Gentlemen, Parker's review has certainly piqued my interest. However, I'm in love with my DirecTiVo. While only focusing on the DVR aspect of the offerings by 2 Parts Fusion, what are the advantages to switching to a DMS? I realize all the various functions aside from DVR, but I guess my main question has to do with what will I sacrifice by giving up my DirecTiVo?
You wouldn't have to sacrifice anything. The DMS will allow you to continue to use the DirecTiVo and at the same time allow you to archive your CD collection, surf the web and give you a piece of equipment that is now upgradeable to grow with any changes.
The DMS can control just about any common cable box or satellite receiver with its' IR blasters (IR emitter in TiVo-speak). So you could infact just leave the DirecTiVo in place or elimnate it and go back to a standard DirectTV receiver. But do know that you do need two DirecTV receivers for dual-tuner functionality, one to feed each tuner on the DMS.
Benefits? well again as Parker said you can do tons of things with your DMS beyond PVR use. And the PVR feature of the DMS has no monthy fees for guide data.
Yeah don't get me started ... even the cable industry which was finally forced into an access card standard (CableCARD) won't trust the PC currently to have pure digital access to conent.
Question...if I were converting my CDs onto the HD to act as a digital jukebox...how much data space does a CD require? Meaning...how many CDs can I get on a 200 gig HD?
A cd is 650 megs, so if you straight copied the wav files, you could put about 300 cds on it. If your coverted the songs to a compressed format, you could easily get the equivalent of 1500 or more cds with little loss in quality.