Online personal video recorders

Moin,

Yesterday I stumbled upon this interesting website: onlinetvrecorder.com. It allows you to do the following for free:

- select TV-programmes from the next three days of German TV to be recorded and delivered saved to your TV-Inbox
- they send you an email when the show is finished (=recorded)
- you download the recording (adverts are removed, download rates around 200kB/s))
- you de-encrypt the recording to a WMV file and watch

Limitations:

- currently only 9 German channels are available
- you can only watch what you have chosen to "record" (no general archive function)

What you do/don't need:
- don't need TV aerial
- don't need TV card for PC
- do need a good internet connection (or great patience) to download
- do need a way of watching the recordings (PC, laptop or whatever else)

This is obviously a big deal, since the next logical step would be a similar site in England/USA/...
I'm downloading my first recorded show as I type to see how well it really works.

Jay

Interesting stuff... Let us know how it goes!

Question... Is there ever a fee involved, or what is the 3 days about (sounds like a test trial to me)?

Check out the mother company.
http://www.tvoon.de/

They also have a new realtime TV deal.
http://www.tvoon.de/ctv/

- Just downloaded my first film recording, a 300MB file, took 20 minutes
- Encryption serves to make ensure that only you (with password/login) watch the recording
- Decryption took about 3-4 minutes
- Recording quality was equivalent to a VHS recording

@ Eriiki
There aren't any costs involved at all, as far as I can tell. Essentially they are simulating the functionality of a videorecorder as closely as possible to stay legal.

Hmm, I just downloaded 'Die Simpsons' and decoded it, but Media Player won't play it. Will have another try tomorrow.

I've played them with BSPlayer without any problems.
I wonder if you need any special codecs installed?

Does it work for Macs? Is it limited to German TV?

It's limited to German TV for now.

I think it won't work for Macs for a couple of reasons. 1) The required decoder program is currently only supplied for Windows. 2) The video file is some kind of WMV (possibly WMV3?) which is not supported by any Mac program (not VLC, not mplayer, and from what I've read, not even Windows Media Player for the Mac).

I tried to convert the WMV file (to some other format) on a Windows computer using VirtualDub, but it gave an error about Microsoft forcing the programmers to remove support for this particular WMV file's format (ASF?).

Maybe you will have better luck.

You may want to have a look at ShiftTV (www.shift.tv).

I think it works fine on Macs, too.

This is an internet-based personal video recorder. You only need a web browser and a DSL connection.

Essentially, you are using a PVR that you access over the internet. ShiftTV is renting you the PVR, and selling you the storage, but not copying. It is YOU who is doing the copying (which is legal for your own use).

On this service, you can record your favorite programs. You simply select programs from a program guide, and come back and watch them later. You can also download them.

Signup is free, you get 30 minutes of recording. For €4.95 a month you get 5 hours storage.

It's only offering German TV right now, but I heard that there will be UK and and U.S. channels on it soon.

You can read about it in Spiegel Magazine - Today's issue, I think.

J

Are any US or British TV shows offering download or live service?

If you go to Help, and then to Decoder, you can see 3 different decoders: for Windows, for Linux and for Mac.

So far I'm pleased with the quality of the downloads and the way the website is set up. A good idea. DVB-T in Hamburg does not have half of the channels that can be recorded on this website.

www.onlinetvrecorder.com