Media Storage drive + TV playback with usb or LAN connection to the PC

[bodger1946]

I have tried a number of these devices over the last few years but these have all come to greif in one way or another.

Does anyone know of a reliable unit that will record from my TV SCART socket or come with a built in Freeview tuner; that will support up to 500 GB SATA / IDE Hard Drive and will alow file transfers back to the PC via the LAN or USB ports for video editing?

[fin]

Heya Bodger,

Welcome to the MD forums,

I have a quick question about what you're looking for..

record from my TV SCART socket

If you mean record by plugging the unit into the scart port and capturing what's on screen, unfortunately this is simply not possible, as your TV Scart socket will be an Input socket, not an output.


But, if you're looking for something that'll do that job, I'd probably recommend this:

S022594

It's a topfield 500GB dual freeview tuner PVR, and as it's a topfield, it has an amazing user community, info about transferring files back to Windows can be found here:

http://www.toppy.org.uk/downloads/windows.php


Though you can't change the hard disk in this unit, any units that have built in freeview rarely allow for a new hard drive to be custom installed. Whereas all the hard drive media players which do this, don't come with freeview.

If I were in your shoes I'd probably just try and bodge together a fairly cheap media centre PC and do it that way, this will also allow for a bit more flexibility in terms of how things are stored, what you can do with your telly (youtube is a much needed option on a lot of the media players) and of course, you won't need to transfer anything, you can just install your software and edit your videos right there.


Hope that helped, just food for thought really.