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Video Storage And Hard Drive Manufacturers
IrateSurf writes "A new column posted over at the Storage Supersite questions whether or not PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) are good for the hard drive industry. It's interesting, considering topics like whether the noise of a hard drive is worse than a VCR. The discussion is a response to an earlier column talking about the bad market for hard drive makers."
It will lead to some manufacturer making quiet drives rather than the biggest and fastest possible. That's capitalism.
Yeah Hard drive noise is bad but it's nothing like it used to be. I remember some of the older drives I had that made so much noise it scared away my cat. Of course I used to buy crappy hardware so the drives were bad to begin with.
I've bought a Seagate HDD with fluid bearings recently, and I am very impressed. I don't hear it at all, except when it spins up. Its noise is well below the CPU fan noise (and I have a quiet Zalman one).
My concern about the PVR application is HDD reliability, not the noise.
Because that's how it's depicted in their movies.
I have to say, bought three of these Seagate Barracuda IV's with the new fluid bearings, and they are extremely quiet. I wouldn't see one of these drives raising anyones hackles. Hell, have you heard how loud some DVD players are?? I've got a couple that the entire chassis vibrates!
IMHO, people is currently not savvy enough to embrace digital videos yet. It will need some time. When the market is mature (and good enough), people will definitely jump into digital video bandwagon. Only then big HDs will have it big share AND all the evils imposed by MPAA will be contended.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Your computer doesn't have to be in the same room as your display, if the hard drive / fan noise bothers you.
Hard drive noise is a quiet hum while most VCRs sound like rampant screeching, hard to compare them.
Banaaaana!
If the sound does become a problem, how about adding a little sound proof (dampening) enclosure around it?
Just a thought.
I recognize that drive manufacturers have made a real effort during the past year to reduce the noise of bearings and actuators. In spite of that, no matter how quiet the drive, it's still being placed in an acoustic-enhancing environment--an empty box, like a drum or guitar.
I don't know about any of you, but I don't keep my PVR isn't in a guitar housing, although it may make a cool hack.
Modular Redundancy--Because 4 out of 5 Nodes agree
Unless of course PVRs suddenly become hotter than DVD players in the consumer market, in which case I suppose demand will work things out. But the PVR is too much of a tech toy right now. I can't see grandma using one day to day to record her soap opera. Remember, millions of people out ther can't get rid of the blinbking 12:00 thing in their VCRs to save their lives.
Noise levels are the least of their problems, I dare say.
Heat is the enemy. If you sound proof your box, then the terrorists... err, heat has won.
I get more noise from the whine when MediaT&Comcast compress their digital cable poorly, resulting in a high-pitched whine coming out of the audio of some stations (FoodTV for one, makes watching Good Eats a bit annoying).
Then again, I have my Tivo sitting behind a piece of glass that makes up the entertainment center. But even with the door open, it's hard to hear the drive, and I've got an un-modded Tivo.
Wow, talk about a flamebait article:
"I do a fair amount of time-shifting now, using two S-VHS decks--a PVR would free me from the purchase of tapes and periodic cleaning," Jeff Carlson said. "But a PVR only duplicates the functions of a VCR; it doesn't provide any truly new-and-exciting, can't-live-without-it functions. "
Only duplicates the functions of a VCR?
- Random access to content
- Pause live TV
- Program it to tape a show instead of chunk of time on a particular channel
- Commercial Skip
- Dump it to your computer (more valuable than it'd seem)
I don't think this guy was doing anything BUT looking for negatives about these things. He finds them noisy?
Anyway, this guy doesn't really know what he's talking about. I think he's in the mode of "Well I can live without it if I just work a little harder". That's not a valid point or an educated opinion, it's a closed mind.
Pausing and rewinding live TV is good example. I hate the culture that means that TV is so important that you can't be interrupted incase you miss anything. Ever had those "What was that they said?" moments? Where no-one heard the critical bit of dialog because someone was asking if anyone wanted a cup of tea? Well, I don't
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
I don't think you can embarrass Abby Joe and Al about their predictions. It's not like there's pride in work there. They're out to keep their jobs, that's all. Make some dough. They're on the sell side. They simply have to look optimistic, like porn stars have to look turned on.
Yes, lets see, lose all the fetures and the picture quality of a PVR and go back to a VCR? I think not. Besides, I don't have to remember to swap tapes when I want my favorite show recorded, or have to worry about swapping tapes, then in the interim someone decides to watch an old family movie and doesn't swap back, love that.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
This guy's pissing and moaning about his PVR in his bedroom. For fuck sakes, get the TV the hell out of there. What are you, in college or something? The bedroom's for sleeping and for fucking and quiet discussions with a loved one. It's not somewhere to have a TV or a telephone or even a laptop or PDA.
Christ. I'm a geek and all but even I don't need to have the television or computer in every room of the house.
Back in 1999, My Packard Bell PC came with a 6gb hard drive, It was WOEFULLY Inadequete! I bought a 17gb hard drive (£149.99 back then) and it was enough!
But when I bought a laptop with a 15gb hard drive earlier this year it was contrictive with windows xp. Add to the fact that I dual booted it with linux and the space is scarse!
But when I built a new PC from scratch around november hard drives were like £50 for 60 gb! Its amazingly cheap, and due to the fact that linux is less bloated (A full linux with kde install, plus OpenOffice.org takes less space than a minimal XP install!) and I probably wont need to upgrade for the forseeable future.
The problem is that the prices are so cheap and the fact that file formats have become very effecient have ment that people are not upgrading as much.
I know it would never happen, but I'd like a DVD player that had a hard drive with space to cache say 10-15 of the most recently watched films so I didn't have to wait for menus and swap disks.
Even if the hardware "expired" a copy after a week or so (to prevent permanent copies of rented films) it would still be useful.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
HD noise? Please. Everytime I used to hit stop on my VCR, it clanked. Eject a tape, it clicks. Hit stop, it clicks. Rewind is about as loud as any fan setup on a home media pc as you are going to get. Tapes are freakin noisy as they come.
Meanwhile, you can buy a mini itx case for $70 or less with a dc-dc power supply (although that buzzes a tad) and an epia 900 (933 mhz) and that's pretty quiet. Get some 5400 rpm hard drive or boot and save over a network.
You can buy 200 gb 7200 rpm special edition/8mb cache western digitals for $250 or less after rebate nowadays. I just bought 2 in the past 2 weeks for recording use (I use a Hauppauge 250; I don't use it as a PVR really re the timeshifting). They are exclusively for video storage. I intend to buy 2 more in the next month, since maxtor seems to be dragging their feet on their 320s (I need capacity, not speed).
I have a fairly old TIVO and have never noticed any noise from it. On the other hand, all of my VCRs are very noisy, especially when rewinding which is something the PVR eliminates.
In reality what I really want IS just a glorified VCR. I don't want to have to pay monthly fees for their service. I don't want to record every instance of "Whose Line..." available - I really only want the one that's on once a week at a particular time. I don't want TiVo (or ReplayTV, or whoever) to tell my machine to occasionally record things I haven't asked for, whether its because of their attempts at marketing or a lame attempt at "profiling" my viewing habits. I don't want these companies using my viewing habits for their gain, even if its anonymous and aggregate. But the PVR manufacturers seem hell-bent on only letting you use their device if you pay their monthly fee for their "service".
Until this is addressed, I'll just keep rotating tapes in my VCR.
#DeleteChrome
My wife complained that the Tivo (Sony SAT-T60) in our bedroom made too much noise at night and it bothered her. I replaced the stock cooling fan in it with one of those quiet models, and it cut down on the noise enough to where the noise from the Tivo is imperceptible to her.
Anyway, the point of the story is that noise from a PVR's hard drive is not such a big a deal to my wife, and I suspect that most consumers wouldn't disagree. (They just need to put quiter fans in 'em)
(BTW, this Tivo has the stock hard drive, nothing special)
Comparing VCR noise against PVR noise is not an apples to apples comparison.
The VCR makes its noise most commonly when operating, with either the TV on or the user away.
The PVR makes its noise most of the time, regardless of the presence of the user.
A Tivo is pretty annoying at night in a quiet bedroom. The low levels of noise become much much more audible and annoying in that environment.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Now there's just so much space available for so little cost... People can store full length movies, entire series of TV shows, not to mention a multitude of rather bloated programs on a single drive, and I have to ask... how much more will we really need?
At the risk of starting my own 640K outta be enough quote here... really, isn't there a theoretical limit to the amount of digital media one can collect? I think I read in the BeOS Bible that all of recorded human history would fit into a few petabytes...
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
My Maxtor HD is the worst. I have heard airplanes that make less noise than that.
The thing that makes the noise is that they are screwed to the metal. If you put a new HD on some rubber foam it is very silent. Its so easy to make the sound dissapear. Lazy designers should be shot but then half the PC industry would be gone tomorrow.
HTTP/1.1 400
Actually, it's quiet, performance, or RMA.
If you want to reduce noise, use 2.5" drives at lower rpms. Yeah, they're a bit more expensive. But I daresay that a pair of 30GB notebook drives would make a PVR whisper quiet without significantly impacting performance. Smaller unit too, though I suspect size will remain pretty constant even when space isn't really an issue. Crack open your VCR sometime to check out the wasted space.
I wonder how recent decisions by HD manufacturers to allow quality to slide in the "consumer" (IDE) market segment will affect satisfaction with PVR devices.
Since manufacturers have switched their standard warranty terms from 3 years to 1 year, I'm guessing you can expect an IDE HD to last about 1.5 years. Does this mean that the typical buyer will throw out the PVR box every 18 months? I'll bet most people expect home entertainment equipment to last a lot longer than 18 months.
(Come to think of it, I'll bet a lot of people will be mad when their computers' HDs start failing after only 1 year of service).
Comments?
The HD noise issue is completely and totally irrelevant. First of all, most people use PVRs in their living room or (if they have one) media room. You put your PVR where you watch TV the most, and that isn't the bedroom.
Furthermore, there are a million ways to deal with the noise issue if you really needed to. Put the PVR in a cabinet, turn on the ceiling fan, get a cheap "white noise" generator, etc, etc.
The article touches on one of the two *REAL* problems with PVR adoption. I say this as as huge TIVO fanatic (I own three DirecTV TiVOs currently and I've converted 7 friends so far into fellow TiVO-haulics).
NUMBER 1) The difficulty in quickly explaining "the magic" of PVRs to the consumer. This is the big problem that the article mentioned more as an aside than as a major problem. Sales people talk about things like "pause live tv!" and other gimmicks that don't suck people in. The real joys of PVRs are:
1. The fact that it holds 60-120 hours of entertainment. You don't swap tapes. You don't have to run out to the store to buy tapes. It is all there, at your fingertips.
2. You can tell it your favorite shows and it will record them EVERY WEEK with no further input from you (even if the show gets moved to a different day or time, the PVR will STILL record it). It can even seek out your favorite show(s) over multiple channels if you so wish.
3. It has tons of built in features to find other shows you might like. You can search by genre, type of show or movie, etc. This is pretty handy.
4. It actively SEEKS OUT shows you might like (and while there are many strikeouts, it does hit a home run quite often). It does this by comparing the actors, genres, and other information of shows you LIKED (indicated by you giving it a thumbs up or just the fact that you recorded it on purpose) and seeking out other shows that are similar. I have started watching a number of really cool shows solely because TiVO grabbed a few of them for me.
5. PVRs are digital, which means fast forward, reverse, etc. work much better. This makes it a lot easier to motor through commercials (and Replay TV even has a +30 second button. TiVO only has a - 8 second button, but you can do a little remote trick to convert one of your buttons to a +30 second button).
NUMBER 2) This is a big issue that the article is not aware of: TIVO has failed to innovate over the last 1-2 years. There have been no significant new features and they have not improved the organization of your recorded shows (which gets to be a problem at 100+ hours of shows). This failure to innovate has served to reduce the "excitement level" of current PVR adoptees, and that slows down the rate at which they fervently try to convince friends to get one.
These 2 problems are what really matters in the PVR space. I haven't mentioned pressure from MPAA, Hollywood, etc. because that is the 600 pound gorilla that hangs over ALL entertainment, not just PVRs.
The point is, hard drive noise is irrelevanat compared to the MUCH larger issues that face the popularity and success of the PVR.
-Michael
Threshold RPG
In reality what I really want IS just a glorified VCR.
That's cool... that's what TiVo is, and more if you want it.
I don't want to have to pay monthly fees for their service.
Pay the lifetime fee one time, then. The service fee is basically a way to subsidize the device. You could either buy a cheap device and the monthly service, or the more expensive device (i.e. paying the lifetime fee along with the TiVo cost).
I don't want to record every instance of "Whose Line..." available - I really only want the one that's on once a week at a particular time.
You can do that with TiVo. Or better yet, you can tell it to record only new episodes of your show, and keep only X number of episodes (in your example, 1 episode). If they shift the time from 10pm to 11pm, TiVo knows it, your VCR doesn't.
I don't want TiVo (or ReplayTV, or whoever) to tell my machine to occasionally record things I haven't asked for, whether its because of their attempts at marketing or a lame attempt at "profiling" my viewing habits.
So turn that feature off. It doesn't hurt anything to leave it on, though. It only uses up free space, and if you need space for a show you're recording, it automatically deletes the auto-recorded shows to free up space. They never interfere, and you just might find some new shows you like (I did).
I don't want these companies using my viewing habits for their gain, even if its anonymous and aggregate.
So turn that off. I don't see the harm, but if you really are that anal, turn that off.
But the PVR manufacturers seem hell-bent on only letting you use their device if you pay their monthly fee for their "service".
Until this is addressed, I'll just keep rotating tapes in my VCR.
Your loss... just try to keep the FUD to a minimum in the future, please.
"And like that
But I thought most married couples used to watch Jay Leno during sex. PVRs open up new options.
It was drowning out the sound from the soothing cd I listen to while I sleep.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
Since most HD makers have seriously reduced their warranties,will this affect the warranties on these consumer devices?
Currently, most HD only have a 1 yr warranty.
Will this mean a PVR is only good for that long?
Seems to me you could just put the display/user input hardware near the TV and put the storage in a computer somewhere else. 100Mb/s is _plenty_ for the kind of video streams most people use. That and you could serve multiple displays out of one central server.
You could even network boot the display unit and use a little, quiet computer. Problem solved.
I've never used a PVR but I was curious about how the video capture capabilities compare to common PC video capture cards. If they're better, do any PVR's allow you to move data to your computer or a standalone CD-Burner?
I have a first gen Tivo with a cheap second hard drive. The only time I've ever heard any mechanical noise from it is when the entire house was empty and nothing was running. It's quieter than my amplifier most times. If I stick my head to the back of the Tivo I can hear the drives and fan, but that's the only time.
My VCR on the other hand makes a pretty massive amount of sound on fast forwarding, rewinding, and when dis/engaging the heads. Hands down it's the noisiest appliance we own.
This guy either got a model with a total clunker of a drive or he's nuts.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Last year or so they have stopped selling that feature. Now you have to sign up, or the Tivo won't do anything.
Yeah Hard drive noise is bad but it's nothing like it used to be. I remember some of the older drives I had that made so much noise it scared away my cat.
Still, there's nothing like the seismic rumble of one of the good old full-height 5.25" 20 megabyte Seagates starting up. And the squeak-squeak sounds of band-stepper actuators.
Ahhh... remember the good old days where you always let the drive warm up for 20 minutes before you saved anything, because the old actuators didn't account for expansion and contraction of the platters and arm?
I must resurrect one of those just for the fun of being able to stick, like, 4 MP3s on a drive which draws 12V @ 6A at startup.
Of course I used to buy crappy hardware so the drives were bad to begin with.There was a company called Kalok which was producing mega-cheap hard disk drives in about 1995, before they got bought out by an even more fledgling JTS. They had a 100 megabyte 3.5" hard disk drive which was selling for about $75-$100 less than a comparable name-brand drive. 'Course, there was a catch... in fact, two of them.
The Kalok had a band-stepper actuator - which is impressive because everything else from 40 megabytes and up seemed to have a voice-coil actuator. Needless to say, installing Windows 95 on a Kalok hard drive was a bad idea, since the system wrote to boot up logs and the like during startup - before the hard drive had a chance to warm up.
The other catch reads like a bad joke: The hard drives were made in India.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the digital cable signal mpg2 at a lower bit-rate than dvd? shitty bit-rate in any medium sux of course...
:-)
i just wanted to make sure i was correct in assuming format.
and moderators...don't mod me down...i know i'm off topic...doesn't mean you need to be assholes...
a bit more on topic...i don't have a tivo, but i have a SGI indigo2 (for fun and nastalgia), a desktop with an AMD Athalon (with bundled heatsink, 2 HD's, GForce2 Ti, and 4 80mm fans moving a total of 320 cubic ft/min of air through the case), a server with case fans and PS fan...all humming in my little military provided dorm room 24-7, and i still sleep fine...
geeks like computer noises to an extent...they make us feel comfortable
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
Try outsourcing to Surrey, BC Canada instead. We've got more Hindu garbage here than you can shake a stick at. Cheap? Hell yeah. Skilled? Hell no.
As long as the manufacturers don't use IBM hard drives in their PVRs, there shouldn't be any problems. Will we get warning stickers on the PVRs prodding us to back up our video vaults?
That's a good point. I've seen interviews where a lot of marriage counselors say that more relationships would last if people would just get the TV out of the bedroom. It's thier first recommendation. Causes more intimacy, closeness, discussion which leads to understanding and resolving problems rather than just zoning out. As far as the porn question, well... use porn in your lovemaking LESS OFTEN and you might actually relate to each other as real people better... And when you DO use the porn, then you get the fun of doing it in the living room. :D
This space available.
I guess two out of three ain't bad. Wish I could just get some sleep then...
It's often cited as a PVR feature because it's easy to explain. But PVR owners know the truth -- they hardly ever use that feature, because they hardly ever watch live TV any more. That's the real change.
I do see heavy VCR users saying they don't think they need a PVR or listing data. But, I have yet to see sombody say they got a PVR and then got rid of it. In spite of all you think you know about them, you really don't understand what they do until you get one.
I know. I thought I knew what it would do, and I'm usually very good at predicting such things, often better than their own designers, but I was just as surprised.
They will take over, to the same extent CDs took over from vinyl, and as DVDs are taking over from VHS because the difference is even more dramatic.
They will get better user interfaces. In fact, today, they could put a mic on the remote control so you don't even push buttons, you just hold it up and say "Record Every Matlock". Even Grandma can handle that.
So they will cause every home to buy 200gb of disk space, and that will be good for HD makers, though they won't want to pay a lot for that 200gb of space.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Environmental questions such as these occur at the point of creation. What is the economic impact of creating 50million mobile phones? Because there is a disconnect between the makers of new items and those who ultimately pay the price for disposal and because free-market capitalism necessarily promotes making, free market capitalism is allocatively inneficient when it comes to environmental issues such as these.
Sure, sure, I can pause and rewind live TV and have it record what I'm likely to like, and it gets rid of all those messy tapes. But, ya know, what? I can take that tape and shove it into any VCR in the house... or any other VCR, if mine break. While that's possible with Replay units, it's kinda klunky still.
Here's what I want: recordings in my inbox. Well, perhaps not emailed to me via the usual route, but dumped to some server in my home from some local device with a cable or satellite feed. But, I want the flexibility to deal with them as I would any other data in my home: stream them to whatever playback device I desire, make archival copies, etc.
I know, DRM prevents this. And it's true, but it does so in a far to heavyhanded way -- I want the days of fair use, and I'd accept mechanisms to constrain that use to being far, but not DRM as presently proposed or implemented.
As for a program guide subscription service: Unbundle it! Tell me how to tell the box what to record and let mo choose the service that will I can subscribe to to get that information in the necessary format to seamlessly integrate with the recorder. Yeah, if that means the recorder has to be sold for it's actually retail price, if I don't accept the manufacturer's subscription service, so be it.
You could've hired me.
No amount of gadgets can make television a quality information source. Such things may provide the illusion of control but when all is said and done, you remain submissive to the capricious whims of the content providers.
Is that good enough for you?
I don't have a PVR, so excuse my ignorance. Couldn't you just turn it off when you're sleeping? If 'tivo-ing' shows while you're sleeping is important, why not get some extension cords/wireless units and put it in another room or closet? I keep a server in my living room for the same reason.
I think you're right though. PVRs and VCRs are different. I don't know anyone who keeps their VCR on 24-7 to record shows while they're sleeping in the same room. PVRs must be really cool for such devotion.
Two points:
1. It's not the drive that makes the worst noise in the latest gen PVRs, it's the fan. And if you're willing to void the warranty, you can swap that sucka out for something quieter.
2. 4200rpm 2.5" drives run both hotter (bad for PVRs - less tolerant to heat) and, well, slower, than desktop drives (both in terms of rotational speed and seeks). They're too slow and hot to handle the disk I/O.
Even a 7200rpm WD drive rated at around 45 decibels is quieter than the stock fan in a ReplayTV 5xxx series.
That seems like a pretty good idea. With all the posts on HDDs failing and Tivo vs. Homebrew boxes, don't you think there might be a market for a PVR with no HDD? It would of course be a very niche market, but I would buy one for sure. Having your computer on all the time might be a drawback for some, but saving 50-100 dollars on a Tivo would be nice for those of us with full-time servers running already. Stuff a gig of cheap RAM in it and you should be able to overcome any network latency and perhaps some of the time-shifting features could be used with no hard drive at all.
Just an idea...
fp? EFF PEE?!? No way man. Out of this office. Now. You are SO fired!
They are very similar, in a perverse way, to high end audiophiles who insist that nothing will ever perform as well as tubes and direct-drive turn tables.
This is totally off topic, but hardcore audiophiles (at least the analog lovers that still own turntables) wouldn't be caught dead with a direct-drive turntable. Sure, they're great for DJs (Technics SL-1200 anyone?), but if you're going analog, be a luddite! Belt drive does isolate motor vibrations from the disc platter (the motor is usually suspended on cushions or on a seperate chassis on high end players). Plus, direct drive tables usually use a phase locked loop, and that's sort of digital, so it's another strike against the breed.
Then, of course, there's the question of whether vinyl sounds better than CD. Here's my assessment: good quality records, played back on the best audio systems, sound better than the best CDs. However, average systems are better off with CD playback. Good vinyl playback is hard to do properly. Crackle, hiss, and pops are pretty rare if you keep your records clean, and you really don't notice them after you realize how beautiful and real the music sounds on a good record.
I've given up trying to make the case for PVRs. At this point, I'm just selfish.
My ReplayTV 2020, which I upgraded a while back with a somewhat noisier but much larger drive, will be perfectly good enough for me until I move to digital television. That is, as long as the nightly feeds continue.
I hope enough people buy MP3 players to keep SonicBlue afloat for a few more years, for that reason alone. (When I bought my machine, it came with a lifetime subscription.)
By that time, the concept of an analog tape recorder for video will seem so hopelessly outdated to everyone (as they do to me today), PVRs will be plentiful, and I'll have plenty of options for my next generation.
Now, I must say, I think people are just plain used to recording onto some kind of removable media. So, DVD recorders may wean some people off VCRs in the interim. But I just can't imagine why we will need to rely on hideous bastardizations like these HD Videocasette players available now. With hard drives at 200GB and counting, by the NTSC "cutoff date" (yeah, right), there is no way anybody will argue that random access media don't have the data density and economy to serve in this market.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
My Tivo is very quiet, and I only notice it when the living room is shut down for the night. Even then, hardly a whisper. I sleep in a room w. a humidifier which is much louder.
Also, as long as I am here..PVR's RULE!!! They totally, 100% change the way you watch TV. Yes, the hardware is important, but the monthly fee that allows the unit to download programming data AND (this is the important part) search it at will is where the PVR's really shine. If Modern Marvels conflicts with Buffy, no sweat, click a button and record the show when it is shown again at 3AM. I totally love it and recommend a PVR to anyone who watches TV. End of evangalism!
It expires tomorrow (Dec 31), but right now with rebates you can get a ReplayTV 5040 (40 GB, ethernet) with lifetime subscription for $450.
That's reasonable enough for me to give it a shot...I hope my wife appreciates a surprise Kwanzaa present.
HD coming soon, cable sitting on their butts with that...
I have an HD ready wide TV. I ain't getting a PVR until it can record higher resolutions and do progressive scan.
I want my
I want my HDTV
The program guide data needs to come in on the same pipe as the video, and the "service" thing has to go. Then these things will become commodities. I give it three years.
Unless the hard drive sounds like a 747 preparing for take off due to worn bearings, I'm not really going to notice the noise.
One of the problems with the current selection of PVRs is that they are not expandable without voiding your warranty. What I would like to see is an expansion bay similar to the one on my PS2 where a standard hard drive could be installed. Probably a serial ATA drive would be good if it could be hot swapped.
jason
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
I received a TiVo2 for xmas and I had to put my ear next to the case to hear any sound from the TiVo harddrive. I haven't opened it up yet to find out what drive is in the thing. My biggest noise issue in my entertainment system are the relays in the receiver. I haven't heard relays that noisy since I got rid of my old tube type Zenith TV (the remote control relays were obnoxious). Odd thing about the relays in the receiver is that they don't just operate when turning the receiver on/off, they also operate when changing various functions.
My TV was 20" I used it to ocassionally watch rented movies, I did not have cable.
I wanted to catch the end of the X files (which sucked) and getting a family member to record them was impossible.
I purchased cable and realized just how pointless it is, I couldn't watch the shows I wanted to as I was always doing something else and programming 2 vcrs is above my pain threshold.
Circuit city had TiVo on sale, I figured ehh why not I hate tapes and programming consumer devices.
Since I purchased the TiVo I REALLY don't care what's on, something is always waiting for me when I get the time to watch TV, and I fast forward through the commercials, a half hour show becomes 15-20 minutes. The thing that records things it thinks you like is fairly accurate, although it thinks I'm Spanish sometimes.
I could not imagine keeping track of two vcrs, swapping tapes, making sure their clocks are sync'd.
Now that's obsessive!!
I have Linux for my obsession.
Ahhhh the sweet stench of die-versity.
for what it's worth, cable has the ability to deliver higher bitrate mpeg than dvd, but that does not mean that capability is often used.
I've gone through all the major sub $99 brands of capture cards in the last year and have a small bit of advice to offer:
Get an ATI Tv Wonder.
The All in Wonder is cool too, but much more expensive (but does include TV video out unlike the Wonder). They both include an internet-updated program guide for FREE, which lets you select any show and hit the record program to schedule its recording. Other than lacking TV out and S-Video, the TV Wonder does everything the All-in-Wonder can do.
The ATI cards also have a geeky cool feature that shows you what is on EVERY channel at once. Sure, it's hard to make out all 80 channels on my machine, but it sure is cool to see them all. They don't move though, the system runs through and updates one channel at a time, taking about a full minute to cycle through.
Also, like many cards you can capture close captioning to text files, but unlike many cards the ATI software can create HTML files of any show's text with periodic images plugged in.
Oh yeah, and if you set your video recording to the right format, you can burn all your shows onto plain old CDR VCDs that can be viewed by many DVD players.
Sadly, there is no way to pause live TV.
Avermedia's TV tuner cards can be programmed to record at particular times, but there is no program guide.. and the quality is disapointing. The resolution is much lower, which makes them useless for other purposes a video input card can be put to like video motion detection.
The Hauppage cards I've tried work well but don't have the feature happy options ATI works in. A useful thing about them for some purposes however is that you can have multiple cards in the same machine, which doesn't seem to be true for the ATI TV Wonder or the AverMedia cards.
Get a capture card, and download Virtualdub from Virtualdub.Org.
Capture to raw HuffYUV. Capture at 512x384 or 640x480. Encode to xvid ( a superior form of divx playable by any divx5 player ), high quality ... 200-350M an ep.
Got bad reception with your analog cable? Just download some free virtualdub plugings. Smartsmoother & Temporal smoother do wonders. Try sticking that in your TiVO and smoking it!
When harddrive is full, burn to DVD-R. 65 cents for a blank dvd-r is about 4.3 cents a show (Assuming 4.6G dvdr, 300M episode). That is cheaper than using VHS tapes, and more reliable as well. My lost cost-benefit analysis ov VHS tapes stated it was 12 cents to record a show on VHS. And my 8-year-old VHS tapes SUCK. And I buy high-end vcrs (current one has a digital color correction buffer, s-video out, yada yada. I don't even use the s-video out anymore -- my tv has 2 s-video ins - 1 for computer, 1 for playstation).
Play files on your computer with TV-OUT (ATI cards have s-video out). No need for a standalone player. YOU'RE READING SLASHDOT. YOU OBVIOUSLY ALREADY OWN A GOOD COMPUTER. As an added bonus, if you miss an episode, you can likely download it from IRC or winmx (legal if you already have access to that program, you are already allowed to possess a recording of it whether it is yours, or a tape or digital fascimile thereof that a friend gave you). Also you can your friends can back each other up in case of hardware failure.
Best is the cheap storage cost. Using *real* dvds would cost alot more (ie 60 minutes per disc instead of 300+ minutes per disc). Computers are more versatile. Data is longer lasting than any media. Where are your vinyl records? (mine are mp3s now) Where are your cassette tapes? (mine are mp3 now) Everything is going to end up on the computer anyway.
Stop fighting it. Boycot all standalone players. Do not buy VCRs, do not by PVRs, do not buy CD players, do not buy DVD players. Your computer can do it all already, and it will be cheaper in the short run.
STOP THE MADNESS.
After recording 420 8-hour tapes worth of shows I realized I had to start doing digital only. I now have over 1650 cds of video (not to mention 12000 mp3s), 480G of harddrive space totally full, and a dvd-burner waiting to be installed so I can burn stuff with more ease.
Okay, so I don't do time-shift. Big deal. The ATI software that comes with the all-in-wonder cards will do that, but I choose not to install it. I also have to do manual video editing (ie removing commercials), but that is mainly to save space and to not have to fast forward while watching. I have more control doing it myself.
Fear me.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
My uncle is a researcher at Western Digital in Irvine, CA. He showed me his patents today ironically, check out "Disk drive employing spindle motor commutation time variation for reducing acoustic noise" over at USPTO. He explained it to me step by step, and it's quite interesting. Just wanting to share...
I think I do speak for us anti-noise buffs when I say.. it's not really those drive operation sounds.. seeking and whatnot.. that are so annoying, but it is the high pitched drone of the drive that gets to us.
I do however have both a barracuda IV and V in my box, and they are commendable in their quietness of drone. I really don't care how well they perform in reading and writing... I only care about the environmental characteristics.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Interface
Tivo's interface blows away any VCR interface. An easy to use GUI with an up-to-date channel guide that can list every show on television this month if need be is very handy. VCR+ is nice, but its nothing compared Tivos programming features.
No Tape Management
No one archives everything. When I use a VCR its always, "Where on this 4 hour tape is that episode I want to put on a compilation tape." Or "Hold on, its on here somewhere!" On top of that is the terrible loss of quality of a tape to tape copy. Tivo has one non-removable disk with a simple "Send to VCR" function if you want to record or capture something.
Pausing
It doesn't seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but it sucks not having it. If I'm watching a normal TV I feel like its in controt. My instict is to hit pause when life interrupts. Its just weird being forced to miss part of a movie when you haven't missed a second of anything in months.
Fast Forward/Rewind/Slow-Mo
These are handier than you'd think. They're actually usable in digital form. Consumer level tape machines have horrible controls. Its more like a high-speed beta with a nice toggle wheel than a VCR. As cool as commercial skipping is, there's nothing like "Bad Conan guest" skipping.
Picture Quality
My tivo records the MPEG-2 stream from Direct TV directly to disk. Can't beat that.
Mine's picked up a bunch of stuff I'd have missed otherwise.
Philly (on at 4am for some reason)
MotoGP racing
Cleopatra 2525
First wave (Ok, so it's crap, but I like it)
Futurama
Farscape
Loads of films.
It has of course, picked crap as well, it likes S club 7 and The Office.
The secret is to be sparing at first with the thumbs, it'll initially record all sort of junk suggestions.
Clear all the thumb data it's got so far. Go through your season passes and give them 1 thumbs up. Then as it suggests stuff, set up passes for stuff you like and give them a thumbs up, only give a single thumbs down when it actually records a suggestion you really don't like.
Mine's pretty much house trained now. Takes a few weeks.
Alternatively, you could always learn spanish.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
of a PVR is the timestamp.
Can't find the episode of Victory Garden that taped 3 weeks ago and you haven't had time to watch? Look at the time stamp-- or you could rumage through the stack of tapes on top of your entertainment center, playing each one until you find it.
I don't understand why hd's aren't changing over to solid state. We've got USB pen drives now, why don't they make a bigger pen drive that we can plug into our motherboard? Sure it'd be expensive at first, but isn't everything? Furthermore, why are we bothering with serial ATA? Just make the HD bus USB2 and be done with it.
I don't see any fud in that message. Is it possible to a Tivo without registering it or connecting it to a phone line? I mean, can you go to the store, buy a Tivo with cash, and take it home and start using it without ever "activating" it? You can do that with a VCR, so if you can't do it with a Tivo, then Tivo hasn't caught up.
That's not flamebait. He's not saying that to provoke a reaction, he's saying it because he's dumb and doesn't know how wrong he is.
You idiot!!! -- now THIS is flamebait
In fact, I actually use this Seagate U series 5 hard drive that was in my Dish PVR 501 in my computer now.
First, I had to get the case of the PVR open with a screwdriver that was just different enough from my other screwdrivers that I almost stripped the screws on the blasted thing. But I found a screwdriver that fit perfectly and had the cover to the thing open very quickly.
After that, It was a simple matter of taking out the HDD enclosure and the drive itself, detaching the ribbon cable and then trying to get it to work in my computer.
My old BIOS from '99 didn't recognize this 40GB hard drive so I had to update the BIOS. I found a forum where there are many knowledgeable, kind BIOS geeks and they helped my update the BIOS.
Now that my BIOS could recognize it, it was time to get windows to recognize it! I tried partitioning it with fdisk (to encounter only one of many fdisk limitations) and it only saw 10% of the total capacity of the drive. No go.
So I tried Seagate's DiscWizard (starter edition). It partitioned, formatted (fat32 for win98 of course), and copied not only all my old files over to this new drive, but even the MBR (Master Boot Record) as well so I could easily boot to the new drive.
After blind (no tables, charts, or clues as to how to set the old hdd to secondary/slave) jumper setting the old hard disk to secondary/slave and the new one to primary/master I was ready to go.
This new drive is SO MUCH QUIETER than my old drive. Plus, it's faster as well (not to mention its 10x greater capacity).
Even when it used to be used in the PVR it wasn't much louder than any VCR I've used. So this was a great deal to be able to use a 'worthless' PVR (after switching back to DirecTV from DISHNetwork) or I lucked out on the quality of the Seagate drive!
--arcades
I just got a Tivo 2 weeks ago, actually it's a series 2 directv receiver with tivo built in.
First advantage over a VCR: no recompression of video. In a directv combo unit, the satellite bitstream is just dumped directly to the hard drive, dolby digital 5.1 and all for shows that have it. So playback looks and sounds identical to the original satellite broadcast. Try recording a movie from HBO that way with a VCR. Standalone tivo units don't work this way since they have to encode the video but all of the other advantages still apply, and the video quality will still be much better.
Also, with a VCR, try watching a recorded show from the beginning-- while you're still recording it. This is something I never even thought of until I got my new box. Say I get in at 9:30, halfway through Alias which records every week, and I can start watching it from the beginning. With my VCR I'd have to wait until 10:00 and then rewind the tape.
A couple days ago I had my TV tuned in to Tech TV for a while... I came back from some errands and saw the tail end of some cool segment on one of their shows, and I just hit "record" and it saved the entire show that it had been buffering the whole time so I was able to go back and see it from the start. Pretty sweet if you ask me.
"But the PVR manufacturers seem hell-bent on only letting you use their device if you pay their monthly fee for their "service"."
And so it goes with electricity, phone service, ISP's, cable service, etc etc etc. I only pay 4.95 a month for Tivo anyway, for that price it's definitely worth it for me. Your mileage may vary of course.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
yeah, i own a pvr - it's a hughes tivo unit with built-in directv receiver. some jerk ganked my access card tho, so i need to fetch another :P
Let's look at the potential customers for '500 "nekkid chicks" in my room right now'.
1. Bill Gates: Married.
2. Sultan of Kreplakistan: Already has 500 "nekkid chicks".
There's just no market for it at this point.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Is there a gnu/linux solution to this yet?
windows is on its way out, one computer left with windows, and that one's a dual boot. Everything else, servers, workstations, is running gnu/linux. I have a list of a few tv cards that are linux compatible, but is there any gnu/linux software that does pvr functions?
I bought the V7100 Deluxe a while back (asus?), which has built in video capability, but NO SOUND and shit picture in mini screen, in windows. I don't want to get burned again.
So how can I do what you did with gnu/linux now, or am I stuck until a good gnu/linux pvr app is written? Just not going back to windows at any cost.
Can anyone post opinions from experience on the cards mentioned below or an alternative?
Here are some suggestions for a multimedia box. One of the All in wonder cards: ($118 - $250)
http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/doSearch.hmx?bop=
Capability:--video card with accelerated 3D support. --watch TV on your linux box. --record analog video Linux support: http://gatos.sourceforge.net/
M Audio 2496 digital audio card: ( $199.97 )
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DeltaDio
--best quality audio recording
--digital audio recording
--midi
Linux Support: http://www.alsa-project.org/
Firewire card : ( $99 )
http://www.linuxmedialabs.com/product_details.p
Capability:
--record digital video
--access to some external devices such as
;kevnhvhveioeoivn eijhigvnieoeoo ...35.8 and still no post... jkfjfkjk;kjfi j09ik jkd kdfjkf fakf nfjia; akfoiowjir;ffnnnfjf knfnakv kafijnkfkf skjfoifnanjhrfn skjffaifi;nfv;wenf kfnknfksnkn sakdfjijafikf jkaf kdfjkfnakrjfkafjjia;;fafirfhuhfba afurf... 37.6 and still no post... kdfjkfnkwrjfknknkrnf;afkjfkvnkv vkrvknvnkevkrioivnnienvkkvvmnkjvivije;rvknejn vnaejvns;jvnjfgjvieornvnfv dfknvasergvievndksnfk fndknvnvi knvkshfjvneornvfdnsjnv evs;vnirevnergff
digital video cameras, digital
scanners and cameras, hard disks which use the
ieee1394 standard Linux
Support: http://www.linux1394.org/
I can vouch for each of these solutions as they are working for me right now.
Software which should be specially compiled to work (which does not come in an off the shelf distribution right now):
Audio:
ardour + jack multitrack editing
ecasound (ecapedal)
LADSPA plugins
Video : Kino (dvgrab)
Coriander
mplayer (recompiled for X accelerations)
avview (for tv viewing)
Graphics:
Gimp + Panorama Tools
I know all the items above aren't pvr specific, only some are, but I included them so that you can understand the target of the email.
If I set up my linux box to perform as a pvr, I would also set it up to watch tv, music, etc., so the above are relevant to a combo box.
I know the pvr/tivo issue was covered previously on slashdot, but comments linux related were sparse. If you know of any specific stories, can you include a link or search terms, I have no luck finding things in old slashdot articles.
TIA
Using gnu/linux and loving it.
btw, the above list is mangled a bit. I can't get the li tag to work, and because of all the line breaks, I'm getting a lameness filter that says "too few characters per line, so this last paragraph is going to run on a bit because the non-human parsing of the posts hasn't reached a level of sophistication needed to be able to accept my post if you understand what I'm saying then you understand why this paragraph is one long run-on sentence. Please accept my apologies. Thanks again. Wow, checked again, and still too few characters per line. So I'm going to need to let this paragraph run on some more, and hopefully the damn filter will finally let the post happen. What do you think? Should I check it now? ok, let's try. No dice. Still need to add more characters per line, need to get the average up. At least after this punishment, I'll know how many characters per line are needed. Up to 28.1 so far. Just checked again and 29.9, still no post allowed. Maybe 30 is the magic threshold? Let's check. Damn. 30.8 and still no post. I know repeat characters are another lame filter but I'm about to incinerate my keyboard, so let me check...32.2 and now time to start key repeating...please ignore the next half dozen lines...owifj nioav n ijakv vnij ijvi jiajer ijijver ijamvk'gj9guj fk jiav rkvj ajvvk erkv eriva jvkhih ev ivb vbevbe ik ebvevbio[vb bskvijvsk trekbijb 'sjgiejgskgnig sigvbkjgksnkngk;gnekr;ne ekv ekgj vkdf vkfg v;ergiveiirgjeng
May this damn filter burn in eternal hell.
Happy fucking new year.
Before using an IBM drive for storing important data, or for pvr applications or for you favorite videos/music, be sure you understand the consequences of using IBM drives, and understand the rma and power on issues as well.
I suggest you read ALL the posts if you have one of the IBM drives, are thinking of buying IBM, or don't know what is in your box. After you read the posts, I suggest you back up immediately to non-IBM drives.
Good luck
3 links above to three different articles on same site.
If my VCR broke down I'd get a TiVO. Untill then I have a nice functional VCR.
So for me all I want is a glorified VCR and I have a VCR so no biggy untill it wears out.
I see no significant issues with PVRs. But for my money buying a new TiVO would be like buying a new VCR.
I don't actually exist.
And no I'm not American.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
If OS politics keeps you from doing things you want to do, but can't (but could with Windows), then Windows has already won. HA HA!
It's all a queston of price. If the price is a million bucks, there aren't to many takers. If the price is a buck, the market is pretty much infinite. That's the supply-demand curve. Besides, you can sell anything for a buck. One guy, as a joke, bet that he could sell dog shit, so he placed an ad in the local paper offering "organic manure" (as if there's any other kind) for $10.00. He figured he might get one or two responses, and thus win his bet. Instead, he got so many that it became a profitable side-line. Like the guy on W-5 last night, who has sold over 12,000 videos for cats (videos of birds, natch).
I got burned on the Asus too. Only time I ever deviated from ATI. Just so you know (which you may already), video capture sound is aways done with the sound card, so don't expect integrated sound support with your video card. Video capture uses 2 cards. The SBLive Platinum is good because it has rca *inputs* which yield much better quality over identical conditions using a mini-jack ("headphone") cable [which most sound cards use].
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes
we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as possible.
-- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
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