i think i got the one that is just right for me. I recomend it if anyone is trying to do something like what im doing. Thanks for all the input guys!