Very nice discussion guys! Seems like we did a 360 on some issues. But at least I know my options and now I am a confused informed customer.

There should be a lease option on the Dish 942 with a one-time lease fee of around $250. Be aware that the 942 is seriously lacking in video outputs, so check the docs to see if it meets your needs.

Where did you hear that "rumor"? It has been on sale for some time.

RT-4800 can record HD to DVD.

http://www.avkoreamall.co.kr/Shop/de...dx_num=1639&m=

1394, memory card reader, 160GB HDD, HD set-top.

And here's LST-3430 with 120GB HDD and no DVD.

http://www.avkoreamall.co.kr/Shop/de...idx_num=989&m=

Well Kenshin it was on one of the audio/video boards I hang out at and most of themare in the US so it might not have made it here yet or be a bit older news then I realised. I'm happy to see it is being produced and I'd love to get one as soon as it gets here and drops to a price I can afford. I have a Panasonic now that has a 80 gig HD in it and I love it for time shifting and getting my favorite TV shows down and edited to a minus dvd. However it's not HD and I don't have a dvhs either to save the good HD shows I've seen. I'll poke around your links, thanks.

In South Korea, RT-4800 costs about 1,200 USDs so it may cost a little under 1,000 or even around 500 in the US market. LG's very recently started developing various standalone models with integrated features. Samsung and Hyundai are a little behind. AVKorea.co.kr is one of South Korea's versions of AVS forum. Some AVS forum members also visit some South Korean sites.

I have had Fusion HDTV 1. Dvico's 5th-generation series are all now very cheap, cheaper than average NVidia and ATI graphics cards. MyHD of the latest version now costs under US$200, but it doesn't seem cheap any more because even standalone HDTV set-tops cost as little as under US$200.

BTW, I probably first mentioned about RT-4800 here last year.

Thanks! I will be looking for it!

I ordered a Samsung set-top SIR-K360D with built-in DVD tray yesterday. It doesn't have HDD and it can't record DVD. No VHS, either, but at about US$250, it's just a little more expensive than the cheapest HD set-top.

http://www.avkoreamall.co.kr/Shop/de...x_num=1889&m=4



Time to send my Toshiba DVD-P/VHS, Pioneer DVD-P, and Samsung Satellite receiver somewhere.

Far from being as good as LG RT-4800 PVR/DVDR HD set-top but that costs 4x more.

I hopr that unit is designed better then their SIR t451 hd tuner was, had a good picture but the remote control was very slow to respond and it didn't do QAM 64 at all as far as I could tell. It also didn't do any analog channels at all, only digital. I took it back and got my LG 4200a setop and it's been great, gets everything, remote responds quickly etc. Let us know how that unit works, they might have made a few changes for the better since the one I tried.

maybe i jumped in too deep
i hope not. just what i have been looking for.
a way to get good quality from tv to dvd and make it work on most dvd players.
i have NO problem building a box just for recording sending etc my f1/soccer and rally racing.
BUT .. hehe..1st i'd like to say ty for all the help you guys readily give !!!
i know it takes soo much time to do .. let alone doing it well
being vey busy helping others with cars/pc/roofs etc i have little time
for my wife and i. the one toy i have is a rca scenium dlp with hdmi in and dtv link = firewire 61 " - model hd61lpw163 built sept 2004

i see many of you guys really know what u are talking about and hope you all can save me some time with all your hard earned knowledge
i am in need of something to record my f1 / soccer etc.
direct tv gave me 2 free tivos recently samsung sir-s4080r . i know there are some nice hacks to enable all the goodies ( usb ) on the back.
http://www.ptvupgrade.com/networking/series2.html
but i am not sure it is enough to do what i want.
i can easily build a Strong pc. i do this all day using quality parts and like you guys i spend my time wisely.i have extra pc's - 1.8. p4 256 cache up to 3.0 p4 3.0/ ram easy to get.. you know the routine..raid cards etc i just bought 2 5 yr warr ide 300 gb seagate hd for $230 . and have seen the mythtv etc sites. i thought i could just make a box to send the files thru that dtv link ( firewire ) to my box using a card like the pinnacle studio 9 has (mpeg4 it says ).
id like to make a pvr , i know it can done but dont have all the right info
to do it. am i going the right way ? should i make one ?
i'd like the best a/v quality of course if poss since i have hdmi cables and pc parts i get cheap

1- do i use the tivo's after mod'd to use the usb to send the data to a new box that can decode the data and burn to my nec 3520a or my 3540a ?
2- get a nice dvd recoder that can record to dvd and then i take the dvd's
and use my pc to make them readily avail to most dvd players ?
3- make a box that does it all ( i dont know what parts etc i would need to do it properly.. thats why im here ! )
Any help would be nice. i greatly appreciate your time and effort running this site and helping / sharing the knowledge
i am v thivk skinned , no need to tip toe around me
Peace .. ty ty ty !
Mrx ( asteriods/stargate games ) wiseman say "u have 2 ears and one mouth"

Thanks for telling your experiences with both Samsung and LG. I received the Samsung set-top today, several hours ago. Installed and booted. Most people at AVKorea.co.kr forum (where I also ordered it) hardly said anything good about the SIR-K360D. LG set-tops are usually much better and there are far more diverse models from LG including those with HD recording to HDD and DVD. But LG set-tops are too expensive here. I will buy an LG box someday if it has more than what the RT-4800 has now but still costs under US$300 (or 300,000 Won.)

The SIR-K360D remote controller works poorly as well. Samsung TV and DVD products usually work well but this remote controller failed at least once or twice just after minutes of first-time use. It worked again though after re-powering with the hidden "initialize" button and ejecting and inserting the two AAA batteries again. As far as I know, only digital works, a bit of emabarrasing since there are hardly any working digital channels here (near the international airport closest from Seoul.)

However, after all, I also bought an LG Flatron 2320T LCD monitor/TV. It has a built-in TV as well but only analog. On this PC, there is still another TV tuner, a Fusion (Generation I) HDTV PCI card. A fourth is the satellite tuner also made by Samsung. So this monitor is physically connected to four TVs. The satellite TV company also services HD programs but that's too expensive for very few programs so I'm subscribed to only some less popular analog channels though in much better quality than conventional air/cable analog TV. The Fusion HDTV is too obsolete, just the one antenna connector and that's all, no remote controller, no DVI, no component. The latest Fusion 5 series uses the LG "5-th" generation chip and still costs between US$50 - US$100. After using this 2320T monitor with Matrox G450, I changed it with Nvidia 5600. Same AGP but 5600 is much better so the display's now 1920*1200 resolution instead of 1600*1200. Matrox G450 isn't good enough even for such a basic requirement. Since G5600 is also much more powerful than G450 and this monitor is running at 1920*1200 res., I downloaded several .tp, .ts, .m2t files, all in HDTV format of 1080i, some even recorded with the Sony HDR-FX1 HD camcorder. I wasn't aware that so many people in Seoul already had HDR-FX1. It costs nearly US$4,000 in South Korea. The video quality's much better than when I played other HD files with either ATI or NVidia card but on a 19-inch or 20-inch or 18-inch or 14-inch or 21-inch monitor none as good as LG 2320T.

DVHS and projectors are also too expensive in South Korea, mostly 2x more than in the US. Same with DVD-RAM camcorders and many other AV things. Could be 10x or over for some luxurious speakers but there are still people ready to throw their money just like there are people who pay like US$100,000 for a Benz or GM car that costs US$40,000 in most other countries and they still have to pay 10x more tax and 10x more on oil and even more severe insurance.

Well Kenny if the units drives you nuts see if you can afford the LG 4200a, Mine works great, and feedback from many others is the same. I paid 256 shipped on E-bay for mine, usual online US price is about 379 or so. But as you have said many things there are a lot higher in cost then here so you have to stay within your budget. Too bad more TV's don't have all digital capability built in, We shouldn't have to for over even MORE money just to use our fancy HDTV's I think. I do want a native HD unit that records someday like that 4800, but sometimes being patient pays off.

The SIR-K360D was very specially arranged and that was how I could buy for US$300. US$256 is already lower than what I paid for SIR-K360D and that's why I so often say you are in HEAVEN.

It's not that I can't technically buy something like RT-4800. Its price is merely about US$1,200. Almost anyone of us who has computers and can afford projectors and such can buy one but what RT-4800 isn't that more than what a US$1,000 PC can do (consisted of two 16x Super Multi DVD burners, a graphics card powerful enough to handle HD video contents, 8-channel audio and optical outputs, two 250-320GB SATA II HDDs with 8-16MB buffer, and so on. RT-4800 is one of LG's newest and also the world's newest of such feature set so it's a little premature for the average HD enthusiats. Perhaps people who have Sony HDR-FX1 and Sony Blu-ray recorders won't feel it's expensive since the combined cost of the two units is over US$5,000.

At just US$300, SIR-K360D is a great thing to buy so AVKorea.co.kr, one of South Korea's best AV sites, had the item a few times. Samsung and LG DVD recorders here for example cost a lot more than that. I've been one of the very early enthusiasts of DVD recorders but I haven't had one DVD recorder with me ever when there were some people who had three or more DVD recorders on DVDplusrw.org forums because it was like over US$1,000 per unit. But of course I have about 30 PC DVDburners that work better than those luxurious DVD recorders.

You can use your PC to record HDTV though fire wire. I have done it with a Motorola DTC 6200 and 6412 and a cool app called CAP DVS. It grabs the transport stream right from the box. I can even record from HBO, Showtime etc etc as my provider has not turned on the 5c flag. Once you get the transport stream you can convert it to a dvd compatible mpg and burn it on DVD or... whatever. I bet it can be done with a sat box too.

Kenshin,

Do you know how to use a DVHS back up data? I saw another post of yours that talks about DVHSTool. The documentation at the DVHSTools site indicate it can only back up transport streams to DVHS.. but I want to use it back up all kinds of data.. porn.. music etc etc