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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 ?
How did the industry let this happen?
I've heard it said that companies make way more on hardware than they ever could on entertainment. I don't really have any numbers on that, but it doesn't sound unreasonable.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Here's a review
This is the type of idea I had a while back, but the short answer, unfortunately, is no. At least, there's no way of building a hardware-based DVD player on the up-n-up (e.g. no DeCSS) w/o getting your own decryption key approved (that ought to set ya back a few).
.. its gettin' to be more and more that the DIY type thing is out of the picture. And just think, we don't even have broadcast flags yet! Even so, I can't think of any way that I can build my own box that can play DVDs, have TiVO like functionality, tune both my regular cable channels as well as my digital cable channels - never mind if I had satellite, which I don't, and never mind premium cable channels or InDemand or PPV, which might require totally different chips on your tuner.
... supply & demand, God bless.
It'd be nice, though
Ah well, that's what we've got capitalism for, right? To see to our every need
Cheers.
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
The studios are trying to get exactly this. Actually, they don't feel that this is adequate either - they want to have time-limited recordings and remotely deletable recordings.
In the ongoing HDTV wars between the equipment manufacturers and the studios (with the broadcasters caught in the middle), about a year and a half or so ago the studios once again whined about there being insufficient copy protection on DTV broadcasts. They wanted all set top boxes and recording devices to comply to an as-of-yet-unspecified standard that would allow for them to set flags allowing maximum number of viewings, time durations, and remote delete capability.
The electronics manufacterers told them to go fuck themselves.
HDTV does have a "do not record" bit in the broadcast. But that's it. The attempts to get more invasive control have failed, and while the cable companies and studios are still pouting, the reality is that it's a dead issue now. There are too many HD receivers out there already and the US government has mandated that all TVs will be manufactured with decoders in the next few years - at that point the installed base is too big to change it. And the various companies will have the choice of selling their wares with "insufficient" copy control or not selling them at all.
Darn.
And they do not want a million calls from Joe Sixpack demanding to know why the box didn't record and play back whenever he wants, just like his old VCR.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.