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Panasonic Combined DVD-R & PVR Device
Raetsel writes "Caught a commercial the other day hawking the device I've been waiting for. TIVO is a great idea, but what if you want to keep something more permanently? Enter the Panasonic DMR-series. The top-of-the-line DMR-HS2 ($1000 US) has a 40 GB hard drive, offers "Time Slip Playback" (TIVO's "pause live TV" function), and allows you to move shows off the hard drive onto DVD. Heck, you can even record straight to DVD-R or DVD-RAM discs (which is what the $700 DMR-E30(K/S) does). There's also a IEEE-1394 input, so you can record from sources that have a FireWire output. Oh, yeah... it's a progressive-scan DVD player, too."
So what formats will it recognize over Firewire ? I wonder whether a S-Video In would be more useful than firewire....does it have that ?
whats a "progressive scan" dvd player?
...but, this is Slashdot, where $1000 is the average yearly salary for most people. Is there a way to build something that does what this thing does, albeit poorly, using Linux and our old spare 486s?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
BB has two panasonic DVD-R models in their ad this week.
=======================================
Doer of bad deeds, screenwriter-wannabe
savagexp
It's great to hear that it's a progressive-scan player. My current DVD player is a Christian conservative-scan model, and it refuses to play a sizeable proportion of my video collection.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
What's the catch? How did the industry let this happen? I wont say that people arent already doign this with DirecTiVos and outboard PCs but this seems like it would be really scary for networks and other "anti-copying" people. And how long until someone hacks this thing to allow DVD copying? Then it will really be some technology to watch... At any rate this may just be my next toy :)
This too shall pass.
If anyone (including me) has that question on mind, look here.
If you're that bothered, why not hook up a network card to your TiVo, extract the data from the hard disk over the network and burn a movieCD?
I've got a series 2 TiVo (with the USB port and network functionality). I've been wondering how hard it would be to expose the video on my network and pull it down to one of my systems to burn onto VCD (I don't want a DVD burner yet, waiting for the formats to settle down).
Lord, bless my users that they may stop being such fucking idiots!!
The top-of-the-line DMR-HS2 ($1000 US) has a 40 GB hard drive
Er, or they could do a 60Gb one for $1040?
If you have a spare $1000, just make your own unix box, setup your own implementation and you dont have to worry about "service" fees later. You don't have time?? then why are you watching TV!?!?!?
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
From the article:
*Recording from the hard disk to a DVD-RAM or DVD-R disc cannot be done with images for which only single-generation recording is allowed. When recording these images to a DVD-RAM disc, the original image on the hard disk is erased.
I suppose we should be grateful that it supports any type of fair use.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
The biggest reason I would want this is very specific: tell it to record every Simpsons episode which airs (including syndication repeats) and burn them onto a DVD when there are enough of them. Ideally it wouldn't re-record episodes it had already recorded (though I don't know how it would be able to compare them) and put tables-of-content as DVD menus and printed labels (or DVD liner notes) telling me what episodes are on the discs.
I suppose you could use this for shows other than the Simpsons...but why?
Isn't this a violation to the DMCA... By playing back a DVD in a player encoded for one region and burning it down in another I break the copyright! Go out and arrest some engineers, see if you can get a CEO too...
This makes me wounder when TV broadcasts will come with a signal saying that the show can only be seen once, then the recording will be deleted.
Except from my fears of stupid politicians, I think that this is great progress. If I wait for half an hour before watching the movies on TV, I can fast forward past all the ads... hmm, I like that!
The only I don't like about TiVO and the rest of the DVR's is that they don't work well with Digital Cable settop boxes. I have AT&T Broadband, and you can only record the channel that the cable box is set to. This kinda removes all functionality of the TiVO, since it can't change channels when a show is on, and it can't record one and watch another.
I heard that the TiVO for DirectTV can do this stuff? Anyone have one and is it true?
Anyone know of a future release where the TiVO and the set-top boxes work together?
The DVR's are cool, but until they get this functionality, they are limited in use.
-A
This sounds great, but I really don't think combination devices like these are going to take off until the price comes down a lot (say, about half of what it is now). DVD recordable drives themselves are just beginning to get down to affordable levels.
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
Jack Valenti sees press release, has massive breakdown and is committed to a mental institution, rocking back and forth, muttering softly to himself.
Seriously though, how long will it be before this thing ends up on the wrong end of a protracted legal battle? If the networks, MPAA and whoever else controls the content don't like the mere PVR, imagine the controversy that this little box should cause.
The lawyers rejoice yet again.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
The consumer technology industry is moving so much faster than the media giants brains it is amazing. I bet the RIAA would nuke the factories making these devices if they had the ability.
Archeaologists have been able to recover sounds from pottery spun thousands of years ago. The recording industry (AKA the people that charge $ for recordings) is going to have to adapt to the fact that once something is transmitted broadcast, acted or spoken out, it is released into the collective state of existance and is available to all.
Why no ethernet port? Or even just a usb port that'd let it work like an excess hard disk for an external PC. It seems like it runs most of the race well, but gives up on the last lap.
"If the good lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates." -Willy Wonka
It doesn't have daily updates of program guide data to select shows to record, subscriptions, actor/director lists, no on guide info while watching. No thumbs up or down.. Basically everything that makes TIVO awesome is NOT on this. They're getting there, but I suspect the only people releasing something of what we want is TIVO themselves.
I had a Replay hooked up to AT&T Broadband for a year. You use the included IR Blaster, which sticks to the IR Receiver and changes the box's signal. Now that I have DirecTV, my Replay connects via Serial cable, I just bought an older receiver that works with it.
I'm waitting on an HD Tivo Series 2 DirecTivo, which I expect to come out within the year. Then I can timeshift my HDTV programming. In the mean time, the 100GB drive I installed in the Replay should suffice.
I was tempted to grab this, as I could drop-in replace my Progressive Scan DVD player and get archiving capability. However, I really don't want to buy any more gear until the HD Tivo comes out.
Dish has an HD PVR in the works, I can't imagine DirecTV won't get one out soon, given that Tivo has gone on record stating that the Series 2 COULD handle it.
Alex
um. philips has had both, and in fact with the philips stand-alone DVD+RW recorder it will even allow basic video editting to produce your own DVD for others to view, complete with menu and such.
and of course philips was the first to manufacture the Tivo hardware units.
To see if amazon sells this product. They do. Check out the used products you can get it for around $800.
One problem will exist still though, to record and watch the same things, only ONE can be set to DIGITAL while the other CANNOT record through digital because the DIGITAL BOX can only DECODE one stream per box.
OK seriously, ReplayTV is:
Cheaper to purchase than TiVo
MUCH easier to upgrade the HD
Comes with a 10/100 NIC built in
Has a better menu system
AUTOMATICALLY SKIPS COMMERICALS
Is 3$ cheaper a month for service.
Lets you tell your DVR to record something from anywhere that has a net connection.
Ect, ect.
Ohh, and there is already easy to use java software to pull or push video from/to the ReplayTV with your Win/MAC/Linux/Whatever box.
It's got that IEEE-1394 port (they call it "DV in"). I wonder exactly how much function that port allows... I mean, you can get info to the internal hard drive via it, so what will happen if you attach a Mac or one of those nice little Shuttle SS-51s instead of a camcorder?
- (Here's hoping it - like the iPod - shows up as a hard drive!)
Guess I'll have to buy an SS-51 when I buy one of these."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Why they havent released a consumer upgrade for the standard TIVO is unknown.
DirecTiVo records the MPEG stream directly from the satellite, rather than re-encoding it. The standard TiVo has to do too much processing to record two shows at once.
Here's a review
Archeaologists have been able to recover sounds from pottery spun thousands of years ago
Huh? Care to provide a link?
When I though about trying to do this a while back, it didn't look like it was a no-brainer. There were some groups trying to put the pieces together, but it would be nice to have some definitive information about just what is required to make this work. It's got to be better and more flexible than a dedicated box like this, or it has to run on older hardware so I can use an old PII or something. If its not cheaper, it has to be better.
If anyone (including me) has that question on mind, look here
I don't think the series 2 units are hackable like the series 1 tivos were. There is some sort of cryptographic signature check on the config files, so it's not just a quick edit to the files to give yourself telnet and ftp.
a y. php?forumid=8
:)
Somebdy will figure something out though-- in the meantime, check out the tivo forums here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdispl
When I peeked just now, the very first thread was titled "No, you cannot hack a series 2 box (yet)" and had quite a bit of good info. Be patient, though-- somebody will figure it out.
I've seen a few complaints in these posts about the fact that it acts like an old-fashioned VCR, and needs to be told when to record by time, rather than the Tivo-like functionality of downloading programme schedules. Thats a cool thing to have, but currently these devices charge a monthly contract fee for that, while this device is just a pay once and you're done box. Personally, I don't actually want a box that I have to pay a monthly subscription on, and doesn't dial home to let them know that I recorded last night's Scrapheap onto DVD to watch again later.
/. hive-mind, but these people complaining they want programme guides are different ones to those that bang on about privacy rights, aren't they?
I know better than to think that there is a single
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It has changed my tv life! I record simpsons and cut out the commericals twice a day, and slap 4 hours onto one dvd. Its great, pricy but great. There is a upgrade to 80gb drive available in the far east, but is not available here. I wish someone would fix that problem.
You make a good point:
If downloading programming info means uploading my viewing habits, I prefer to cut the cord.
I'll be interested when it has HDTV capability. Low resolution TV doesn't interest me. Actually, nothing much on TV interests me, but seeing basketball over an HDTV signal does make it worth watching if you are interested in the game.
..so that Joe Average user might start actually to see these in Best Buy ASAP. If combination PVR and DVD recorders begin to combine the benefits of VCRs (removable, permanent recordable storage), DVD players (high-quality video), and PVRs (instant random access, freeze, content searches, etc.), then I think that these could be huge. As demand kicks up, watch the price plummet.
/. geeks to be up in arms over this, its quite another when a bunch of people start getting used to their "new VCR thingy", and some new laws come down which says that they'll never be able to buy another ever again!
If these things get market penetration quickly, then we will be able to more effectively deflect the **AA's various fair-use restriction attempts. It's one thing for
Market penetration is what is needed, though. The industry can afford to piss off the early adopters of analog HDTV sets (that may be obsoleted by embedded permission tags in transmissions) because there just aren't very many HDTV sets out there. And of those, a bunch don't use it to its fullest advantage (ie. won't miss 1080i broadcast quality 'cause they never saw it to start with). For these PVR/DVD-R's, we need people literally replacing their VCRs and DVD players and using the features as they were designed to be used!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
these people complaining they want programme guides are different ones to those that bang on about privacy rights, aren't they?
Nope. I want a program guide and I care about my privacy. That's why I have a Tivo. They have a comprehensive privacy policy that the software actually adheres to (as verified by independant parties.. aka hackers). The data it sends back by default really and truly is anonymous. You can opt-out thru their phone number, and they send a command to the box itself to stop sending data back (also verified independantly). Or, if you like, you can opt-in to identify your data and let it be used for more useful things, although there's not much point in that as of yet.
And that is one of the aspects, of this device, that I like, indeed prefer over Tivo. No subscriptions, no unknown software updates that could possible reduce functionality and no Tivo phone home.
The Panasonic machine is like a VCR, you push the button and it does what you want. But, it does so in a modern format and has a few more features than today's VCR. Unlike Tivo, which I feel is severely threatened by the RIAA, this device could indeed be the next VCR.
I don't want a device that can do anything/everything for my television, I already have a few computers. I like this specific function device and when the price hits $500, probably after Christmas, I'll get one. By then, hopefully the price of the media will also have dropped.
I like this thing, but, as a professional DVD author, I have to warn you that not all encoders produce equal quality video streams.
You only have to look as far as QuickTime's encoder. Yeah, it's a software encoder that works at 2X, but it does not produce anywhere near the quality most people want, especially at low bit rate.
Of course, this could have hardware encoding, but the real quality, either software or hardware, comes from multiple passes. If this is recording to DVD in real time, it has no chance of doing VBR.
On pass VBR is worse that CBR.
So, I guess you could record, but only at VHS quality.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Archeaologists have been able to recover sounds from pottery spun thousands of years ago
> Huh? Care to provide a link?
Hear! Hear!
I did some more digging to followup on my previos post about TimeWarner's integrated DVR/Digital Cable box. They are testing it in Rochester, NY, and they have a page up here. There is a movie (infomercial) about the service where you can see what the UI looks like... does not resemble TiVo at all, so I doubt they are using TiVo. Probably custom software from Scientific-Atlanta, the people that make their digital cable box. It's called the Explorer 8000.
It will have an 80GB drive. It will allow for PIP, watching live TV while recording another show, or recording two shows at once.
There is no cost for the device from TW, you pay around $10 a month for the service. No installation charge if you already have TW service.
"And like that
... but after reading in a review (epinions) that it doesn't play well with a satellite receiver, I'll be waiting for the next revision. Besides, I saw one in BestBuy over the weekend, and the front panel is straight out of 1978.
Seriously, this looks like it would be a 'killer-app' product with just a little more attention paid to the user interface. If it would talk to my DirecTV box, I'd have bought one of these already.
Sony et all have made the requirement of drm in firewire applications. Therefore, if the format supports connectivity through firewire, in all likelyhood, the firmware contains drm that is either on by default, or can be turned on using various methods (os, discs, patches, etc).
So has anyone done the proper due diligence on whether this product contains any unknown drm? Sony has already been caught in a news article about a month ago quietly installing drm into all of its CD/DVD drives through firmware.
With all the push towards deciding how many times people can view a particular event, I'm surprised the TV Studios and MPAA don't give up on TV and film entirely, and devote all their efforts into producing live theatre.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Well, it's no match for TiVo yet. I'd like to have some kind of TiVo-like service, at least as an option. I find the most useful aspect of TiVo is that it will autosearch for programs and construct a recording schedule based on a defined set of priorities. And having to entire the titles myself would be a real pain. Still, if the TiVo folks are smart, they are thinking about a DVD-recorder equipped version or DVD-recorder peripheral, because I expect that these things will ultimately take over as an archival medium.
On the other hand it's a big step up from a VCR. The media is a bit pricey--the hours per disk they quote are of course for the lowest recording quality, which if my experience with TiVo is any guide, means horribly artifacted for anything other than talking heads. But I'm sure the blank disks will get cheaper in time.
I'm surprised the TV Studios and MPAA don't give up on TV and film entirely, and devote all their efforts into producing live theatre.
Actually, if they stopped releasing things on home video or TV and essentially forced people to go to movie theaters to watch movies, they could possibly make more money (i.e., $50 for taking your family to a movie versus $5 for renting the video at blockbuster). The theater companies would be happy; consumers most likely would not.
My other first post is car post.
Although I haven't heard more than rumors, this sounds a lot like a PVR device that I would expect Apple to produce--down to the pricetag being 2.5x the competition ($400 for a TiVo vs. $1K for this.) Hm, lets' see: SuperDrive, FireWire. Figure that Apple throws in a better show finder than TiVo, and connects it to
--
$tar -xvf
Personally I'm waiting for the Toshiba RD-X1. Its supposed to be available now, and has an 80 Gig drive as opposed to a 40. The price in the press release says $1500, but it can be seen on C|Net for as little as $789.
Meant to say RD-X2. The RD-X1 was only available in Japan I think
I would go for this... If it could make disk images of my DVDs to put on the HD. I doubt though, that will ever happen (unless I build my own).
I have ReplayTV and I do not allow telephone connections to update the program guide because of the possibility of them retrieving information about viewing habits. Until someone provides a program guide over a broadcast medium (i.e., not telephone, Internet or cable box), I will be entering data manually.
...because if you did, you could legally claim to be allowed to break CSS as the copyright holder, provided you could get your own recordings CSSed.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Really, I don't care if someone knows what I watch. I think there are a lot more interesting things in the world than looking at my viewing habits.
Even if I watched porn 24x7, I wouldn't care. I've got better things to do with my time than entering 150 channels of program guide 365 days a year.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
I just purchased the HS2 last night. Funny it showed up on Slashdot. The toshiba might have a leg up in quality since it can do a bit for bit video/audio transfer from HDD to DVD.
"One major benefit of this process is that during High-Speed Dubbing, from the HDD to the DVD-RAM, digital audio and video signals retain their original integrity. The video signal is not decoded to baseband then re-encoded to MPEG-2. This helps to insure consistent digital picture quality and reduces artifacts when dubbing to DVD-RAM."
I like the unit so far but I haven't figured out how to make my panasonic record on a schedule since I use a digital tv box. At least this stuff is out on the market but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep the damn thing.
My wish? Ability to have a set top box like this (just works better than all the ATI, snap stream, etc. crap) and get video/audio in mpeg-2 from the unit to my computer for editing. Damn. Maybe I should buy a tivo and hack it. Oh wait, that is a lot of work. What do I do?
I wonder what the hard drive on my panasonic looks like. Wouldn't it be cool if it stored files in mpeg-2?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I have digital cable and it has a great guide with it. Program details, run times, etc etc. It's included with my cable service.
Tivo would give me a better recording-oriented guide, but I can't see it being all that much better for watching.
Plus, Tivo can't decode digital cable internally anyway, so I end up with multiple guides. The extra money for the Tivo service doesn't seem worth it.
I can't say that I particularly care if they retrieve my info, but if I hear that they are making money from selling it, I'm going to be asking for a cut.
By the way, there exists a broadcast medium for program info. I have a device called Starsight, which controls my VCR. It doesn't have a phone connection, but picks up program info that is apparently co-broadcast on PBS channels. The device itself is decidedly inferior to Tivo, however, because it won't do searches.
I used to have an even better program guide/VCR control device--nearly as good as Tivo, in fact--that used the pager network to deliver the info. Unfortunately, they got bought up by the company that owns Starsight, who discontinued the service.
NEWS FLASH: no one gives a crap
what rfischer watches. the data is for cumulative analysis - like ratings.
Freakin' LaRouchies!
I am an agent of Soviet influence.
Well, Firewire could be made to carry control signal information in addition to multimedia content. But it's really meant for applications where high bandwidth is a requirement. It's kind of a waste to use Firewire for sending a signal from your PVR (Replay TV, TiVO, etc.) to your cable box saying "change to channel 11."
You could make Firewire carry everything multiplexed over one cable -- it supports enough bandwidth to make this practical, at least for standard resolution video streams (but probably not for high definition video). But you'd run into a hell of a lot of opposition in the consumer electronics industry.
The DVD Forum (aka DVD Consortium) has a standing policy banning the use of Firewire ports on DVD players. Their fear was that Firewire used as a carrier for digital video would facilitate piracy of DVD movies. Hollywood would never have jumped on the DVD bandwagon without this concession. (Interestingly, now that movie directors have gotten into DVD for their home theaters, many are doing after-market modifications of DVD players and big-screen plasma TVs to use a much higher bandwidth interconnect than Firewire for transmitting video. This takes advantage of the obvious loophole in the ban on Firewire ports for DVD players -- other digital interconnects aren't disallowed.)
The original ReplayTV units had Firewire ports on them, with the intent that they would eventually be activated by a software revision allowing consumers to dump recorded video to an external hard drive or other storage device. Later models removed this port (and the Panasonic Replay TV unit that I own also lacks the port); the software was never updated to use the Firewire port. Again, this was a concession to big media companies concerned about piracy. Similarly, Castlewood bet the farm on the notion that PVR devices on the market would eventually incorporate Orb drives for removable storage. None of these devices ever made it to market, at least not in North America.
Bottom line: Don't count on Firewire being a universal standard for two-way communication between home theater components any time soon. The few devices that have come out lately which burn DVDs and have Firewire capability are set up to use that port strictly to take video from a digital camcorder and transfer it to the unit's hard disk or straight to DVD.