dvr's gone
 

i have noticed the $300 junkie funi dvrs are a thing of the past and replaced by $20 usb recording devices. anyone have one of these?

The only one I have is an RCA DTA880, which is a DTA converter with a built-in USB recorder. Works really great.

The funi ones may be gone, but the Funai (Magnavox) ones may still be around. 500 hours on a 500 gig HD? I saw some refurbs out there, but lots of out-of-stock, too.

I have a converter-sized recorder that is single tuner, records MPEG2 stream directly onto disk (so the recordings aren't small) but they are the same as what feeds the antenna, commercials skippable, closed-captions work, etc. Records onto USB 2.0 anything, if that 'anything' is fast enough. Elgato TV tuners for computers work well, too, with the same stream recording. (IE, no further compression.)

I'm stuck in an annoying position. The TV shows I timeshift/archive are (only) on cable and the damn local cable company encrypts literally every channel on QAM so the only way to tune it is with one of their damn cable boxes which only output RF or HDMI...I can record the RF NTSC outputs of the box but I want to watch my HD late night shows in HD without staying up (and also save them for the future)...
So I bought an HDMI splitter (that strips copy protection from the signal) and an HDMI capture card...The card worked maybe 5-6 times and died (may have been the card or my computer...other PCI cards have had issues with it).
So I then bought this Cloner Alliance HDML recorder box...It has yet to completely die with a lot of use but it is about as dependable as a first generation VW beetle on a rainy day...The damn thing is hyper-picky about what USB memory it will use and how it is formatted...Hell even when it will record on a thumb drive it will often randomly stop recording, and sometimes corrupt those cards (either requiring I format the card or corrupting it beyond the ability to format it).
So far my situation seems to have no foolproof solution for recording. I wish they could just make these products as reliable as VHS decks were...I should not have to try a bunch of products to find some magic combination that works.
The Chinese companies producing these shitty HDMI capture boxes should be ashamed of themselves.

Read/write speeds of USB sticks varies quite a bit. Patriot 16 gig sticks with rubber-like cases have proven reliable for lots of things I work with -- but I bought them several years ago. They were separated from the average sticks out on the floor at MicroCenter. I believe they were with the camera/video stuff at the time.

I have a couple of SSD HD recorders (Blackmagic HyperDeck and Shuttle 2) and they are quite picky on which SSDs are used. Even though mfg's tout fast read/write speeds, they use various caching techniques that average out to fast, but still don't cut it when it comes to continuous (hours-long) recording at (up to) 4k HD video at very high bitrates. Kind of separates the men from the boys. They have an approved list on their site -- you may find some SD card information there which might give you some 'specs' to shoot for on the USBs.

Those Chinese companies know no shame man. Their innovation in past centuries was impressive, but today they're just crapping all over their own legacy while breaking international laws and ignoring basic codes of ethics.

I saw this a while back, it may not be a practical solution but it's the only thing that comes to mind:

https://www.blondertongue.com/mddm-860.html

...

I already have a USB tuner card that tunes CLEAR QAM...Trouble is cable here ENCRYPTS their QAM so no QAM devices that are not rented from the cable company can tune their signal...If it were not for the encryption I'd have many more/better options.

I'll never go for a TIVO. Having to pay rent for a device I OWN to work and having my programs trapped on that device are IMO absurd.

If I knew a bit more about digital video and hacking I'd be tempted to find a cable card capable QAM tuner and try to hack it to work without a card.

...

I remember many, many years ago there was a way to pull recordings off a Tivo for "backing up". It's how the only surviving version of the Daria TV series with the original music still exists due to licensing. I know the old boxes have long since been blocked from connecting but for you Americans was there never anything modern that took its place or have they locked down the new boxes that hard?

can the rca dta 880 do programming like a dvr? looks like the dta is discontinued too. any decent brand making one today?