Back for your weekly session of poking the bear?
How on earth is heyted's response an emotional argument? Are you saying that personal preference has absolutely no bearing on what a person chooses to purchase or make use of? It's a very valid argument and also quite logical. Tivo is a fixed platform with virtually zero room for modification or customization, especially with the most recent models. A HTPC configuration is fluid. You can change the hardware or software to suit your taste and requirements. You can customize it for additional features and appearance. You can also choose to go with something other than Windows Media Center if you prefer a different front end. If someone prefers not to have this level of control then Tivo would clearly be their personal preference. Those of us that like to tinker and have more control over what our DVRs can do prefer something a bit different. Personal preference has everything to do with it.
? It's emotional because it was all about control and not about any benefits of that control. Control for control's sake. You are doing the same thing.
His and your "control" is all a bit of a mirage and theoretical. I mean in theory you could build your recording tv software and have all the control you want. What's stopping you? And then considering that you really only have 1 choice for recording cabletv software and that all the hardware, except maybe cases and remotes, is pretty standardized, the control here is a mirage as well.
I guess you could say you have more choices if you want a worse WMC pc. I mean if you want your pc louder than a Tivo and run hotter or have a bigger case etc then you can do that and save some money. But you can't do better, despite all your control, with power efficiency nor how quiet it is to any degree that matters nor probably how compact a Roamio Plus is. And probably can't do better than a Tivo remote either. So control seems like an emotional argument that serves a psychological need. The word "control" is meant to win over emotions rather than logic.
A few years ago WMC had a lot going for it over Tivo. But now WMC has none of these advantages it had. I mentioned these earlier in this thread.
There is always a caveat with any venture into an area that's new or unfamiliar. If you want to call it fine print then fine. However, if you don't read the "fine print" then that's on you. If you don't already know what you're getting yourself into then you haven't done your homework. Again, this is common sense for most of us. You simply don't jump into something like building and configuring a HTPC without prior knowledge of what's involved. If you don't, you'll be in over your head before you realize what happened. Anyone that's worked with PCs knows this to be a fact and not simply conjecture. It's like trying to hack a Tivo without doing any research first. Your philosophy is on the same level as someone requiring a warning label on a coffee cup at McDonald's to inform them that the contents may be hot.
You are all mixed up. I said, "You want the WMC pc to be much cheaper than a Roamio Plus. But when someone points out that this comes with many caveats then you say you can overcome those. But when someone points out that the WMC pc is then no longer a cheaper option you cry foul!!!"
The caveats in this case are the fact your much cheaper WMC pc will be a POS. I've mentioned specifics in earlier posts.
And what you just said only backs up what Bigg says,
" He's obsessed with MCE, even though in reality, TiVo is the far better option for all but the most hard-core tinkerers."
All this talk about time being money and so forth is superfluous and irrelevant. If that's how you have to measure time having fun then it's clearly not your thing. You can't put a price on time spent doing something you enjoy. I don't sit around thinking about how much time I spend on a hobby vs. what pay rate I get for doing my regular job. If anything, I look forward to spending the time away from my regular job doing something fun and rewarding.
This also reaffirms what Bigg says. And which I agree with.
But I just leave the hard-core tinkerer part out because I haven't heard of a tinkerer that needs to be told they can tinker. And in general this isn't the vast majority of people especially, or at least, when it comes to DVRs.
If you really think WMC is only for those who love building computers and tinkering with them so much that they never count the time then why nitpick those like Bigg or myself who say Roamio is the way to go?
And personally a few years there were some very pragmatic reasons to go with WMC over a Premiere. WMC had 4 tuners and extenders and a speedier UI. The Premiere's default storage was also pretty laughably low by most measures. Now WMC has none of those advantages. And MS has discontinued further support on top of it.