Check out the marketing nfo on this puppy.

Quote:

Toshiba's RD-XS54 combines the quality and durability of DVD recording with the exceptional versatility of a hard drive digital video recorder (DVR). This unit's built-in 250GB hard drive can hold over 400 hours of your favorite programming, and it's always ready to go — just set your recording, and the DVR takes care of the rest. You can find and record the TV shows you like using the free TV Guide On Screen program guide. It lets you access 8 days of program listings, and search them by keyword or sort them by category to quickly find what you want to watch. When you find a show you'd like to save, all you have to do is highlight the listing and press "record." Plus, the 'XS54 can control your cable box for simplified unattended recording. After you've watched your recording, you can delete it to make room for shows, or make a permanent DVD copy. Basic editing features make it simple to create a customized and organized DVD collection. The 'XS54 automatically displays the date and channel of each recording, as well as a thumbnail image. When you record to the DVR or a rewriteable DVD-RAM disc, you can edit the date and channel, create your own title, and choose your own thumbnail. You can also set chapter markers and erase unwanted material, so it's easy to find what you want to watch later on.

link

Sweet!! I want one.
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"Linux is more than an OS, it's a state of mind."

Cool! Yeah,I want one too.
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When we installed our DISH satellite receiver we got the decoder with the DRV function built in.

It is wonderful.

It can be programmed to record all NEW programs that we tell it to. For example, yesterday I told it to record all new programs related to the Olympics. It will scan all the chanels that I subscribe to and record everything it finds. It is smart enough to skip things that it has recorded before and things that are not new programming. For example it will skip the replay of the 1980 Mens Ice Hockey Victory over Russia that is scheduled to be broadcast on ESPN Classic. It will also skip the 3:00 A.M. rebroadcast of the previous evenings show.

Mrs. RB and I hardly ever watch live TV and don't watch commercials except for the Super Bowl.
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RunnerBiker ¿
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." - Will Rogers

Dish makes good PVRs. I've played around with the 501. There are no subscription fees with that unit but it's not a dual tuner model. The dual tuner models like the 72x series are sweet. There's a nice HD version as well. Which model do you have?

In the past, I've used a TiVo Series I unit with DTV. They are very nice dual tuner PVRs that are PPC based and runs linux. You can even put a WiFi card inside those things and stream your recordings to your PC for archiving.

The nice thing about the Toshiba is it's flexibility. You can grab video from just about any source and store it on the internal drive, or more permanently using the built-in DVD recorder.
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"Linux is more than an OS, it's a state of mind."

We have the Dish Model 522. It is a dual tuner, so it juggles the schedule to try to avoid conflicts when attempting to record two programs at the same time.

You can be recording on both tuners simultaneously and also be watching something else that you previouisly recorded.

The promotional literature says we can record 100 hours, but each hour takes about 1 1/2 hours of the available time. Still that gives us about 66 hours of recording.

When we get down to about 30 hours or space left, the disk starts thrashing and doesn't work so well, so we try to keep it less than half full.

There is a USB port on the back of the unit, but it is a USB master connection. (Large Rectangular connector like on your PC). Dish Tech support says it is not enabled. I haven't tried to use it.
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RunnerBiker ¿
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." - Will Rogers