I am looking to get a DViCO TViX-2230 or 6500. What is the best price for them? Thanks!
TViX PVR
Caramelthecat on 23/09/2010 - 21:11
Comments
Thanks for your help Pauly.
Yes, I did a search on the TViX 2230 and the price has gone up! It was as low as $89 before.
Is there any comparable products that can record TV and play files from PC?
There are many PVRs + Media Player in the market, and I've only ever had the opportunity to play around with few (mostly no-named brand) units, including 2 that I own. By far, I find the TViX the most reliable, and has a much cleaner user interface. For my liking, the only 2 things missing are the lack of MKV and real media support. But hey, what more could I ask for given the price right?
For a reasonable price point, the other one that I can think of that plays almost everything and is a PVR, is the Astone AP-360T. They're closer to the $200 price range without the HDD. This previously had manufacturing issues when it was first released, however from user reviews on their forums, these issues appear to have been fixed in the newer batches + lastest firmware. A big plus for this is also the frequent firmware updates. If I have the need for another PVR, I would give this a try.
I bought mine from Eljo media, they were doing a special a while back. The 2230 is a fairly robust player, with only a couple minor downsides. As mentioned above, it cannot play MKV or H.264. (but this is what you have the PS3 for) haha
Also, the EPG is a bit flaky sometimes because the time gets messed up, so it's a bit unreliable for recording shows. But this isn't a problem for me because I get my series off the net without commercials etc. Why bother recording when someone else has already done the hard work for you?
One thing that I have discovered recently is TVIXIE. This free program is a godsend. It makes the TVIX 2230 a dream to use. Before TVIXIE, I had a stack of movies, but when you want to watch one you don't know what its about, who is in it, is it any good etc…. So you would end up watching 15mins just to decide you weren't in the mood for that type of movie.
TVIXIE looks up IMDB (and various other sites if you want) and pulls all the information down for you, actors, directors, plot, rating, and also the cover art from the DVD, and also the fan art which goes in the background. Then it renders this information into a JPEG which is displayed when you navigate to the movie folder. Magic!
The only downside is that you have to create a folder for every movie that you have, and the name of the folder has to be the EXACT title of the movie otherwise it has trouble searching. But there are programs out there that can do this for you.
If anyone wants my TVIXIE template that I have made for the 2230 (for 1080i only) then let me know and I can email it to you.
For the TV series you can just use any jpg as long as its the right size, and rename it to tvix.jpg.
Sorry for that off topic rant, but if you have the 2230, its well worth looking into. Makes a $100 player seem like a $300 player.
Personally I wouldn't recommend the 2230. The Highlander and the Aldi one are both cheaper by around/over $50 when they were on special. You can go to Whirlpool to see what problems people have with it.
The DViCO TViX-2230 used to be around the $100 mark previously (had a couple of bargains < $100 here when they were first known in the market), but when I searched for it again about a month ago to get it as a present for someone, the prices seemed to have increased by about > $50. For instance, oo.com.au used to sell them for around ~$130, but the same unit now costs $200. I suspect it has got to do with good reviews the unit received previously.
The cheapest I could find was ~$140 (before postage), but I couldn't remember which online store it was. Didn't end up buying due to the price influx.
You could try MSY though, they're clearing the TViX 2230 for $139. Or you can try asking QQQ (from COTD) if they're going to be selling this item soon. I've seen this unit appear several times there.
Not sure about the 6500.