I've started this thread over on the 3rd party forum but thought I might bring it up here too.

I know that, without any PCI slots, the HD1K wasn't designed to take a tuner card but, with the advent of USB products now, is it possible to use the Roku as a PVR?

Obviously recordings would need to be saved to to a network share. Seems to me it would be a fantastic solution and would negate the need to walk into the study to hit record on the PC.

There are drivers available on both Linux and Mac so there would seem to be a starting place if the Roku has the berries to support it.

Any thoughts Mike, Dave?

No.

So the ethernet stream cannot go both ways I suppose. And I don't suppose the a CapDvhs utility could grab the ethernet stream either?

The USB on the PB is USB 1.1, not enough bandwidth to do HD capturing even if somebody wrote a special driver to do it.

In fact, I don't think I've seen ANYONE find a useful application for the USB port. You can't plug in USB hard drives, and there doesn't seem to be any keyboard/mouse capability (for if you had a 3rd party web browser application), so I wonder just why it's even there???

I thought it was there for the wireless adapter.

swingnstar wrote:

I thought it was there for the wireless adapter.

You are correct. People have had more success using a wireless bridge, though, and avoiding the USB port all-together.

Hmm. The USB port does seem rather useless then. But I have several PCs around here with USB 1.1 and I routinely use video capture devices on them.

In fact, I have two of them, an Adaptec AVC2200 and a Dazzle DVC 90. They complain if connected to a USB 1.1 port, but nonetheless work fine, even at rather high video bit rates. Admittedly, they're not HDTV, but they do an *excellent* job for standard video. I use them to do video capture from VHS decks to convert that mountain of old VHS tapes in my garage to DVD. Works fine.

So, if I were willing to write my own 3rd party app to drive one of these devices, you're saying the Roku could not do as well as an old, slow PC?

Sure, it would have to write to a network share, but so what? I do that with my PCs just fine across my 100BT LAN.

And for that matter, I use these same USB 1.1 ports with external hard drives for backup, etc. Yes, they're slow, but they work fine. You're saying that Roku could not do as well, if someone were to write a driver?

I guess we have to chalk this up to being another HD1000 failing then, huh?

I sure would like to understand why the USB port is so useless......

Cheers,
Nathan

The PB has a 299 MHz RISC CPU that is highly specialized to it's purpose. I wish you luck, but I wouldn't get my hopes too high if I were you.