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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.