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A PVR For Two Straight Weeks Of Video
Rob G. writes: "Story from Variety on Y! News this morning about a monster PVR that can store 320 hours of tv; price is $1999. You could tape full seasons of a dozen shows and watch 'em in the summer instead of BB2." There are some other cool features promised here, including free programming service for broadband users. Watch the hard-drive wars heat up on PVRs and smile at what that means for your time-shifting habits.
Sure it is enough room to store entire seasons of multiple shows, but is it enough to store a full Kevin Costner film?
If it won't boot, Fsck it!
Given a BIOS that lets you Boot A PIII System In .8 Seconds and the Hauppage WinTV PVR card ($249) you could roll your own! Probably for lots less than $1000.
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Coming up with a dozen shows good enough to be worth taping a whole season's worth!
Why is it that as TV viewing technology gets better, TV seems to be getting worse?
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
ReplayTV is planning a post-Labor Day introduction of a souped-up DVR that could store as much as 320 hours of TV programming and send programs by email to other DVRs.
Oh, that's just super.
"I send you this episode in order to have your advice"
On a serious note, that feature is going to kick ass, and is much cooler than a couple (hundred) extra hours of storage. Imagine:
- Your favorite team makes an incredible play, but you miss the game. So you hop onto IRC and someone mails you a 60-second clip
- You're flipping channels and come across a show that you really like. So you download every previous episode.
- (I know these things are supposed to come in threes, but that's all i can think of, so use your imagination)
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
130 hours an incredible amount of TV. You can sit and watch TV for every waking hour (16 hours/day) for over 8 days with a 130 hour TiVo. Switch to the high quality setting and you can still store 10 full length movies permanently on your TiVo and still have enough room left over to watch TV every waking hour for three days. Even on the highest quality setting, a 130 hour TiVo records 40 hours of TV, enough even for the most dedicated of couch potatoes. How much more do you need?
Hmmm....
1. Record entire season
2. Remove HD -- place in PC
3. Burn MPEG-4 of entire season to DVD-RAMs/VCDs
4. Replace HD
5. Share with friends (*NOT* the TV show)
6. Repeat
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
So, now, a unit that's over 6 and a half times the cost of my Sony SVR2000 (i.e. an expensive model of TiVo) is supposed to revolutionize TV viewing? My ass. Sure, I plan on putting another larger drive in my TiVo, but I'm not whining about lack of space - it'll just be a nice cushion for when I'm away for the weekend.
btw, 8 times my current capacity isn't a whole season. It's maybe two months. Three tops. And I'm not particularly psycho about my TiVoing.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
The question is, what happens if Replay wraps the firmware within their box with a thin layer of encryption? Trying to get around that would almost certainly run afoul of the DMCA, no?
With Tivos (which run Linux), you can add hard drives as large as you like (though nobody's tried to break the IDE 128GB limit yet). Current owners can put in two 100GB drives, for well over 200 hours of recording capability.
.@.
No more late-night fights over what programs to keep: public access yoga vs. Doctor Who. If I had a spine, it would always be sci-fi over metaphysical crap, but apparently in a "relationship" you have to make "comprimises". 320 hours means no more comprimises over my precious PVR space! Woohoo!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
ReplayTV recently sent out email questionaires about a speculative product that matched this one. Typically these questionaires ask about a product that isn't even close to existing and may not ever exist, because the whole point of the questionaire is to find out what products the company should bother to spend money developing. Note that while the article mentioned $10/mo for dialup and free broadband, others were asked about $10/mo for dialup and $5/mo for broadband so the specs and prices aren't set in stone, even if the machine is anywhere near production. Someone decided to take their version of the questionaire and misrepresent it as a product announcement.
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http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum1/HTML/008
http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/Forum13/HTML/005596
The next big step for a PVR will be when it can record two weeks of everything on every channel. I find there is plenty of space on my Tivo for everything I think I might want to watch in advance. The problem comes when there are two or more things you want to watch that are airing at the same time. Also, every once in a great while I will realize that I don't have anything on the Tivo worth watching. At that point, I would like to have a two week archive of everything to browse.
Well, they're looking to fill the market that TiVo is refusing to touch... that is, the transfer of programs between TiVo units. And if it is able to transfer video, you can almost bet that it has an ethernet connector, and doesn't just do it over dialup. Good for them. Competition is going to make the PVR market better.
Regarding the 320 hours, that's going to be in low quality. I'm assuming that the ReplayTV has a two-drive limit. Either they are banking on future technology (2 x 128gb drives) or some additional compression, or both. (Additional compression is still possible, using existing methods. Anyone remember the TiVo bug where vertical resolution was lost, but was only noticable on SVideo units?)
In any case, I'm glad they're taking a stand on the sharing issue. That alone might be enough to make me switch.
Has something like this been used to record security camera footage, for archival purposes? Sounds like it would be perfect for that.
So it's probably not supported. I don't know what chipset it's on, though some of the other Hauppage cards use the bttv set, which is supported, unofficially, under Linux and, IIRC, FreeBSD. The cool thing about it is the hardware mpeg2 encoder. All the others I've seen under $500 are software encoders, requiring a GHZ processor for realtime work. Now I can finally put all those episodes of Buffy on VCD ;^)
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TiVo is a great product, the problem is that the public just doesn't understand them yet. I've pretty much given up explaining them to people, as they invariably respond with: "my VCR can do that."
I just hope TiVo can hold on long enough for the critical mass of TV viewers to catch on. And things like this with a big "gee whiz" factor can only help.
Sure, you can build a device to record shows. But the great thing about these PVRs (I own 2 TiVos) is the integration they provide. It's not like having a seperate box to do these things. It fits in very nicely with an existing AV setup and soon you forget it's even there. The interface is great. It will be a while before you can build something as seamless and nice.
They're the same thing. Some people call it a Digital Video Recorder, others call it a Personal Video Recorder.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
How many years ago was it that an 80 gig hard drive would cost $2000? It is becoming likely that everyone will have these one day, since I don't see random storage devices cheaper/better than hard drives coming out any time soon. Unless of course you count the internet as a random storage device... That *might* win (if the phone company ever got its act together).
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
It's pretty much agreed among all PVR geeks that this is likely vaporware. The "source" for this info was a survey that Replay sent out asking "Would you pay this much for this feature in a future product?", and then whoever came up with the story took all those features, and decided it was a product announcement. Don't expect to buy one anytime soon.
See the following:
Tivo forums discussion
Replay forums discussion
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
About a month ago, I upgraded my ReplayTV to have 100 hours of record time. (I did the fast-n-easy swap out the old drive for a 100GB drive.) It's overkill, and there are some problems.
First of all, the interface wasn't designed to cope with that much TV. To get down to the Simpsons (alphabetized by "The") I have to page through like 12 pages of other junk. Yuck.
Second, that's a hell of a lot of TV; I don't want to let the thing fill up, because when will I possibly find the 100 hours to watch everything it records?
Third, it does encourage you to watch more TV. There are shows I used to watch only when the opportunity arose, but now, since I'm recording EVERYTHING I might ever possibly watch, I end up watching all of them.
The real problem I have now is not the amount of record time, but the fact that it only has one tuner.
P.S. Do you know how long it takes to low-level format a 5400 rpm 100GB drive? About 15 hours!
It has speech recognition and a library of common commercial phrases ("not-so-fresh feeling", "order now and get an extra...", etc) as well as voice recgnition (can tell the kid from the Gateway commercial from the characters of your favorite show).
Watch the hard-drive wars heat up on PVRs and smile at what that means for your time-shifting habits.
...also watch copyright content control features go into you hard drive and feel your stomach turn as the MPAA and RIAA reach into your computer.
In the U.S., a TV season is one year, or about 20-24 new episodes for a prime-time drama or comedy. Shows that run on a daily basis, of course, will have many more episodes per season.
a souped-up DVR that could store as much as 320 hours of TV programming and send programs by email to other DVRs.
If you thought it was bad that people mail Power Point presentations around, just wait till they start clicking the send to so they can share their favorite sit com. ARGH! What kind of jerk would encourage this sort of thing?! No no no no!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This ReplayTV device doesn't stand a chance at the $1999 price, and the TV executives are quoted in the Yahoo article as saying they'll fight the commercial skipping and the ability to share the recordings.
Why is it that as TV viewing technology gets better, TV seems to be getting worse?
You obviously don't own a TiVo. You would be amazed, there is actually good stuff on TV. TiVo makes it much easier to sift through the garbage and locate the gems. I know my TV watching has gone up drastically since getting my TiVo, and I'm actually watching stuff that I LIKE.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
is the SnapStream PVR software. The demo version is free, and the only practical limitation is a 2GB storage limit. But, if you move stuff out of it's directory, it doesn't know to add it into the 2GB quota. I've been using it for a few weeks now with a Hauppauge TV card, and it works great. My TV gets recorded, and I watch it whenever I want. The only bummer is that it currently only records in ASF. They once had an AVI recording feature in Beta, but I don't know what happened to that.
What options are out there nowadays for digital VCRs similar to TiVos that don't require a subscription? (and no, I don't care about the guide).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
246 hours with 200GB on mine as of last Friday. Did it myself too - very easy given even less than a rudimentary level of Linux knowledge and the ability to read FAQs.
Given the ability to connect Tivo to ethernet (www.9thtee.com) and a bit more Linux knowledge someone could probably build a script to archive and restore shows at will, effectively making the storage infinite -
Does this thing do clips, or do you have to mail the whole freaking game? One day, the whole game might be the better choice. You know, you just had to be there...
Video over the net does not make me happy yet. This stuff is going to clog up the world. Imagine your email having to compete against a sea of this shit. It's bad enough that the warez crowd hoggs up the net swaping around comercial movies, songs, M$ software and other trash. Encouraging Everyone to do this is irresponsible. Keep broadcast junk where it belongs. Leave the net to original content until it can handle much more.
If you absolutly must share that golden clip with your friend, host it on a web site! Email the link and let your friends decide on their own if they want to look at it. Cramming this into email is just rude.
You've got spam!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
but hopefully much more reliable and portable drives. Think VCR tape: consumers are going to want VCR tape sized (or smaller, of course) hard drives which they can pop in and out of these devices. this will mean a lot of good eventually for those of us who dig hot-swap storage.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Boy, if you hate SPAM now, I can just see it: come home from work, plop down in the recliner, and fire up the ol' mega-PVR.
"You have mail! Downloading message 1 of 73 ..."
Two hours later (after everyone in the neighborhood complains about using all their cable bandwidth), you find that the helpful folks with the "FREE PAGERS" have sent you 12 identical infomercials, several fly-by-night lenders sent feature films showing how they can refinance your [mortgage|debt], you have 17 MLM videos that all begin with, "This is NOT an MLM", and a dozen pr0n companies have sent you samples of their latest films (OK, so it's not all bad news).
Meanwhile, Aunt Emma sent the latest home videos forwarded and re-forwarded from distant relatives you've never met ("Here's Johnny Applesmith's complete graduation ceremony. You can see him at about 2:50. Johnny is my neighbor's second cousin-in-law on his uncle's side, twice removed."), Uncle Joe sent a Norton infomercial (fowarded from a friend, etc.) that he wants you to see "RIGHT NOW" because of that "Good Times AV Virus" he heard about (acutally shreds your PVR drive into its component electrons, then melts everything in your freezer, or so he heard from his buddy Tom), and half-a-dozen old friends with way too much time on their hands forward all the latest compilations of stand-up routines snatched from Comedy Central (and each other, over and over again).
Two thoughts:
1. We're going to have to get a bigger Internet.
2. Time to dig out my library card.
(Come to think of it, the pr0n by itself would consume every Hz of available bandwidth. Death of the Intermet, film at 11!)
Technology can be a wonderful thing. Just keep it away from Marketing.
TV dramas typically have 25 unique episodes per season and a 1-hour duration. That's 25 hours/season.
Or if it's a 1 hour show on every day except Sunday, that's about 313 days. Again, 313 hours/season. But I think only news programming is close to that.
And of course, if it's on every day of the year, that's up to 366 hours/season.
And if you sleep 8 hours a day and watch TV the rest of the time, that's 20 straight days of TV.
The critical market acceptance question: Will we be able to sell old episodes on eBay?
Milo
Hey, at least then we wouldn't have to worry about them advertising to us, limiting what we can/can't record, disable sharing features, etc...
I'd gladly help out with such a beast...
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
You wouldn't need speech recognition, you could use closed captioning.
the DMCA says very little about breaking encryption. Rather it speaks about circumventing copyright protection devices. I don't see what copyright the studios would be breaking if they reverse engineer the replay heuristics.
On the contrary; All studios need to do is to create a licence that their programming is licenced for viewing as a whole. Any attempt to select parts of the programming could be argued to be an attempt to circumvent licencing, and hence by extension copyright.
Not a watertight case in either direction, but it seems that the DMCA would once again play into the big studios hand if it has any bearing at all.
what a surprise
The thing that sets this device appart from VCRs is that it can record the entire commercial and not incurr a penalty for fastforwarding through it. So the PVR has the luxury of only needing to decide whether that was a commercial, not whether this is one.
The way I would implement it is to record everything and use a user-tunable heuristic to mark blocks as likely commercials which are then skipped during playback. If you get it wrong, the user can view the block w/o skipping it. For example, commercials tend to be a bit louder than average programming. You know that there will be a big change (got that from another post) in picture before and after the block, AND you know that it will be a multiple of 30 seconds.
The first and last of these criteria, in conjunction with post-facto marking rather than the pre-commercial guessing makes the PVR much better suited to the task of identifying commercials than VCRs.
Only digital product placement is likely to be able to foil these sorts of heuristics, esp if the user is able to write their own rules and assign levels of certainty to them.
It doesn't sound like DMCA would apply. DMCA outlaws circumvention of technological measures that effective control access to a copyrighted work. In your hypothetical scenario: What is the technological measure that is effective controlling access to something? What is the "something" to which access is being controlled?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
To really do it right, requires strong AI.
I wouldn't trust any non-intelligence to keep from filtering out "fake" commercials such as the Psi Corp Commercial in And Now For a Word, The Simpson's "Canyonero", Saturday Night Live's "Colon Blo", etc. It would requires contextual understanding, appreciation of humor, and other qualities.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It would be interesting to see if a separate site dedicated just to those categories could survive on its own. I suspect not. Even if someone donated all the money necessary for its existance, the potential posters, once they found themselves deprived of an audience to offend, would probably lose interest rather quickly.
In other words, despite all this talk of democracy and censorship, and empowering the users, what's really going on is that a bunch of immature jerks like to post stuff just to annoy others and draw attention to themselves, and whenever anyone doesn't want to bother wasting their time playing along with their silly game, they whine about it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm starting to see where you're coming from.
They say 320 hours is enough to store "full seasons of a dozen shows"
You say 320 hours isn't enough to store a whole season.
But you're talking about your TV viewing season, not a television show's season. They're talking about a television show's season.
You can store whole season of Star Trek:Enterprise, and a season of The X Files, and a season of Earth: Final Conflict, and a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a season of Roswell, and a season of Dark Angel-- that's only six, and it takes about 150 hours. 12 will take about 300 hours.
That's how you store full seasons of a dozen shows on the thing.
My favorite show would be the one where the kid from the Gateway commercial suffers horribly for the entire episode, every episode, all season long. :-)
Okay, not really, but you know what I mean.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
the Hauppage card comes with a remote and an IR receiver.