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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 ?
...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?"
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)
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.
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
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!
Tivo doesn't re-record episodes it already has recorded. It looks at the schedule to see which episode is being aired and compares that to ones already saved.
That's fine for geeks, but a lot of people who have the time don't have the know-how. For them, spending $1000 on a fairly dumb appliance is a lot happier a prospect than spending 1000 hours swearing at Unix manuals.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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)
Perhaps it's this little "feature" -- (from the Panasonic site):
- "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.
"
There you go -- only one copy of a 'restricted work' can exist thanks to this device. But you can have it on reasonably durable media.So it's got some sort of restriction ability built-in. Bad that you can only make one copy (but then burn more from your computer?), but good that you could save, say, the Angels winning the World Series for posterity.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
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
Here's a review
Interesting how Amazon jacks up the "List Price" by $300 (vs. Panasonic's MSRP) so they can claim that "You Save" that much.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
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?"
--
Damn the Emperor!
..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.
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.