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."

Comments

HDD noise

[mike449]

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.

Re:HDD noise

[gordyf]

New drives have varying acoustic states which can be changed with manufacturer-provided software.

IBM drives, for instance, have two modes, full-performance mode and quiet mode. Performance mode has the usual seek noise, although all modern drives are quite quiet, but quiet mode is absolutely silent. Even with my ear inches from the drive, I can't hear it seeking at all. It's eerie when you're loading windows and you can't hear your drive - makes you think it locked up. :)

You can use the "IBM Feature Tool" to manage IBM drives' acoustic management, along with monitoring drive temperature and setting power-saving modes. Maxtor drives, from what I've heard, have three modes, quiet, performance and a blend of the two.

The schemes used to reduce seek noise introduce a slight penalty to seek time, however, but in many applications seek time is not that important (such as PVRs, where high throughput is needed). Quiet mode makes defragging take noticably longer, though.

Fluid Bearings?

[deathcow]

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!

Sound proofing

[div_2n]

If the sound does become a problem, how about adding a little sound proof (dampening) enclosure around it?

Just a thought.

Never mind the PVRs

[The Bungi]

If the HDD manufacturers are thinking that's going to save them, they're in for a surprise. Hard drives (like most other PC hardware) are becoming commodities, and the market is in for a long-due consolidation. IBM is already out of the biz. In a few years (say, end of 2005) there will be just a few companies making them. How many sound card companies existed in the 90s? How many today? Ditto the video card, modem, processor (we hardly knew ya Cyrix) and so on.

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.

Re:Never mind the PVRs

[dreadlocks]

---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.---

the PVR is still a misunderstood toy now. Unfortunately, people still don't get it.

When they were clearing out the showstoppers I found one for $80 after some rebate. I was talking to my office mate across the hall about how cool they were, because he was constantly whining about missed shows (forgot to put the tape in etc). I offered to pick it up for him (to be paid back of course), but he declined. He then went and bought another VCR to juggle more tapes. I'm sorry, but at $80 (no activation), you gotta be afraid of new technology or something to avoid a deal like that! Well, it went to my brother who appreciates it.

My mother 65 and father 83 (grandparents!!) have one and love it. It was only after they saw it being used at my brother's house and how it caputured shows that they decided they had to have one. They really can be easier than a VCR to program.

Other than the setup (which I handled over the phone) they have not had any issues with it.

The PVR manufacturers should push them hard and offer a 30 day money back risk free sort of deal also. Getting them in the door is the hard part, but once they are in a home more tend to follow. I bet the growth of the industry is like the home PC market, people buying second and third machines with a small to moderate percentage being first time owners. I have 2 PVRs and 2 computers (well, I'm one data point at least)

Noise?

[Enry]

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.

-1 Flamebait

[Anonvmous Coward]

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.

Re:-1 Flamebait

[AxelTorvalds]

People like him use VCRPlus numbers. They get them off of their digital cable or out of the TV guide or the tv guide channel they plug them in and then they do the rewind shuffle and remember counters. I've seen them do it. 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. You can't argue with them, they are beyond reason and they've made their minds up regardless of continued innovation and fact. (You know the ones that think hiss and crackle add the "warmth," there are real audiophiles out there but there are also a fair number of cranks who are just luddites with money) There is something to be said for sticking with what works and enjoying it but many of us have to press onward and try to improve, even if we fall short.

I spent close to 2 years developing a PVR at my ex company. I did the platform work. (GO LINUX!) Accoustics is everything, cheaper processor to get away from fans and fluidic barings in drives are the norm. I had a maxtor drive that I couldn't tell if it was on, seriously, dead on silent all of the time. Nothing sucks more than listening to the grinding noise when a PVR disk starts to "get tired" you can hear it through walls, at one point I didn't sleep for about a week because I couldn't not hear it. It's also a very minimal problem that is getting better and better, a good new PVR is probably more quite than a VCR.

His points are valid. Nobody needs a PVR, until they see one in action. Nobody watches "that much TV" and then they see one and they're sold.

Put a DVD player in them (been done, failed, it'll get done again) and you've got a single point of access to the digital TV experience. Explain it to a layperson who likes to not watch a lot of TV and it's a gadget. At my ex-company there were tons of people who didn't understand the PVR products until they saw them. His point about saving the industry is valid also, drives are already primarily being used for media. I've got a 600GB system and I can't even dent it with my "data," start putting movies, pictures and MP3s on it and I can fill it up.

If you look at the health of Tivo and replay as companies and you know how easy it is to build a PVR (the code is simple, with digital TV, it's really pretty simple, it's moslty an excercise in cost reduction engineering) I kind of expect that PVRs may die and then come back in more favorable economic times. Tivo looks like they are getting traction and brand recog. but I have a hard time believing that Sony and Matsushita can't do it better and more cheaply if they choose to. I think that if a couple of Japanese companies put their minds to it they could simply wipe out Tivo and replay; they are hurting as it is and since the Japs aren't playing ball I'm guessing that nobody has figured out how to sell it to the masses and that's the bigger problem.

New and exciting features

[twoshortplanks]

"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."

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

Re:New and exciting features

[Zathrus]

Pausing and rewinding live TV is good example

Whatever you want to make yourself believe.

Is pausing/rewinding/ff'ing TV going to be the saving grace of mankind? Of course not. Is it a damn useful thing for watching TV? Yup.

Frankly, being able to rehear that line I missed is a nice advantage. With a single press of a button, instead of the hopeless attempts of doing the same thing with a VCR. Of course, you could argue that that's irrelevant with live TV because any shows you actually care to watch are being taped anyway. And I'd agree with you.

But what about the news or the weather? Sure, they'll repeat, or you can go get them off the net, but if you're watching TV already then going to the computer is a disconnect and an inconvienence. If you're watching TV, why on earth should you have to wait 15-30 minutes for the story to repeat if you've got rewind capability?

Of course, you don't have the ability to pause live TV. Like so much else with PVRs, it's a situation where you don't get it until you've got it.

But I presume that instead of grokking this you'll just continue snarky comments pretending that you're somehow superior to everyone else. Enjoy.

Why not stick them in DVD players?

[FyRE666]

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.

Why I haven't purchased a PVR

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.

Noise

[mgs1000]

This might be off-topic, but...

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)

VCR noise != PVR noise

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Hard drives are dead silent.

[miffo.swe]

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.

Maxtor modes... a correction...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Maxtor drives, from what I've heard, have three modes, quiet, performance and a blend of the two.

Actually, it's quiet, performance, or RMA.

Use 2.5" drives, lower rpm

[Sean Clifford]

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.

There are far more pressing problems than noise

[ThresholdRPG]

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.

Please educate yourself

[tswinzig]

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.