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I was at my uncle's the other day and looked at his new TiVo Series3 HD box. You know, the thing does bidirectional digital HD cable better than Comcast's SA boxes! My initial reaction was surprise and admiration, but I am just left stunned by the fact the only way to receive all the channels (that includes on-demand and SDV) that you pay your cable company for without leasing their digital set-top box is with a TiVo Series3! I was stunned to see Comcast's Channel 1 On Demand work without a glitch and even look better on TiVo!
Yeah, Cable Card Windows Media Center PCs are available. But those use OCUR (the first generation version) that can't do on-demand, SDV (which all the new HD channels will use soon), or any other bidirectional (2-way) digital service cable companies can and will offer some day.
I'm not going to let TiVo win this battle against Media Center PCs! As they say, if you can't beat them, join them. So, I have an idea and I have no idea if its even doable which is why I am writing this - to see if anyone here knows if it can be done or not. My idea....
Looks like TiVo is now priced in the same ball park of HD-PVR. It also looks like TiVo can be added to a home network. What I want to know if its possible to access TiVo recordings through the network? If so, it would be possible to access those programs through a Media Center PC, effectively making TiVo a networked virtual tuner.
Is this workable?
FYI - A Tivo HD has dual tuners for about the same price as the HD-PVR, which only works with a single tuner. As such, it's only half the cost of two HD-PVRs for the same functionality. S3 Tivos and the Tivo HD have the TivoToGo feature which allows you to transfer recordings to your PC. They can be easily converted to standard transport streams using VideoReDo so you can play them back with most codecs. I use BeyondTV's interface to play them back on my HTPC on occasion.
If you have more than one Tivo HD or S3 Tivo connected to your home network you can access shows from any remote Tivo and play them back on the Tivo you're viewing. The shows are actually copied over to the Tivo from the remote unit and are not streamed. This allows independent viewing of the program in more than one location.
Unfortunately, you will be unable to network your Tivo in such a way that it can be used as a remote tuner for streaming content to your HTPC. Still, a S3 Tivo complements a HTPC quite nicely if you have an A/V controller that can switch between them. I have two S3 Tivos along with my HTPC for recording encrypted content from FIOS. The HTPC is used strictly for recording OTA HD locals and playing back standard DVD and Blu-Ray rips stored on an unRAID server.