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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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)
No shit. The poster knew that. It's called humor, look into it!
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.
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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
Tivos are not very happy with the notion of being switched off.
I would prefer a thin client system (AV devices attached to ethernet, with built in MPEG decoder in rooms around the house and a nice server in the closet hosting the music, programs and Tivo style capture. No fans or hard disks in the rooms, centralized content distribution and plenty of scope to annoy the copyright laywers.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Since manufacturers have switched their standard warranty terms from 3 years to 1 year
agh, i'm so sick of hearing this - "back in the day", you had a 500 meg drive. in a year, there was the 1 gig drive, but you could still purchase a 500 meg drive, in two years, you might be able to find someone with a 500 meg drive in stock, and at the end of three years, the manufacturer was having trouble keeping the replacement 500 meg drives in stock. fast forward to today. the manufacturer makes a run of 250,000 120 gig drives, and cuts off the production to retool for the 200 gig drives that are slated to come out in 12 months. so say you have a 120 gb drive, and it fails at the end of two years, and you still have a 3 year warranty on it, the manufacturer now is making 380 gig drives, and the concept of making a 120 gig drive is laughable. as a result, they have to give you a new 380 gig drive at a significant loss to them. yes, they should have made a better product that should last till at least the end of the three years, but that doesn't always happen. if you had had a 1 year warranty, at least they can clean out the last of their 120 gig hard drive stock at the end of the 8th month of your ownership and replace it with a same model.
when drive size doubles every 12 months, that means size increases exponentially and at some point replacing drives with drives that are eight times larger and as a result cause you to not need to buy another drive from them when your original sized drive should have run out of space, it just becomes economical to drop the warranty down to 1 year.
moox. for a new generation.
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.
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
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
However, it's still only an 8 hour tape.
Does it automatically cycle older programs off?
Can it record by actor or director?
Can it record by description or title keyword?
VCR's simply don't have the storage capacity to keep up with PVR's. My Tivo can store 130 hours of programming, and can store as much as 300.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Solid state disks costs ~ 10 grand per gigabyte.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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
Have you tried Pinnacle's PCTV? I basically want to make sure that whatever card I get is Bt8x8 compatible so dScaler (www.dscaler.com) will work with it, and it has S-video. The package said it had PVR software but I didn't read it thoughroughly.
And no I'm not American.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
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).
Would you be satisfied with the performance of this keychain for your (likely) relatively tame performance requirements?
Even so, that still translates into a $4800 drive for my Tivo.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.