New Sony PVR/DVR and DVD Recorder

i4u writes "Sony announces in Japan a new digital recorder NDR-XR1 equipped with the 80GB hard drive and a DVD recorder. The unit features a broadband connection to retrieve a programming guide. The system can record up to 90 hours of programming on the 80GB Hard drive. Recorded shows can be directly burned on DVDs with the built-in DVD writer. This is the dream machine! Wonder if it will be available on the US market, This baby is poised to 'piss-off' Hollywood. This would be a nice alternative to the ReplayTV box. The Digital Recorder NDR-XR1 will go on sale April 12th in Japan."

Comments

Split Personality

[Lothar 0]

This baby is poised to 'piss-off' Hollywood.

Or the Sony studio execs down the hall.

Re:Split Personality

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony Japan that produces technology and American Sony music that produces music probably don't see much of each other.

Re:Split Personality

[Pii]

This was exactly what I was thinking...

It's amusing to watch a fight where in one corner, you have Megaconglomerate Sony, and in the other corner, you have Megaconglomerate Sony.

I think it's fair to say that only a company with the mighty resources of Sony could muster a fight against Sony.

But, to paraphrase Costanza, "A Sony divided against iteself cannot stand..."

Re:Split Personality

[Mnemic]

Its really nice to see Sony's Consumer Electronics area creating devices like this. Even knowing that the Sony Media group is pulling their hair out over these devices and the Piracy they supposedly cause.

ITs interesting, since I Just purchased a sony CD/MP3 Player for my car. in the Manual it indicates that the player conforms to the CD-Standard, and cannot read disks with copyright protections that do not conform to the CD-Standard.

"This Product is designed to play back dissk that conform to the Compact Disk (CD) Standard. Recently Various music disks encoded with copyright protection are marketed by some record companies. Please be aware that among those disks there are some that do not conform to the CD Standard and may not be playable by this device."

Re:Split Personality

[Drakonian]

Yeah, good point. There have been quite a few articles about this. Here is one from Wired (which wasn't the actual one I was thinking of). (Wired.com seems to be down so here is a google cache.)

Re:Split Personality

[jwinter1]

Abe Lincoln in his address upon receiving the nomination of the Republican party, 1858.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifty year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crises shall have been reached and passed.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Lincoln was quoting the Bible, specifically Matthew 12:25.
'And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand'.

But that's a great Costanza quote.

Re:Split Personality

[Eraser_]

Wired actually had on article on this not so far back when they were discussing the demise of the Music Industry. (Wired hath spoken, and so it shall be done. Even if the magazine is degrading.) Sony Electronics has to deal with Sony Music and Sony Pictures. Do you "drive your Sony to the Sony to pick up more Sony?"

Re:Split Personality

[Quino]

On a related note, Sony DVD players (well, all in one home theater boxes, which I've been looking at for the past two years or so) used to not play CDR/CDRWs/MP3s etc. I assumed it was because Sony was also a Music / Movie distributor /producer / whatnot and didn't want to encourage copying of its own content (I had to return the Sony unit when I realized it wouldn't let me play anything I'd burned myself, even music CDs. I looked, and at the time _all_ the Sony models at Fry's were this way). Two or three weeks ago I saw the Sony units (they're usually really good looking and I covet!), this time promimently advertising the fact that they could play CDR/CDRW/MP3s/etc (too bad, this came too late for me since I like their units).

Maybe hardware is really just more important to Sony than the other divisions?

Re:Split Personality

[mbogosian]

[I]n one corner, you have Megaconglomerate Sony, and in the other corner, you have Megaconglomerate Sony.

In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it's the other way around.

Re:Split Personality

[nessus42]

Sony CD Players have been able to play CD-R's, and some even CD-RW's, for quite some time, so I don't think they have been going out of their way to prevent you from playing anything you have burned yourself.

DVD players have traditionally not played CD-R's, because the lasers in them are not compatible with CD-R's. (Strangely, they typically can play CD-RW's.) In order to allow them to play CD-R's, they needed to add a second laser, which was more expensive. If Sony DVD players didn't play CD-R's, it was probably, like for most DVD players, just a cost saving measure.

|>oug

DVD Recording

[HogGeek]

I'm truly suprised that someone hasn't come up with a hack like this for TIVO...

Or have I missed something?

Re:DVD Recording

[HogGeek]

I did miss something...

Here is a informative link on using a dvd-writer with your TIVO...

Re:DVD Recording

[shadowj]

Tivo has a history of supporting reasonable hacks, and as a result the hack forums (such as Tivo Underground) generally support Tivo. Most of the forums strictly forbid discussions that revolve around attempts to copy Tivo content to removable media.

Re:DVD Recording

[phillymjs]

It's indeed possible to make DVDs from TiVo recordings. I recently spent a weekend putting Ethernet (and a few other necessary hacks to make extraction possible) in my Series 1 and working out how to pull the shows off, get them into iMovie, edit out the commercials, and then burn to a disc with iDVD. As it stands now, I've got a full written page of steps to follow that I'm still trying to streamline and improve.

So to answer your question, yes, it's doable, but it's currently a tedious and ugly process-- and for that you can thank the greedy, ligitious bastards of the *AAs... for were it not for TiVo, Inc's fear of being sued into oblivion by aforementioned bastards, we'd be able to mount the TiVo drive as a network volume and pull the shows off in an editable format, right out of the box.

~Philly

Re:DVD Recording

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, they don't allow you to talk about extracting the video off digitally. But you can EASILY attach a dvd-recorder to the analog outs, just like a vcr and record your shows to a dvd-recorder the same way you record to a vcr. Manyy people do this.

Re:DVD Recording

[Anonymous Coward]

See this open source project to do just that with your TiVo: http://dvd-create.sourceforge.net/tystudio/index.s html

Re:DVD Recording

[Zathrus]

It's worth noting that this will not work on Series2 TiVo's (which is all that's been sold for well over a year now). The S2 TiVo's are locked down much tighter (at least with current software) and haven't been hacked completely. Yet. Last I read the hacking was progressing, but it's going to involve replacing the BIOS - in most cases physically by desoldering the old one and soldering in a new one.

You can still get a S1 TiVo on eBay if that's what you want. But you won't get any future software upgrades (S1 are not getting 4.0, due out any day), new features (no HMO - although most (but not all) of its features can be hacked in to one extent or another), and wow are they slow. If you're really, really into hacking the boxes and that's what makes you happy then I'd advise a S1 TiVo. If you just want things to work, get an S2.

Re:DVD Recording

[Anonymous Coward]

post a link for your text

Re:DVD Recording

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, Sony can keep their DVD recorder PVRs that will probably be DRM crippled. All I want is someone to make a damn hardware mpeg2 encoder card with open source Linux drivers. Is that too much to ask!? I want to build a PVR and the only thing keeping me from using a nice mini-itx case and low power Via Eden CPU is the fact that it can't keep up with encoding mpeg2 realtime while doing anything else. If we had a nice affordable mpeg2 encoder card we could use a real low power desktop box with no active cooling and an external power supply brick like many of the mini-itx cases have.

Oh, and before you guys say to just get a TiVo, I'm sorry, but TiVos are severely lacking. If you want everything to be a hack and an add-on then fine. Want Ethernet? Hack (yes, adding a usb dongle and setting some secret area code is a hack if it's not in the setup docs). Want mp3 streaming? Pay $99 extra. Want picture viewing? Pay $99 extra. Want to play DVDs or DivX movies? Sorry, no option. Want to browse the web? Sorry, but no. Want to stream movies to other TiVos? Sorry, no option (yet). Want to schedule movies from work on your home machine? Sorry, no option yet and it'll be extra.

I was *this* close to getting a ReplayTV that satisfied most of what I needed for no extra cost and now they're going out of business. So the only real option left is to build my own PVR and I can have it do whatever I want. Again though, to do it with anything less than an egg-frying AMD Athlon XP 2400+ chip and a massive heatsink and fans I need a decent hardware encoder card. Why can TiVo be based on Linux and support mpeg2 encoding in hardware but nobody will release a generic third party card for other linux users? It's a fucking conspiracy! All I want to do is record Seinfeld for crying out loud!!! DAMN YOU TIVO!

Re:DVD Recording

[buck_wild]

If all you want to do is record Seinfeld, then break down and use a cheap Windows box.

Re:DVD Recording

[phillymjs]

Ok, you asked, so here is what I've got so far:
----------
Creating DVDs from TiVo Series 1 Recordings on the Mac
I spent the better part of a weekend trying to burn a DVD containing shows I recorded on my TiVo, after extracting them from the TiVo and editing out the cruft with iMovie. As it turned out, the easy part was getting the TiVo networked so I could pull the video out of it with my Mac. The hard part was getting it into a format that I could easily edit, once it was sitting on my Mac's hard drive. After much trial, error, and cursing, I have written the procedure down for my own future reference. I decided to share it with other Mac users who also may want to archive their TiVo recordings to DVD.

These instructions assume the following:
You have a Series 1 TiVo with Ethernet, telnet and ftp capability.
The TiVo also has TiVoWeb installed on it, and has been modified by following the procedures here.
Your Mac has QuickTime Pro 6 ($29) and the QuickTime MPEG2 Component ($19), both available from Apple.

(Steps 1 through 3 originally by Alexander Fajkowski, and are just included here for completeness)

1. Using the modified TiVoWeb page at <http://your.tivo.ip.address/ui/nowshowing>, find and note the FSIDs of the recording you want to retrieve.

2. Retrieve the recording from the TiVo:
a. Open two Terminal windows (Window 1, Mac. Window 2, TiVo.)
b. Window 1: cd /directory_where_you_keep_nc
c. Window 1: ./nc -l -p 1200 > /desired_directory_path/desired_filename.ty (Don't hit Enter yet)
d. Window 2: Telnet to TiVo
e. Window 2: cd /directory_where_you_keep_sendstream
f. Window 2: ./sendstream -s FSID1 [FSID2] [...] | ./nc -n -w 5 your.mac.ip.address 1200 (Don't hit Enter yet)
g. Hit Enter in Window 1, then Window 2. This starts the Mac listening for the stream, and the TiVo sending the stream.

3. Once file has been retrieved, convert it to MPEG2:
a. Window 1: ./tyc -s < /desired_directory_path/desired_filename.ty > /desired_directory_path/desired_filename.mpg
4. Separate the MPEG2 file into separate audio and video files with BBDemux or your preferred demultiplexing utility.

5. Convert the audio file to AIFF format with SoundApp or your preferred sound conversion utility.

6. Open the MPEG video track and the AIFF audio track in QuickTime Player, in separate windows.

7. Do a "Select All" and a "Copy" on the audio track.

8. Make sure there is no selection in the video track, and make sure the playhead/insertion point is at the very start of the movie. Then do "Add Scaled."

9. Now you should once again have a movie with sound-- the difference is, the sound will now remain in the finished product if you export to another format. Export it to DV Stream format.

10. Open the DV stream version of the movie file in QuickTime Player.

11. Divide the DV stream up into chunks iMovie can handle. NOTE: There is now an Applescript that automates this process, available here.
a. Starting at the beginning of the movie, select a segment about 4 to 5 minutes long (or slightly longer, but they must be 2GB for use in iMovie)
b. Cut the segment, open a new QuickTime window and paste the segment into it.
c. Save it as a self-contained (DV stream) movie, and stick a number in the filename so you know how to reorder the segments in iMovie.
d. Repeat as necessary until you have divided the whole movie up into DV video segments 5 minutes long.

12. Open iMovie, create a new project, and drag and drop the collection of segments on the clip shelf

Re:DVD Recording

[nessus42]

To copy stuff from a TiVo to DVD just get a Panasonic DVD Recorder, such as the DMR-E50. You can find them for $400, including shipping. Sure, you have to go through an analog step. BFD.

|>oug

Need a better Babelfish...

[TopShelf]

Too bad the Sony links are in Japanese!

Re:Need a better Babelfish...

[TopShelf]

Oops! Been a while since I used it... here's a translation of the release:

The SONY marketing corporation, hard disk drive (the or less HDD) with the digital recorder ' NDR-XR1 which loads the DVD recorder ' and, 5.1chcDvd foam/home theater system ' NAV-E900 ' of HDD built-in type ' NAV-E600 ' sells the total 3 type as a brand of the foam/home AV gateway equipment which corresponds to broadband network environment.

Both machines are defeated, by various functions due to the regular connection to broadband network and the fact that service is added, offering new AV life style to basic function of the digital recorder and the foam/home theater system.

Type name Desired retail price (classified by tax) Sale day
digital recorder ' NDR-XR1 ' 145,000 Yen April 12 day
foam/home theater system ' NAV-E900 '
foam/home theater system ' NAV-E600 ' 115,000 Yen
84,000 Yen April 26 day

digital recorder ' NDR-XR1 '

The knitting machine is the digital recorder which loads the connected function to broadband network the HDD and the DVD of the 80GB - the RW / - in addition to the R recorder.
Image such as television program maximum approximately 90 hours (the *1) it is possible in the HDD to videotape. As for the image which was videotaped in the HDD, compiling, it is possible to record to the DVD simply. In addition, if you connect to broadband network, " net program guide " empty up-to-date television program information on Internet can be procured. With the adoption of the " net program guide ", the case of program searching and video recording reservation and the program video recording with keyword the comfortable video life such as automatic title input is actualized.
It classifies image of video recording end, every folder in the HDD and marks password and can manage. Furthermore amount used of the HDD, being color classified every folder, has done the device which mass video recording program is easy to manage e.g., it is indicated. The case where in the HDD the DVD is drawn up from image of video recording end, image is divided in chapter, just favorite the scene is gathered and the play list is drawn up. It chooses the background which you like from the midst of the templet for the DVD menu of 30 types which are prepared beforehand, also it can draw up the original DVD which has the menu picture like the DVD software of marketing.
The video deck and the ic.link terminal which were connected to the external input terminal (the *2) taking in to the HDD, it compiles also the DV image of the handy cam which is connected, it can retain the image of the memory which past photographed as the original DVD. In addition, adjusting to the music which is beforehand prepared in the knitting machine, you can enjoy also the still picture which was photographed with the digital still camera of the rhinoceros bar shot and the like the memory stick slot (the *3) with loading, with sliding show.

*1: At the time of SLP mode use (1 title longest 12 hour video recordings is possible.)
*2: The ic.link terminal of the knitting machine is the " DV input terminal ".
*3: We do not correspond to the memory stick PRO.

foam/home theater system ' NAV-E900 ' ' NAV-E600 '

Both machines the HDD of the 80GB are 5.1 ch DVD foam/home theater systems which load the connected function to broadband network. Not only enjoying the image and sound of the DVD software, retaining the music CD * television program * digital photograph picture and the like in the HDD, e.g., it enjoys, you can have enough the various AV lives which center the foam/home theater system.
Choosing necessary function with standard function, and the life style which center " the function " of the foam/home theater system there is an addition function which it can purchase " in " both machines. " Standard " function playback of the DVD/CD, the FM/AM tuner, WEB perusal and the email due to Internet connection, of function acquisition of the CD number data with the Gracenote CDDBR (the *1) consists. In add

Re:Need a better Babelfish...

[kippy]

The knitting machine is the digital recorder which loads the connected function to broadband network the HDD and the DVD of the 80GB - the RW / - in addition to the R recorder.

"They're years ahead of us!" - Homer Simpson

Re:Need a better Babelfish...

[Anonymous Coward]

All those reference to foam/home worry me too. I mean they want me to put it near my other electronics?

Re:Need a better Babelfish...

[vierja]

>Oops! Been a while since I used it... here's a translation of the release:

Are you sure you have used that translator?? It looks just as plain Japanese to me :-)

Re:Need a better Babelfish...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, god forbid anyone ever actually write webpages IN THEIR NATURAL LANGUAGE!

Translation?

[cmeans]

OK...I can't read a thing on that web site. They seem to have a different word for everything :) Can anyone translate it to English or American for me?

Re:Translation?

[phrantic]

not even altavista can help you, if you run the url through you get amoung other things

The knitting machine is the digital recorder which loads the connected function to broadband network the HDD and the DVD of the 80GB - the RW

For what it is worth I can read most of this, but not to a level that I could post here, but it does seem like a cool piece of Equipment.

As to things like copyright, the Japanese are quite lax about it, or were when i was working there. It is the only place in the world where MD (Mini-Disks) really took off. If you throw in the fact that you can rent yes rent CD's in the same way as you rent Videos most other places means that it is almost expected that you copy things.

Re:Translation?

[belroth]

FYI here in the UK you can borrow CDs, DVDs and videos from the local library. Ours charges about 2.5ukp per week for a dvd, a bit less for a video and about 0.8 ukp for a cd for three weeks.
Not for copyright theft but it's a lot better than video rental shops so I treat the CD/DVD section as a try before you buy deal. It's a cheap and easy way to try new music .

Re:Translation?

[Physics Dude]

Ours charges about 2.5ukp per week for a dvd ...

In the UK, do they charge you to borrow library books as well?

Here in the USA, you can borrow CDs, DVDs, Videos and Software from the local library. They charge NOTHING. Just go in and ask for a library card.

Re:Translation?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but in our libraries here in america the music and movies suck ass. they have such crap.

Re:Translation?

[belroth]

No, book loans are free. There is a small charge to reserve a book that is on loan to someone else, and a larger fee (but still small) to get the library to order a book they do not already have - but I haven't actually tried this. Is there a limit to the number of items you can borrow at once? In my county it is 14.

I was replying to phrantics comment about CD rentals. I was assuming he was in the US and that CD rental was not allowed there - perhaps another of your stupid laws (like the DMCA). That's not meant as an anti-US comment - you have some stupid laws and so do we, RIP springs to mind rather quickly (see the sig). BTW my favourite daft US (Florida state) law is the prohibition on tethering your elephant to a parking meter,

Re:Translation?

[Physics Dude]

Yes, there are limits to how many items can be checked out at once which varies from library to library, but there are no fees for inter-library loans or holds. (There are fees for over-due items of course.)

I agree that we have many stupid laws here, but luckily the libraries are in general opposed to such laws and are generally working in the interest of patrons and the public in general. The media interests (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) seem active in trying to destroy this one bastion of intellectual freedom, but for now they are being held at bay.

Re:Translation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for copyright theft but it's a lot better than video rental shops so I treat the CD/DVD section as a try before you buy deal.

Yeah, me too. I try the DVDs by ripping them, and then don't buy them! BTW: it's 2 quid a week near me.

Media type

[mrrc00]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know which DVD standard it burns?

fp, I think.

Re:Media type

[MCMLXXVI]

DVD-R

Re:Media type

[MCMLXXVI]

Opps
DVD-R/RW

Similar to other products

[ruiner13]

I saw pioneer (i think) had a similar unit. It had a 40GB hard drive though. I'm not sure what this unit does, but the one that I saw, once you burn a recording onto DVD, it deletes it off the HD. I find that kind of annoying, but I guess they had to do that to compromise with the movie companies (only allow one copy at a time, and don't allow mass burns of the same program). I hope this one does not have tha behavior.

Re:Similar to other products

[dreamt]

Its Toshiba, Tivo and Toshiba announced it in January.

Actually, odds are, the Sony unit is a Tivo as well.

Re:Similar to other products

[iainl]

It was the Panasonic DMR-HS2, not a Pioneer, if you're still considering it.

The big difference is that the Panasonic product works like an old-fashioned VHS deck and requires you to type recording details in, rather than the Tivo's programme guide method.

So you're not paying a subscription, but you don't get the guide stuff; which is better I'll leave to you.

Re:Similar to other products

[JaxGator75]

Who cares if it deletes it??? I would much rather have the data stored on the DVD (which could be popped into any DVD-ROM, copied to the HDD and THEN mass-duplicated.

Hmmm

[jkabbe]

But isn't Sony part of Hollywood?

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article somewhere (I just forgot where the link is...sorry) that the president of Sony Japan is condemning the Sony music company of not embracing the Internet / P2P technology to promote and sell songs either in whole or one song at a time as low as $0.05USD. Sony's divided, but I'm standing with Sony Japan on this!

Bah!

[Mr Pippin]

What?! No HDTV?

Anyway, if they would allow commericial skip or some kind of minimal editing on going to DVD, I could be tempted.

Re:Bah!

[JonTurner]

>>What?! No HDTV?
Nope. At least, not in the near future.

Sony is a company with competing interests. On one hand, the personal electronics division wants to sell compelling, useful electronic devices. On the other, the studio-side of the company jealously guards its entertainment/media content. The content side holds the electronics side in check -- it knows what the market wants (HDTV TiVO, anyone?) but fears cannibalizing Sony's Content/Studio division sales.

There are internal (management) power struggles going on right now to determine which side will win. Personally, I'm betting on "neither." The infighting at Sony will continue for the forseeable future, and smaller, more nimble companies without divided loyalties will be the ones to deliver innovative products and gain market share.

Your right to DRM ends where my TV begins.

Any word if this is Tivo inside?

[cmehta1]

Sorry, but the site was in Japanese. Sony has made Tivo units before, but I am sure their contract with Tivo is probably non-exclusive for DVRs.

(FP Maybe?)

Piss Off Hollywood?

[FortKnox]

I don't know. Think about this. PVR's piss off hollywood because you FF through commercials. But, even though you WILL FF through commercials on this also, the commercials will be permantntly burned into a DVD. What sales company doesn't like the idea of permanent commercials on a DVD?

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would it piss off hollywood? vcr's do the same thing just on a crappier media

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Randolpho]

the commercials will be permantntly burned into a DVD

Until you transfer that file to your computer and slice it off with common video editing software, that is. ;)

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[yunfat]

Actually, this isn't the case. Right now, with my Tivo, I can archive stuff to a DVD recorder as I watch it on my Tivo, which means as I watch, I FF through the commercials, and thats how my video gets saved. So, in essence, its very easy to have archival copies of all your favorite shows without the garbage. You can do it now for less than that Sony machine costs. All you need is a Tivo, $199, and a refurbished DVD-recorder, about $500, and you have your "magic box" right now.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Eric P. Henus]

Yeah, Robert Cringley last article talked about the FF aspect.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[radish]

Or yank the recorded programmes from the Tivo to a PC with TurboNet, cut out the ads properly using a video editor, and then burn with your PCs DVD burner (or as I do, burn SVCD onto a CDR). Sweet :)

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[thechuckbenz]

Actually, the clumsy translation seems to say that you'll be able to mark points in a show and create chapters and playlists. Presumably you'd be able to edit out the commercials before burning. Tres cool.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[fetta]

What sales company doesn't like the idea of permanent commercials on a DVD?

Lots of companies won't like this - many commercials are time sensitive and meant to be a part of a larger ad campain. Some companies (Coca-Cola, Nike, etc) might be interested in building long-term brand awareness, but for most this is a losing proposition, especially if people FF over the commercials on the DVD.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[YrWrstNtmr]

What sales company doesn't like the idea of permanent commercials on a DVD?

Most or all of them. A commercial from 6 months ago is quite probably not relevant anymore. Different campaign, colors, price, maybe even product name.

And if a product goes horribly wrong (e.g. Firestone tires), then they DEFINATELY do not want that ad out there being seen again and again. They'd rather we forget all about that little faux pas.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Anonymous Coward]

PVR's piss off hollywood because you FF through commercials."

What do these companies really care? You've already paid them major $$$ for the box. And there is no guarantee that the box will work with your computer, or that the DVD will play anywhere else.

There are three guarantees in life:
Death, taxes, bill$.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[BrookHarty]

Why record twice, im sure dvd's players with 30 second skip will be out. :) Gotta come up with some new features to make you buy new DVD players.

And with dvd blanks being expensive, why reburn to lower quality.. Of course, if your gonna share, edited SVCD or Divx will work nicely.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Mournblade]

I'm currently in the market for a DVR, and was looking into this exact function. Haven't been able to find any info about yanking programs off the tivo, though. In fact the tivocommunity.com message boards appear to have explicit prohibition against even discussing the topic on that site. A (brief) google search hasn't turned up much yet. Any advice on where to look for HOWTOs?

Also, you mention the TurboNet card. Is the same possible using a USB network card on a series 2 tivo?

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Mournblade]

Would you supply more details about how you are doing this? I'm interested in the same thing.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[radish]

Try http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/ for info. There's not much in the way of real HOWTOs due to the illicit nature of the process, but it's pretty straightforward using TyTools.

Being in the UK (we only have series 1 units) I don't know much about the series 2, but from what I hear they're much harder to hack in general. But if you can run tivoweb on it, then you can probably run tytools.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[radish]

I only record once, on the Tivo. If there's something I want to keep, I burn it to SVCD, seeing as I don't have a DVD burner. The quality is not as good as the original of course, but IMHO it's still a lot better than VHS, and it's a whole lot cheaper than any of these integrated systems. I could also use DivX but my DVD player doesn't play that so I'd have to watch it on the PC.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Mr. McGibby]

Until you transfer that file to your computer and slice it off with common video editing software, that is. ;)

Except the whole point of this machine is *ease of use*. Record TV shows and save them to DVD. What could be easier. Now if the machine allowed to cut out commericials on the machine itself, that would be cool

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Mournblade]

Cool. Thanks for the info. I'll check it out.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[Alien Being]

I wonder if we'll start to see people sharing "edit scripts" to remove/skip the commercials from particular broadcasts.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[rifter]

Why record twice, im sure dvd's players with 30 second skip will be out. :) Gotta come up with some new features to make you buy new DVD players.

You are probably right, but honestly the whole deal of fast forwarding or skipping forward 30 seconds is just a band-aid. If you don't want to watch the commercials, you edit them out cleanly, and then you get no commercials at all. This is also a good reason to buy your favorite shows on DVD. I have seen a number of shows where the currently running show is already available on DVD, presumably partially because of this.

Re:Piss Off Hollywood?

[AKnightCowboy]

Some companies (Coca-Cola, Nike, etc) might be interested in building long-term brand awareness, but for most this is a losing proposition

Why does Coca-Cola and Nike even bother to advertise at ALL anymore? If you don't know about Coke and Nike tennis shoes then you are living in some backwoods cabin in Arkansas. We get it already for christ's sake! STOP ADVERTISING! Yes yes, Coke is the blood of Jesus and Nike is made from the leather skin of the lord. We shall consume more of these products. Just STOP ADVERTISING ALREADY!

Not quite my dream machine

[vondo]

When it can receive and record HDTV, then it will be my dream machine.

Note to self

[SpanishInquisition]

Buy one of those in 10 years for 50 bucks and laught at this.

Re:Note to self

[ryanr]

Ha, if it doesn't support x-ray writing of DVVDvD +- R/RW/RO/WO 1.5 TB Discs with Dolby 15.3 SRS and XHDTV2, it won't even be worth $50.

THIS ROCKS!

[fudgefactor7]

I would buy one of these as soon as I could provided they weren't ungodly expensive. This is a great idea, whose time has come, but the MPAA/RIAA/DMCA and god knows what else will surely get in the way. Damn those lawmakers anyways!

Oh good...

[MoeMoe]

Because New York isn't filled with enough bootleg DVD's to go around...

Sony is a Tivo licensee

[shadowj]

So is this thing based on Tivo technology, or is it something else entirely? And if it's something else, what does that say about Sony's relationship with Tivo and Tivo's future?

I own two Tivo boxes, and wouldn't give them up for anything. Unless I see something better, of course...

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[dreamt]

Well, the latest Sony US released PVRs are Tivo series 2s, and the last Japanese released PVR that was mentioned on /. a while back was Tivo, so this is probalby a Tivo as well.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[zackbar]

I imagine it's not based on tivo technology other than the fact that it's recording broadcast to disk. I don't believe Tivo patented this.

Tivo itself only makes the software, which probably isn't being used by this product.

Tivo makes their money by selling the guide to users. This product gets the guide via an internet connection. I didn't see anything that states that it gets it from a Tivo source. Since there are lots of free tv guides online, it quite possibly gets it from those.

So for all practical purposes, there is probably no Tivo technology involved. The fact that Sony makes a Tivo product as well is meaningless, since Tivo actually pays Sony for every Tivo unit Sony sells.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[Anonymous Coward]

Tivos do have the ability to do daily calls via the internet. This was unofficially supported in 3.x but will be officially supported with version 4 coming out this month. I would think that if it's based on
Tivo and they don't mention Tivo anywhere else, they wouldn't mention the guide data is from Tivo.

My point is, it could very well be Tivo-powered.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[shadowj]

I imagine it's not based on tivo technology other than the fact that it's recording broadcast to disk. I don't believe Tivo patented this.

Actually, they may have. Tivo holds 20-odd patents covering many aspects of its DVR technology... see this , this and this, for example. They've tried to enforce them, too.

And what Tivo hasn't patented, SonicBlue/Replay probably has. Granted, SonicBlue won't exist much longer, but someone is bound to buy the patent rights, and they'll probably try to enforce them.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[zackbar]

SonicBlue is exactly what I was thinking of when I suggested that the Sony pvr might not be using any of tivo's technology or patents.

I should hope that neither tivo nor sonicblue was able to patent recording tv broadcast to a hard drive. It's been done before either, IIRC.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[zackbar]

Replaytv has a guide too, can get the data from the internet, and probably isn't powered by tivo. ;)

I'm not saying it's not using tivo technology. I'm saying that it probably isn't. Why would Sony want to sell a product that requires licensing something from Tivo that they can create themselves?

Additionally, one of the tivo's flaws (imo) is that it requires a monthly fee (or a "lifetime" fee) to get the guide. Licensing tivo's technology might require that monthly fee again. This is the reason I, at least, will never own a tivo. (Yes, I know one doesn't *have* to get the subscription. But the dang software will keep trying to sell it to you. Very annoying.)

I expect Sony would much rather not involve themselves with other companies for a single product when not abolutely necessary.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[shadowj]

SonicBlue is exactly what I was thinking of when I suggested that the Sony pvr might not be using any of tivo's technology or patents.

SonicBlue and Tivo had a patent lawsuit fight a year or two ago, and the two parties settled with each other for undisclosed terms. It wouldn't at all surprise me if both companies licensed patents from each other.

I should hope that neither tivo nor sonicblue was able to patent recording tv broadcast to a hard drive. It's been done before either, IIRC.

There's a lot more to a PVR than recording video to disk!

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[zackbar]

Recording video to disk is the primary function.

Besides recording, all that's left is the playing of the disk file, retrieving the guide, displaying the guide, and setting the recording to be based on the guide. I'm not sure what else is there is.

Certainly having the software record shows that I haven't selected isn't a feature I want.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, on the flaws (imo) with the telephone is that you have to pay a monthly fee for a dialtone. This is the reason I, at least will never own a telephone.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[shadowj]

Recording video to disk is the primary function.

Yes, fine, of course it is, but that doesn't mean that all the things that go with it (software, guides, UI, etc) aren't important. Without them you don't have a product, and of course they're just as patentable as the machine's primary function. Just as they would with the primary function, a competitor will have to either create alternate, non-infringing versions of them, or they'll have to licence them from Tivo (or fight the patents).

In any case, while I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that at least one of Tivo's patents covers the whole idea of a PVR... or at least one broad set of implementations.

Certainly having the software record shows that I haven't selected isn't a feature I want.

So turn it off. It's not like it's compulsory.

Or are you referring to the occasional marketing message? Those messages are stored in a reserved area and don't cut into the advertised capacity of the machine... and they're unobtrusive enough (a single line of text at the bottom of the main menu) to ignore if you're not interested.

Re:Sony is a Tivo licensee

[zackbar]

Software, guides, ui, etc.

Seems to me that "software" is basically the user interface, the storing of the program, the displaying of the program, and the guide.

The guide is fluff. It's not necessary to the product anymore than it's necessary to a vcr. Admittedly, it would be a good feature, but I don't believe tivo is the only company that could write it. In fact, tivo gpl'd their code anyway, iirc.

Aside from that, all that's left, as I said before, is the recording and displaying of the program. The user interface sure doesn't have to be licensed from tivo.

The closest patent of tivo's I can think of for your point is the one where the user can record the current show while pausing, fast forwarding, and rewinding. I believe Tivo settled out of court with sonicblue, and it hasn't gone to court. I don't believe tivo would have allowed sonicblue to exist if they owned the general idea of a pvr.

Certainly having the software record shows that I haven't selected isn't a feature I want.

So turn it off. It's not like it's compulsory.

You missed the point. My point was that the basic pvr functionality doesn't have to require fluff like the feature I mentioned above. Also, the dang thing will continue trying to sell you the guide if you haven't already purchased it.

So far, you haven't shown me that There's a lot more to a PVR than recording video to disk!

From your post, you seem to be a tivo fan. I won't try to disuade you. More power to you. A friend of mine at work loves his units. However, I personally won't buy a product that advertises to sell services to me that I already told them I didn't want, lets the company know what I'm watching or where I pause, and switches away from what I'm watching to record a program that's being pushed by the company. All of these things are tivo.

Hmmm... new DVD player or new car?

[Txiasaeia]

I think I'll wait until the price comes down to below, say, $5000 CDN. Oh, wait, can I buy the entire X-Files series with that much cash, a bigger TV, surround sound, and a whole freaking truckload of popcorn?

Maybe I'll pass. It's nice tech, but who has the cash to drop on the latest technology like this? (Bill Gates, plz STFU)

Re:Hmmm... new DVD player or new car?

[Txiasaeia]

Just performed the price conversion... it's actually about $1700 CDN, or $1200 USD. *Still* cheaper to go nuts on X-Files and a new TV, at least...

Re:Hmmm... new DVD player or new car?

[buck_wild]

I dunno about that. I priced new (cheap) 36 inch TVs at over $700, and good ones at $1000+.

Re:Hmmm... new DVD player or new car?

[really?]

Don't let the MSRP fool you. It will be awailable for far less in Akihabara ... check out www.kakaku.com.

Nifty...

[japhar81]

Its nothing that can't be done with a high-end PC now (including HDTV, yum), but at the right price, thats $600 for those of you who need a number, it ought to sell very well. Why $600? Take a cheapo mini-ATX barebones box ($400 at a trade show) add a DVD/RW or whatever your flavor is ($200-$250 at a trade show) and you have the same thing. At least for us geeks, thats the case. But more and more 'common folk' seem to be realizing the same cost of parts vs. cost of the unit deal.

Re:Nifty...

[nhorton]

The MS Media Center PC's do a pretty good job of this out of the box, plus they will let you play back all sorts of other formats that this thing won't.

Re:Nifty...

[Anita Coney]

Yeah, and those MS Media Center PCs cost about $2000 each!!! What a waste.

Re:Nifty...

[RedX]

Barebones typically doesn't include a video card that supports TV-out. You're also missing MPEG2 encoding hardware and/or video-capturing hardware as well as any hardware to support HDTV. You also didn't include costs of peripherals such as remote control devices, etc.

Re:Nifty...

[Lumpy]

Ok let's step into relaity.

freevo is the lowest processor/ram hungry of all the free-pvr projects.

cheapest Computer that can do it as good as a Tivo is a Athalon 1800+ with 256 meg of ram. The mobo,processor,fan,case,powersupply in super cheap form (I.E. really crappy and ugly case) is around $400.00 now you need a video card that can handle tv out correctly... $50.00-$100.00 WinTV-D card to do the HDTV you mention $200.00 Pioneer A05 (anything else is utter crap for DVD burning) $250.00 Hard drive $150.00 - $300.00 depending on size/speed/quality.

now how about an IR remote? $30.00 for a ir reciever or build it yourself for $15.00 in parts and a good knowlege of electronics.

$1000.00 is the actual REAL price for a working freevo box done in economy mode. More if you buy a real AV case that looks like a stereo component.. MythTV requires a XP2600+ to do the same job because it requires X and really is no competition for freevo right now.

so you are off by a large amount because you left out most of the hardware needed. and you STILL need to hack together lots of pre-alpha software to get it to work.

Re:Nifty...

[Anonymous Coward]

> MythTV requires a XP2600+ to do the same job because it requires X and really is no competition for freevo right now

You're right! Because MythTV can pause live TV and Freevo can't!

BTW, I think your figures are wrong. I've got a 1.2 Ghz athlon and it has plenty of power to watch live tv, pause, record, etc. using MythTV. An 1800XP+ can record two streams at once.

Having never used Freevo, why does their website say "Most graphics boards are supported in either X11 or Xv mode" if you don't need X?

Re:Nifty...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read beyond the google summary and you'll see that it uses SDL and can easily use the Framebuffer console by any video card that can use framebuffer.

Sorry, but even the MythTV forums state you need GOBS of power for myth tv. everyone is reccomending the 2600+ for myth tv for a good user expierience.

if the myth tv people are saying it, then it must be true.

Re:Nifty...

[kjeldahl]

Exactly what would you recommend to get decent video capture and real-time encoding, if possible? I built my linux based PVR and even upgraded to a brand new motherboard and processor (1.5 GHz AMD) to see if that would improve video capture. I still only got 15-20 frames per second (because it was captured uncompressed I guess), and capturing sound worked poorly or not at all. Encoding "off-line" (after capture) is fine, but as long as capture was both poor quality and with serious frame dropping, building a linux-based PVR using off-the-shelf components is not something I would recommend.

I also had issues with LIRC. I used the remote control that came with my TV card (a BT based card) and set it up with LIRC. Worked fine - mostly. Unfortunately, LIRC also picked up signals from the other remote controls, and *sometimes* those signals lead to LIRC simply freezing. Restarting the LIRC client was the only solution to get it working again.

Don't get me wrong - it is not that I would not like a "do-it-myself-PVR" running linux, but without proper capture and with the problems with LIRC/remote controls interference, it was very hard to make it easy to use. I set it up so that my girlfriend could use it to play music (mp3/CDs) and watch videos and had to teach her to reboot the box when things froze up and I was not around.

And before people tell me to buy a Tivo - they are not available where I live (Norway), so that is not an option (and the program guide would probably not be supported either, which means it would not be very useful).

So please tell me I am wrong and that everybody else is getting 25-30 frames captured with nice video and sound (preferrably with real-time encoding or an embedded encoding unit before data is streamed to disk to avoid frame skipping) and I might consider giving it another try.

If not, I will wait for more hardware. Either a box that works in my country (Norway), or one that can be hacked to work (scraping programming from web sites), or better hardware to roll my own (a quite mini-itx board with embedded mpeg encoding would be a very nice start).

Re:Nifty...

[Anonymous Coward]

you got dma transfers enabled on your hd-discs?

play around with different codecs too.

i was able to catch to divx on reasonable quality on 1ghz amd, and i know one friend who is using ~1.3ghz celeron

also don't go for stupid resolutions(320*240 or something that has right ratio for you but don't even think about higher resos).

one thing that you could use to drastically drop the cpu usage is to get a digi-tv card.(i don't know if norway has digi-tv yet, finland does)

Re:Nifty...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very admirable that you decided to go with Linux for your PVR, but the technology was still way to immature for me.

I needed hardware MPEG encoding, so that I can get a decent frame rate capture, although I'm not interested in HDTV. I had a couple of options, the PVR 250/350 or the Creative DVCR. The DVCR seemed more TV centric, so I got that.

I needed hardware MPEG decoding, so I got a cheapo ATI RADEON 7000 with TV out.

Why did I want all this hardware MPEG encoding and decoding? So that I could run a crappy 1Ghz CPU without a fan resulting in a silent black box HTPC.

Using myHTPC for the back end and Digiguide for the EPG I have an HTPC that my wife is happy to use. In fact, neither of us ever use the VCR or the TV standalone anymore.

Now I'm waiting for HDTV to reach a reasonable price so that I can browse the web from the living room couch at 1900x1200 resolution, a regular TV sucks for regular PC output.

Re:Nifty...

[msimm]

Real nerds should have most of the parts lying around! (jk)

$54 Geforce 4 mx
$29 5.1 Sound
$99 Clear pc case
$50 Cordless keyboard with built in mouse
$99 120 Gig hard drive
$219 DVD Burner
$43 512 Meg memory
$137 1800 XP AMD / Soyo Dragon MB combo
$25 Zalman cpu cooler
$69 Zalman quiet power supply
$74 +/- Various Case Lighting
$16 Fan controller (slow down!)
$0 OS
$0 Multimedia software

$914!

Coolness factor..priceless.

Plus, on the bright side after your wife/lover/puppy figures out how much this all cost you can remind them that its totally upgradable! Plus you can install next years features an 1/3 the cost (intead of throwing it away)!

Re:Nifty...

[MojoRilla]

The problem with both MythTV and Freevo is that they can't do hardware MPEG compression, due to there not being linux drivers for MPEG cards available. Once linux drivers become available (hopefully for an MPEG 4 card), you could probably use a 400 mHz pc (TiVO series 1 ran on a 57 mhz power pc).

Re:Nifty...

[AKnightCowboy]

So please tell me I am wrong and that everybody else is getting 25-30 frames captured with nice video and sound (preferrably with real-time encoding or an embedded encoding unit before data is streamed to disk to avoid frame skipping) and I might consider giving it another try.

I don't know about Linux, but I'm just using the crappy Avermedia software that came with my $50 capture/tuner card and I can record mpeg-2 video on the fly with my AMD Athlon 1.4GHz box using less than 50% of the cpu time under Windows2000. It doesn't have any hardware encoding support so it's all software. I can also playback another movie at the same time I'm recording without a problem. If you can't do this then perhaps you don't have DMA set on your hard drive? Did you check it using hdparm -t? Many times it defaults to PIO mode in which case you'd be using tons of processor time and get only 5MB/sec instead of 45MB/sec. Maybe not your problem, but something to check.

Now, my problem is, the avermedia software sucks rocks and locks up from time to time, misses scheduled recordings, and has no program guide support. It's just a digital VCR not a PVR. I'd LOVE to use the Via Eden boards with a nice silent set-top box style case as a PVR if there was a hardware mpeg encoder that worked with Linux!!

Re:Nifty...

[foom]

First, w.r.t the CPU requirements of MythTV: that is in no way true. MythTV runs *perfectly fine* recording and playing back simultaneously (aka Live TV) a 480x480 stream on a 1Ghz Athlon! Yes, *1*GHz. With about 10% CPU left over. (In case you are wondering it was an Athlon 1600+ underclocked to 100Mhz bus speed)

I just built myself a new MythTV box with the following hardware:
Shuttle SK41G case+MB+PSU - $250
120GB Maxtor Fluid Dynamic Bearings 5400RPM HD - $130
WinTV dbx model 401 card - $100
Athlon 1800+ (NOTE I did *not* need to get this fast a processor, but I wanted speed left over for other things too) - $60
512MB DDR ram: $70
New remote control: $20
Total: $630

Compare this to the price of a TiVo. From Amazon.com: TiVo Series2 80 Hour Digital Video Recorder - $399 - $50 rebate = $350. (I couldn't find the price of a 120 hour TiVo, so I'll give TiVo a little advantage)

Okay, now add the lifetime service fee of $299. Now you're up to $650. Wow look, all of a suddenmy box is cheaper! Or maybe you just want to add two years of service. Well then $12.95/month * 24 months of service fee - oops that's more than the lifetime fee!

But guess what: my box can also play video games. I can get TV shows OFF of it onto other media. It can be a webserver, file server, whatever else I want it to be. It stores my MP3s and can play them. Guess which one's a better deal?

Seriously, before knocking MythTV, learn what you're talking about. Your claim of needing a Athlon XP2600+ is probably for having a *DUAL* tuner system. That is, encoding and decoding TWO MPEG4 streams simultaneously (for Picture in Picture, or just for recording one show while watching/pausing/fastforwarding another).

Re:Nifty...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can capture in lores (352x288) to mpeg4 (with ffmpeg) or mjpeg (with xawtv) on my duron700 in 25fps. I got a cheap (~50) FlyVideo3000, with no hardware-encoding. Higher resolutions quickly overwhelm my system though.

Im suspicious

[Loosewire]

All sony owned record labels are pushing for copy protection , why would sony want to make a machine which helped piracy (ok not music piracy but they all want to push for DRM , watermarking, etc etc)
*shifty eyes*

Re:Im suspicious

[incrustwetrust]

if i'm correct, sony is seperated into different departments that really don't have much to do with each other.

in fact, i think i remember a story not so long ago about the music part of sony bitching towards the electronics.

Re:Im suspicious

[Loosewire]

im glad people like you are around to make everything seem better - thanks :)

Re:Im suspicious

[Surreal_Streaker]

All sony owned record labels are pushing for copy protection , why would sony want to make a machine which helped piracy

Because they think they can make more selling electronics than they think they will loose from theit movie / music business.

Re:Im suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably for the same reason Sony makes DVD burners, CD burners, tape recorders, recordable media, ...

PAL

[salamander_sjv]

Anyone know if this thing comes in PAL format?

Re:PAL

[Anonymous Coward]

I do. And no it doesn't, not until February 2004 according to the web site.

Re:PAL

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean the 'personal ass licker' format?

Compression...

[DarkBlackFox]

Run the page through babelfish.altavista.com. Not a perfect translation but enough to get the jist. Looks like it's only capable of 90 hours on it's lowest quality setting. The highest results in 15 hours. Gee.. wonder what type of compression it's using... could it be MPEG-2? Must be if it's designed to burn DVD. How much more could it fit if divx were used? It is kind of nice though, with an 80 gig hard drive, it must keep the price relatively low... Aside from the dvd burner, all other features are standard on most PVRs. The variable bit rate encoding is rather nice, but again, what can this do that my computer (with a dvd burner and all in wonder 9700) can't?

Re:Compression...

[Anonymous Coward]

but again, what can this do that my computer (with a dvd burner and all in wonder 9700) can't?

Well, it can give some cred with the (potential, in your case) girls or something that has fully integrated components, so you don't have to worry about patching, re-installing and configuring. So that you can enjoy the unit.

Re:Compression...

[teeker]

The variable bit rate encoding is rather nice, but again, what can this do that my computer (with a dvd burner and all in wonder 9700) can't?

1. Sit nicely (and quietly) in your tv stand/entertainment center.
2. Be used by somebody other than a CS graduate
3. Work properly out of the box
4. Remote control without buying extra hardware and programming
5. Be used without having a monitor/keyboard/mouse attached.

Consumers will simply not put up with those inconveniences for something like this. Sometimes, it's worth spending $$ for. Maybe not the price of a small car, but something...hooking up a real PC to your entertainment center is still for serious geeks...

Re:Compression...

[radish]

Just as a FYI - Tivo uses VBR & MPEG-2 as well, and gets ~12hours on a 40gb disk in best quality. This thing must be doing it at pretty damn high quality...

Re:Compression...

[DarkBlackFox]

Is that not essentially what this unit is? A fully integrated PC with a specialized OS designed for video capture and burning? The PC Industry is trying to capitolize on those demands by issuing "Media Center" PCs designed for that exact purpose, integrating PVR functionality while maintaining a complete PC environment. That's exactly the reasoning behind Windows XP Media Center Edition. Aside from which, a bundled Media Center PC from any major brand will run roughly half the price of this new stand alone unit. Granted, my PC is a bit more than that, but the out-of-box units put out by big brands could easily serve an equally functional product to the general public.

Sony Tivo

[thehun101]

Sony already makes a DVR built with Tivo technology. I imagine they will still use Tivo technology for a US release of the new product.

Adding a DVD burner is definitely a cool addition.

Re:Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

No slop monkey, I beat you all.

I am the FIST PORTS KING OF DA world. You all are full ov congevelity. I am not. Therefore, I will eat you like the salad you are.

Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[iainl]

"DMR-HS2
Progressive-Scan DVD Video Recorder with 40GB Hard Disk & Time Slip Playback records to DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs
MSRP $999.95 "

Straight from the relevant page of the Panasonic site (which I'm having problems giving a direct link to, sorry).

The drive is only 40Gb in this case, but thats easily enough if you're backing up to DVD regularly.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[easyfrag]

Thanks for that. Link is
here.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[cdipierr]

I don't understand the Panasonic devices. Why don't they have a coaxial cable input and a tuner? If they're meant to replace a VCR, then they need tuning capability.

At around $300-$400 I would gladly trade a VCR for a DVD-R solution (no HD needed as I have TiVo as my primary recording source), but as they are now they only work as archival devices instead of true replacements.

Boo.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, they do. I have a DMR-E30 that has the features you mentioned. Timeslip recording, too! If only it had TiVo service... I don't know why the coax input and tuner aren't listed, but the Panasonic website has always been light on the capabilities of their products.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh. I entered a Bold tag when I meant to add a line-break tag. Apologies for the formatting.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[cdipierr]

Ah yes, so it seems. I discovered this after posting. Sorry about that...the Panasonic site doesn't make it clear, and the BestBuy site doesn't show the entire back image and thus cuts off the coax input. Whoops.

But why don't they support DVD-RW?

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[nexthec]

Because DVD+RW is better, or maybe is DVD-RW, I dnot know ;-> It basically comes down to the fact that the there are to many fucking DVD standards.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[Sleuth]

I suspect they only support the DVD-RAM and DVD-R formats because that's all that was available in combo drives when these units where released. They use DVD-RAM kind of like extra HD space, writing and erasing at will. The DVD-R's can be finalized to act like DVD-ROM's for other people to view. It's a rather nice unit, and can be had for around $700 if you shop around.

Re:Why wait, when Panasonic are already there?

[feeii]

Sony is never the market leader in the DVR arena. Never been to the states, but in japan, Panasonic, Toshiba and Pioneer dominates ~80% of the DVR market. And after all the market in japan is the most competitive in DVR... In fact Panasonic just released a new series of DVR codenamed "DIGA" in Japan. The series range from the low-end of a DVR without HDD(EM50) to one with a whopping(EM90) 160G. Similar models exists under Pioneer and Toshiba make. I believe the next gen model to HS2 is just around the corner. check out the DIGA site.[in japanese] http://panasonic.jp/dvd/recorder/diga/index.html

Remember Minidisc players

[Confused]

Or rather, the product will be crippled to hell by DRM systems to be nearly impossible to use properly.

This has been done before with the NetMD minidisc players, which don't allow to extract the pieces recorded with the microphone.

I wouldn't be surprices, if those burned DVD can only be played back on the same unit, that DVD commercial DVD can't be copied or some other copyright protection idiocy.

Yes, this may actually be "it".

[mbourgon]

This is a noticeable improvement on the 2nd generation of DVD-recorders, along with the Toshiba RD-X3. First generation was a DVD-Recorder. Pure and simple. They're still coming out, should be under $500 this summer. The second generation, which is still coming out, includes a Hard Drive, which IMHO is necessary. While the DVD-RAM can let you edit and the like, it's far from a DVD-R.

I'm using the Panasonic DMR-HS2, which has a 40 gig drive. Very nice, but programming it's a pain - either manually program it or use VCRPlus+ codes. A TiVo-like program guide would be the cat's meow. The catch is that for $1000+, should it come with a "lifetime subscription" ala ReplayTV, or are you going to have to pay each month? This is not a trivial issue - the boards dedicated to these DVD-Recorders mention it frequently.

Three other things:
1) Cable Blaster - if you have a cable box, you have to program your box to change channels, and the DVD-Recorder to record. A Cable Blaster/Cable Mouse (i.e. something to change channels) really is a necessity.
2) CPRM is supported on these things. The television transmission can have a "No Copy" bit set, and these DVD-Recorders will obey. So, for now, MythTV may still be superior.
3) How long before DVD-R drives become cheap enough for them to be included in some kind of Tivo? A big reason for owning these is to make it _easy_ to burn to DVD. Yes, you can use stuff like DVArchive to download to your computer. Then you transcode. Then burn to DVD. This is all one step, and the reason I have one - it's simple. Granted, I'd rather make SVCDs of some of them, rather than a DVD, but I'll cope.

Insanity of advertising.

[gosand]

What sales company doesn't like the idea of permanent commercials on a DVD?

The same kind who shut down websites for containing video clips of commercials.

It was one of the dumbest things I have ever heard, when a few years ago a website (can't remember the name) was SHUT DOWN for containing copyrighted material. It was a website of funny/interesting/nostalgic commercials. How stupid could advertisers be, to shut down a website that did their job for them. It's all about control. Insanity.

Re:Insanity of advertising.

[easyfrag]

I believe the site you refer to was Adcritic, and it is sadly missed.

I do understand why advertisers didn't rescue it, effective advertising doesn't need to entertain you, it needs to pound something into your skull over and over again (I bet you are not entertained by the never ending Subway Jared ads but I bet you know his story and now equate Subway with healthier food). A lot of the ads on Adcritic were entertaining and you can remember the ads but can you remember what the product being advertised was?

What I can't believe is that Apple didn't rescue it seeing as how it streamed Quicktime only, I know a lot of people who installed Quicktime just to view that site.

Re:Insanity of advertising.

[porter235]

Remember also that actors have signed an agreement on the conditions around using their image. If the ad companies didn't shut down the site, they could be in trouble from the actors and their agents.

Re:Insanity of advertising.

[Zathrus]

AdCritic didn't shutdown due to industry pressure, copyright violation, or anything else like that. It shutdown due to popularity - the bandwidth bill was too damn big and they were losing too much money.

It has since re-opened, but it's now a pay-your-own-way site.

Just search Google for Adcritic and shutdown if you want more info.

Worthless....

[freeze128]

It's worthless to me until it supports my Time Warner Digital cable system. That seems to be the problem with Tivo and ReplayTV. What good is a PVR that records all your favorite shows no matter what channel/time they are on, when all you see is channel 3 coming from your tuner?

Re:Worthless....

[bsdnazz]

Do you know what sort of STB you have?

In the UK the digital cable STBs (Pace 1000s, 2000s and 4000s) use the IRDA 115.2Kb/s signal rate but not the IRDA data signalling system.

TiVo in the UK have released a 'dongle' or IRDA adaptor which allows the TiVo to control the digital cable STB by converting the TiVo signal to IRDA.

Re:Worthless....

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, tivo and Replay do support your digital cable hookup, thats what IR blasters are for. Channel 3 blasting, through, think before you post. I have digital cable, and tivo and it works beautifully.

Re:Worthless....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tivo and ReplayTV have the ability to control your digital cable box and change the channels via either a serial connection or an infrared connection depending on what model tuner you have. I own 3 ReplayTV units and have them connected to Time Warner digital cable boxes and it has been working perfectly for 2 years. Do yourself a favor and buy the PVR of your choice. If you watch any amount of TV you will wonder why you have not owned one all along.

Re:Worthless....

[RedX]

That seems to be the problem with Tivo and ReplayTV.

And you came to this conclusion how? You certainly didn't own either device, or you would've realized that if your Time Warner set-top box is one of the few that isn't supported via direct serial connection to the Tivo/ReplayTV, an IR blaster is included with each device and will support any STB that has an IR remote.

Re:Worthless....

[Anonymous Coward]

there are adaptors that the tivo uses to change the channel on your cable box via IR, derf.

Re:Worthless....

[Malc]

And how does that help me if I'm already watching another channel? These IR controls are just an ugly little hack with limited functionality and no ability to scale.

Re:Worthless....

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with using one of these with a cable system is that they only have 1 tuner. This means you can either:

A) Watch what you are recording
B) Watch a previously recorded show while recording live.

You cannot watch 1 show live & record a second live show. To do that you need a dual-tuner box which, last time I checked, was only available in the Tivo-DirectTV combo boxes.

However, I do use a ReplayTV with my Comcast Digial Cable system, with the IR blaster, and it works great.

Re:Worthless....

[Anonymous Coward]

You are looking at this as a problem because you are still stuck in the old "I have to watch a show when the networks tell me to" paradigm. PVR's free you from all that. That's the beauty of them. You watch a recorded program off the PVR while the other one is recording. You never watch anything live, that way you can blast through the ads. That is why PVR's are superior to VCR's (among other reasons). You can record a show while watching another previously recorded show simultaneously.

Re:Worthless....

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I have a Series 2 TiVo (60 hours), and Time Warner Digital Cable. They get along fine. The TiVo has an IR sender that it uses to change the channels on the cable box.

I put in a splitter, so the cable feed goes into the TV as well, so I can watch one (analog) channel, while TiVo records programming from the cable box (analog, digital, premium, it doesn't matter).

Eventually, there will be standards for Digital Cable (didn't they just get approved?), so that future consumer electronics boxes can "tune" the digital channels as well. It would be great if they could tune subscribed premium and PPV channels as well.

Re:Worthless....

[Malc]

Twaddle! You're stuck in the "I don't really understand what you're talking about but I must comment anyway and I'm arrogant enough to apply my life-style to you" paradigm. There are things I want to watch live, and (shock, horror), there are channels I watch without commercial breaks. I don't watch things now because the TV network tells me to, I do it for my own reasons.

Re:Worthless....

[nessus42]

I understand what you are talking about, but you make little sense. You criticize the TiVo by saying that it doesn't have the ability to change the channel on the cable box. You are incorrect about this. It certainly does have this ability.

Then, suddenly, you change your argument to that the TiVo doesn't allow you to watch one channel while it is recording another channel. So? What you are asking for is impossible with a single cable box. That's not the fault of TiVo. You can solve this problem easily, however, by getting an additional cable box.

|>oug

As a follow up...

[DarkBlackFox]

Here are the system specs pasted from the translated page: Video recording system / sound recording system MPEG-2 (resolution: D1, 1/2d1 and SIF) / Dolby digital AC3 HDD capacity 80GB HDD maximum video recording time / title number HQ: Approximately 15 hour SP: Approximately 30 hour EP: Approximately 60 hour SLP: Approximately 90 hours / maximum of 200 titles Record possible media DVD-RW (Video: Ver1.1), DVD-R (Ver: 2.0) Reproducible media DVD-RW (VR / Video), DVD-R, DVD video, CD and CD-R/RW (CD-DA) Tuner Ground wave ×1, analog BS×1 Reception channel VHF: 1 - 12CH and UHF: 13 - 62CH, CATV: C13 - C38, BS: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13, 15CH *4 Internet browser 0 Letter input method: Software keyboard Also interesting how it's using DVD-R/RW rather than the + Sony has supported in the past...

Reading about them is such a tease

[Mattygfunk1]

I only hope it's not too hard to get this unit to Australia. I have been after a PVR for a while now after reading such glowing reviews on slashdot about them.

Unfortunately it appears that TEAC attempted to create an Australian model that was a dismal failure, and nobody else has had the ambition to have another go.

Perhaps making my own would be the best option. 80 Gigs isn't heaps, especially considering the much better quality television broadcast signals compared to the US, that needs to be compressed.

____________________
www.cheap-web-site-hosting.com.au/

Re:Reading about them is such a tease

[cxreg]

You can do pretty well with a linux box and myth tv, although its not quite as feature-complete as tivo. A nice solution though :)

Apex is also releasing a DVD/PVR unit

[wildzeke]

Although this does not include a DVD burner

Press release : http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/030109/90251_1.html

Info from the Apex web page: http://www.apexdigitalinc.com/images/APEXDVD.PDF

Re:Apex is also releasing a DVD/PVR unit

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-read the press release.

The Apex ADR 1000 is a DVD/DVR with 40 hrs recording scheduled for Q1 2003 release. You can pre-order at Amazon for $199

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0 00 08N6XF/ref=pd_sbs_e_3/102-7410525-3708165?v=glance &s=electronics

The Apex DRX 9000 is a DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVR with 40 hrs recording scheduled for Q3 2003 release. You can pre-order at Amazon for $349

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0 00 08N6XE/qid=1049393317/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-741052 5-3708165?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

If you read the article check the Poll!

[implex]

There is a poll on the right :
Would you like to burn your recorded shows directly on DVD?

* yes
* no
* we cannot do that to hollywood

Please submit your preference, when it's no longer /.d

To record TV shows of course.

[SuperKendall]

The history of TV is littered with shows that people like, but the stations drop - the whole reason to own something like this is so that you can record series you really like for later viewing.

Although it would be nice to buy a DVD of the series and help support the actors and such - often there is no way to buy any kind of tape of a series.

Even apart from the series, I'm sure there are many people that would record other weird stuff from TV.. myself, I'd collect commercials I like.

Re:To record TV shows of course.

[LetterJ]

I've already got a system like this and it's really simple. I've got a USB InstantDVD connected to my entertainment receiver and a DVD-R drive. Anything I can watch on my TV, I can dump to the hard drive or straight to DVD. The InstantDVD streams 3mbit, 4mbit, or 5mbit streams straight to the filesystem. The software it came with lets me say, "Make a DVD out of this file". A while later (1x DVD-R), I've got a DVD.

I can record from the satellite dish, the DVD player, my old VCR, hell, I could record Playstation games to DVD if I wanted to. It's really simple (not all in one box simple, but simple nonetheless). I just put something on to watch, hit the big red button on a computer software. When the show is over, I basically say, "Make a DVD" and I'm done.

HBO, Cinemax, Pay-per-view and I'm building a movie collection that grows pretty quickly. I'm also building a nice collection of shows like "Good Eats".

Lots of people complain about DVD-R's costing $1 a pop, but seem to forget that VHS tapes still run $1-2 all over the place. Sure, they're more expensive than CD-R's, but who cares?

Re:To record TV shows of course.

[thedbp]

Great point. A lot of the best shows in recent years were unceremoniously cancelled. Greg the Bunny comes to mind, as does the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Re:To record TV shows of course.

[jimand]

You lost all credibility when referring to "Greg the Bunny" as one of the "best shows in recent years".

I'd pick "Sports Night"

moron looking for journeyman ship builders

[Anonymous Coward]

we're looking for vessels that will float in damnned near any substance.

the creator is participating. lookout bullow.

no need to contact us, just start building the boat(s), we'll find you. thanks.

Cost, media, Tivo

[swb]

I can't read Japanese, but their appears to be an MSRP of 145,000 yen on the Sony page. That's ~$1200 at current exchange rates, and far more expensive the similar Panasonic unit which has an MSRP of $999, and generally goes for about $700 on EBay. Shouldn't these kinds of devices be going *down* in price, not up? I realize the Sony unit has some networking features for guide data and so forth, but I can't see those adding $300 worth of value, unless its a total Tivo replacement.

It's also not clear what writable format they're using -- + or - or all of them. I'm mildly biased in favor of the - format because it seems to be the most compatible where I've tried it.

As far as a Tivo replacement, I'm not sure I see that. Tivo is pretty far down the pike in terms of scheduling, selection, conflict avoidance and user interface. I don't think this Sony unit is meant to be that, but instead as a VCR on steriods.

I'm personally waiting for the DVD writer decks to drop in the $300-400 range. I have a Tivo, so I don't need an extra source of guide data. The internal HDD is nice for basic editing (from what I understand of the Panasonic DMR-HS2 unit that has one), but its a big added cost as well. I could live with just the writer. I'd hope they'd drop to sub-$500 this year, perhaps closer to Christmas, but maybe the economy/war/malaise will make us wait even longer.

Re:Cost, media, Tivo

[kalidasa]

The Japanese market may be able to support a higher intro price than the US market. They're more tech rabid than Americans (a frightening thought, that).

Re:Cost, media, Tivo

[scharkalvin]

Actually Panasonic has a new model just anounced
(e50 something) with a MSRP of $449, (maybe less on fleabay).
The current model still has a MSRP of $699, but many retailers are discounting it to $499 right now.

Re:Cost, media, Tivo

[nessus42]

DVD Recorders have already dropped to $400. I got a Panasonic DMR-E30 a few weeks ago from Sixth Avenue Electronics, for $400, including shipping.

How Bodes Sony TiVO?

[bluethundr]

I love TiVo and I love Sony for their industrial design sensibilites. Everything in my entertainment center has a Sony logo on it. Including the TiVo. I wonder how this news bodes for the Sony TiVo...

Isn't this open source?

[swordboy]

Is this going to be their open source box?

it's not gonna piss anyone off

[TerraFrost]

This baby is poised to 'piss-off' Hollywood.

ReplayTV pissed people off because it had features that let you skip commercials, and it had an ethernet port which meant that you could stream video from your ReplayTV to your PC, or just download it directly, which in the MPAA's eyes, means that it'll be that much easier for everyone to become the pirate that they naturally are.

Re:it's not gonna piss anyone off

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the broadband connection on the Sony unit? Someone will probably be able to hack it to be more open if Sony does put restrictions on it.

Re:it's not gonna piss anyone off

[computechnica]

Kinda makes me want to just build a Living room PC with a ATI AIW 9000DV with a DVD-Burner. I have an old AIW 128 in my PC and Archive about 20 hrs of TV shows a week to VCD. Mostly Futurama, Anime, and Pr0n. I must be EVIL;~)

Re:Why would you want this, if not to pirate movie

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't pirate anything, but I don't buy many DVD's, CD's or even books anymore. Why? It's just too expensive. If CD's cost, say, four or five dollars each, I'd buy more many more than the one or two a year I bug now. My guess is Hollywood and book publishers would be making much more money simply by cutting prices to one-fourth what they are now.

The important question has to be ...

[MrMickS]

why does it look so ugly? I mean it has styling that reminds me of 1979's VCRs *yeuck*

I'm confused

[Timesprout]

Are a P0rn Video Recorder and Digital Video Recorder not the same thing ?

How much on a DVD?

[BMonger]

I can't get to the articles but... does it say how many minutes/hours you can record on one standard DVD? For instance iDVD will only allow for 90 minutes to be recorded onto a DVD but I'm pretty sure that's because of the compression it uses... just curious.

Re:How much on a DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ü4Ödì3

@4324ê

!!

Re:How much on a DVD?

[RatBastard]

Using "Standard" quiality recordings from my ReplayTV and recorded to DVD with ULeads's DVD Creator (it works, and that's better than most programs I tried) I get about two-hours and twenty minutes to a 4.77GB DVD-R.

Re:How much on a DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming it throws data straight from hard drive to DVD with no predefined burning limit, but at low quality it supposed to get 90 hours on a 80gb drive which is (9hr/8gb)*4.77gb = 5 hours 22 minutes. Or at highest quality 15 hours for 80 gb, so on one standard 4.77gb DVD this is (1.5/8)*4.77=.894 = 53 minutes 39 seconds

Re:Why would you want this, if not to pirate movie

[FirstNoel]

1. For all the Trekkies out there, start recording a season for your own personal use, DVD's will keep better than VHS. It's being broadcasted, we're paying for it through the products we buy. No harm no foul.

2. God knows the Major networks show an made-for-tv movies/specials once and at the very most twice, if you don't get good copy you might never see it again. Example. back in the 80's my brother and I recorded the Kroft puppets (spelling/name may be off, sorry) when the did the "Ronny and Nancy Show". I re-watched that tape till it wore out, now I can't find a copy of it anywhere. If I had one of these, no problems.

Not everyone pirated movies, it's too much crap to deal with. Why would I want a wall covered with DVDs? I barely have enough space for the crap I got now. I don't need/want anymore. I'm sure there are people who feel the same way.

Sean D.

Re:90 hours my ass...

[secret_squirrel_99]

Um no. Tivo (at least DirectTV Tivo) does 35 hours on a 40G hard drive with no loss in quality. So that would be 70 hours on an 80G drive. With some minor improvements in the compression algorthym it's easy to see how this could be feasible.

Re:90 hours my ass...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

90 hours with 80GB HDD means 0.9GB/hour, which is a lot. With DivX you can get TV-quality with about 400-500MB/hour.

Collecting commercials...

[FirstNoel]

That's would be cool...

I could get the 100 dachshund - 100 oxen commercial.

Just seeing those weiner dogs stampede makes me laugh.

Sean D.

Apex.

[blackmonday]

I can't wait to see the Apex version of these units a few years down the line. DVD-R's will be 10 cents each, the unit will cost 90 bucks, and the DRM will go away if I hold the "6" key on the remote while I start up the machine.

Re:Apex.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apex has already announced a similar product they will ship in Q3 2003 for $400, $350 pre-order at Amazon

From the press release...

"Apex DRX 9000 DVD recorder allows up to four hours of DVD+R/ +RW recording per disc, DVD+RW simple editing, 2x and 4x zoom, and frame by frame advance -- in addition to all the other features it shares with the ADR 1000 model (40 hours of one-touch, programmable hard disk recording, as well as time-shift, DVD video playback, Progressive Scan (480p) playback, Kodak Picture CD/JPEG playback, MP3/WMA audio file playback, audio CD/CD-R/CD-RW playback). The DRX 9000 input/outputs include progressive-interlaced component video output, interlaced component video input, S-video input/output, composite video input/output, optical and coaxial digital audio output, and analog stereo input/output."

Amazon link

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0 00 08N6XE/qid=1049393317/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-741052 5-3708165?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

Re:Note to self, remember to not be dumb

[donkiemaster]

I am using the same logic for my dental visits. In the next 10 or 20 years I should get used to the pain, which right now gives me symptoms like a cross between epilepsy and Tourette's, then I can coast along another 40 or so years pretty easily slowly moving to a fully liquid diet. By that time I figure they will have dental robots in the grocery store and I will just plop in 50 cents and they will rip out my teeth and give me some shiny new ones in the blink of an eye.

Expensive!

[Dr. Mojura]

The listed price is 145,000JPY, which equals $1,213..
Nice if you can afford it I suppose. I wonder if there will be restrictions on exporting it to the US.

Re:DADDY WANTS!!!!!!

[m3djack]

Well, I guess that would be two zeroes at the end, duh... :P

Re:90 hours my ass...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tivo must have some magical encoder then. My 80 GB ReplayTV gets 24 hours on highest settings.

Burn broadcast to DVD?

[Kevin Burtch]

That's kind of silly since DVDs are drastically higher resolution, better sound (with more channels), etc.

VCD/SVCD would make much more sense... since VCD is VHS quality and SVCD is (supposedly) about the same quality as NTSC is capable of carrying... AND you can play them back in (almost) any DVD player.
Not to mention the fact that it would be MUCH cheaper.

I'd love to have a VCD/SVCD recorder.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[nate1138]

try this. The Terrapin recorder. about 250 bucks. I think it has been discontinued, but it was a hell of a cool idea.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[dubious9]

No, DVDs have dramatically more space than VCDs. Why not just encode at the VCD quality and fit a lot more on the DVD?

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[RatBastard]

VCD is less than VHS quality. And broadcast NTSC is higher than SVCD. I've played with both, and DVD. DVD has the ability to reciord at higher quality than broadcast NTSC this can be mitigated by lowering the bitrate at which the video is recording.

It is also very untrue that "(almost) any DVD player" can play VCD/SVCD format discs. No one I know owns a DVD player that can play VCDs, yet everyone I know has a DVD player (or a PS2/XBox) that can play DVDs just fine.

I've gone down both roads and DVD is the way to go (until they come out with a new standard and make us buy all of our favorite movies again!).

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[Kevin Burtch]

While the cost/MB is about the same, I see a distinct advantage in the smaller size.

It's easier to give a recording to my sister when it's the only recording on the disk... rather than giving her 5+ hours of recordings (by the storage ratio listed in the article).

That, and CD burners are drastically cheaper than DVD burners.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[YrWrstNtmr]

No one I know owns a DVD player that can play VCDs

Most Apex's do, even the $60 bottom of the Walmart line. And I have a low end Panasonic surround sound 5 disc setup that does as well. Most VCD's anyway. I've had a few that won't play.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about DIGITAL broadcasts of HDTV? A device that can record to DVD can record high quality digital streams. There are already several channels available, and there will be more in the not too distant future, especially with the new regs.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[Zathrus]

DVD doesn't have the bandwidth for HDTV. Ignoring the storage issues (less than an half hour of HDTV quality video will fit on a 4.7G recordable DVD), DVD doesn't have the bandwidth. HDTV tops out at 22 Mbps, while DVD has a 10 Mbps cap. So either you throw out over half the video data or you hope that all your HDTV is broadcast in 480p.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[msimm]

VCD's failed here because aside from being lower quality (the MPAA's DVD format) they can hold LESS VIDEO, which is important to those of us who don't like to get up in the middle of a program to swap out cd's.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[damien_kane]

My Sony DVD player plays VCDs and SVCDs on either CD-R or CD-RW dics. Most of my friends players play at least VCDs.
The only people I know who can't play VCDs on their DVD players are the very early adopters... as early DVD players didn't play VCDs.
Most now do.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[RecoveredMarketroid]

My DVD player, a couple-of-year-old Pioneer DV-525, plays VCDs (which I can burn on my CD burner). Won't play SVCD though, as far as I know.

Re:Burn broadcast to DVD?

[nessus42]

Component DVD Recorders are not drastically more expensive than component VCD Recorders. Panasonic makes DVD Recorders that sell for under $400. You can record 1 hour of very high quality video on a disk or 6 hours of crappy quality. The happy medium is 2 hours on a disc. The blank media costs about 75 cents per disc. The quality of VCD's really sucks in comparison to any DVD recording mode except the 6 hour one.

|>oug

Panasonic makes one already.

[ender_wiggins]

I got one of these. Its called a Panasonic DMR-HS2. i love it.

Is there a decent component style MP3 player

[frenchgates]

Sized fit in with my home stereo with a hard disk, remote control, and TV interface for playlists and control?

Re:Is there a decent component style MP3 player

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 2 of these in the latest JnR printed catalog: Sony with 20 GB, and someone else with 40 GB. Around $400.

Re:Is there a decent component style MP3 player

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this, I have the older version and it looks great sitting under my Dennon reciever:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shop pi ng/scripts/product_detail/product_detail_view.jsp? product_code=DB226A%23ABA&script_name=product. cgi

Calculate storage capacity

[ItWasThem]

A quick note to clear up any confusion about the amount of video you can compress onto that 80GB hard drive with this unit...

It's about 4 LOC (Library of Congress) although if you need to be more exact, you could say that it's 4 LOC, and then round to the nearest Volkswagon

*DUCKS*

Re:Calculate storage capacity

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Good thing you put "Library of Congress" in there. 'cause if you have 4 Lines of Code filling up that 80 GB Hard Drive, you need to use way more carriage returns...

Re:Calculate storage capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing you put "Library of Congress" in there. 'cause if you have 4 Lines of Code filling up that 80 GB Hard Drive, you need to use way more carriage returns...

And line feeds. :)

Ignoring OS-specific stuff, a Carriage Return only puts the cursor at the beginning of a line. The Line Feed, moves it down one line without putting the cursor at the beginning of a line. :)

Re:90 hours my ass...

[nate1138]

You are forgetting one thing:

In order for this thing to record to DVD, the algorithm that it is using is fixed (MPEG2). All you can really do is fiddle around with the bitrates some to vary the quality/size relationship. Unless of course it uses a high quality/low bit compression (DivX, Xvid, etc) and then transcodes on the fly when a disk recording is requested. If you had to transcode and then burn, it would take so long it would suck.

uh oh....Better hope you never need service...

[jcrash]

Sony's Service centers are god awful. I hope you bought the extended warranty on everything so that you can go through your dealer instead of Sony, as Sony is a joke.

They shipped my monitor to me in pieces after I sent it in to be fixed the SECOND time after the first time I shipped it to them the tech told me over the phone "that's what you get for buying these new things."
----------------

arrrr me maties

[DonkeyJimmy]

I doubt that a product like this will work out in the States with all our anti-copyright legislation. I do believe, however, that a small hacker community will pop up, with modded japanese models, pirate US guide sites, and the like. It's gonna have to slip under the radar, and if it does, I hope I'm part of it. This thing sounds great. However, tivo is only as good as it is because the software is so good, one false move and this product will suck.

Re:90 hours my ass...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this a troll? Translate the sony page and you'll see it confirms what he's saying.

Re:90 hours my ass...

[Anonymous Coward]

The DirecTivo, which is what the parent is talking about, does not have any encoder at all. It just captures the already encoded, digital stream straight off the satellite.

So yes, the DirecTivo does have a heck of an encoder--it's just that it's at the head end of the transmission and can be much better than the one in the Replay or standalone Tivo units that encode an analog signal.

Where's The WiFi Support?

[md17]

Until I can talk to it from any device on my wireless network, it is no Dream Machine. If it had 802.11b support and an NFS server, then I might label it the Dream Machine. Until then... I'll build my own.

Re:DADDY WANTS!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

you have two zeros in your end, assface.

Somethings wrong...

[ZorMonkey]

Sony is making a decent sounding product, but no mention of proprietary storage? No 6" DVDs with a strange new data format? What will I do with all my memory sticks? This cant be right!

Re:Off topic but interesting corelation

[Anonymous Coward]

NBC didn't have a reporter in Iraq to begin with.
Peter Arnett was a journalist in Iraq working for the "National Geographic Explorer" which is owned by NBC. Since NBC didn't have a reporter in Iraq, they were using his reports.
He was NOT a reporter for NBC.

I would be careful about the DRM

[suman28]

Though, I am not sure about the laws in Japan regarding DRM, this is not going to accepted with open arms here. Just wait till those people on Capitol Hill get news about this.

Does it use TiVo software?

[mjh]

Ok... I can't read Japanese... or is it Kanji that you read and Japanese that you speak? Whatever it is, I can't interpret what any of this means except for looking at the pictures.

And from looking at those pictures, it looks to me like this thing doesn't use TiVo software. Not that I think TiVo software is currently, and will forever be inherently better than any software. It's just that it has such excellent search features. The PVR component of this device simply won't be that good without effective search. And if you can't get enough good stuff into the PVR, who cares whether or not you can burn it to DVD?

I'm not saying that it needs TiVo software. I'm saying that it needs the effective searcy abilities of TiVo software. But if it has it, when can I get one?

The tivo/toshiba unit can't write to DVDs though.

[gatekeep]

It's essentially a tivo and a DVD player sharing the same box. You can't put tivo'd shows onto DVD, and you can't record DVDs to the tivo. They're two seperate devices for most purposes, though there is an option on the tivo menu to 'play dvd' that's as far as the integration goes.

Tivo does not subsidize hardware..

[gatekeep]

Tivo no longer subsidizes hardware. Series 1 hardware was subsidized, but Series 2 is not.

"With the Series2, we're out of the subsidy business," Ramsay said.

That's TiVo Chief Executive Mike Ramsay as quoted at news.com

Dynamism.com

[mesach]

keep checking dynamism I'm sure they will have it imported here.

DVD burner prices

[dmnic]

back in January we bought a LaCie 4x firewire DVD-RW for $225(retail through Apple)...works with PC and MAC.

you can buy one here...

[mlrtime]

www.pricejapan.com

Basically you can buy anything from japan there, not guranteed to work here, but most people know what they're doing.

-mlr

They're not as dumb as you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's okay, but not as good as you think it is.

Trust me, attempting to interface it to a computer will prove to be excruciating. And just like Sony MiniDisks are proprietary, there is no guarantee that the "DVDs" will actually play anywhere else.

My Home Built PVR that shreds these

[thedbp]

i just posted this on another thread but its relevant to this too:

Built from parts:

G4 450
Desktop-style G3 case painted black w/ silver trim
768 MB RAM
120 + 80 GB drives (coming soon - currently only 80 and 12)
32 MB Radeon Dual-Head Graphics (drives a 27" TV and a 14" VGA 800x600 mirrored or separate display at the 'control center' of the couch)
DVD-RW
External CD-RW
Mac OS X (incl. all the goodness of a full install of X)
EyeTV
VLC (for VideoCDs, DivX, etc)
Remote Control via Keyspan
Wacom Tablet

Best freakin' PVR etc in the world. Has 2 stereo audio inputs, 2 S-video out, 2 Composite Video out, 1 VGA, 1 DVI, one Mac DB-15, 2 USB, 3 FireWire, 2x DVD-RW, 16x CD-R, 8x CD-RW, 1 10BaseT Enet, 1 10/100BaseT Enet, SCSI, 2 serial, ADB, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I can burn a VCD while encoding a DVD to DivX while recording live TV to MPEG-1 while acting as a media server to my LAN while ... you get the idea. Built on the old and the new and it works flawlessly.

Doesn't look like TiVo

[200_success]

Actually, from the screenshot on Sony's website, it doesn't look like TiVo. For one thing, the interface is in Japanese. I doubt that TiVo has internationalized its software, given that I only sells its service in the USA and UK. I'll guess that that forced Sony to develop their own software for the Japanese market.

Some good news is that Japan uses basically the same 100-110 VAC and NTSC as the USA. The DVD region codes are different, though. I hope that the Sony recorder doesn't region-lock its recordings.

In other news, Panasonic also sells a DVD recorder.

...but writes DVD and is more expensive

[muyuubyou]

This thing will be 145000 yen (that's US$1,212)

Expect some $1,500 in the USA

Not that expensive

[Tensor]

1200 USD is steep but not ungodly. Think of it in terms of pc. This would be equivalent to a high end pc with an ATI 9700 all-in-wonder and a dvd recorder.

That is, around 600 for the puter + 350 for the ati + 350 for the dvd-r runs to $1300

And this probaly is easier to use, faster and easier to program and has like 6 different inputs and outputs (including showing pictures from memory sticks)

I'm not surprised - American TV is rubbish

[Mr_Silver]

Okay, I'll admit the title is rather trollish, but I have a point.

I went on holiday for 10 days - in the, granted, limited time I saw telly I couldn't get over the fact that (compared to the UK) advertising is literally rammed down your throat.

Almost everything is sponsored by someone, you have advert breaks with unnerving frequency (often just cutting out in the middle of the tension without any thought to picking a bit where it would make sense) and you even have adverts just after the starting credits and just before the ending credits (I mean, whats the point of sticking some adverts up - only to come back to the credits, and then more adverts??).

Finally, I was watching some ice hockey and even the player stats screen was littered with 3 adverts! Amazing.

So, in short, I'm not really surprised that Tivo took off over there and badly here. Yes, we have adverts - but they're appproximately once every 15 minutes, cut out at appropriate sections of the programme or film and aren't put so close to the beginning or end of items that it annoys the viewers.

BUT, and it's a big but - Sony are very pro-DRM. Their Net-MD line would be great if it wasn't so crippled and last month I went to buy a CD/MP3 player only to find that whilst their top of the range product was very very cool, you couldn't fast forward or rewind through MP3's. I fail to believe that this is due to technical problems - more the fact that they want it to be so slightly inconveniant that you give up using MP3's.

Re:I'm not surprised - American TV is rubbish

[beenay]

Personally, I'm fine with the over saturation of advertisments in American television. I think with the advent of Tivo and similar systems we will finally see the end of commercials. We are just going to fast forward anyway, so as this technology becomes more prevalent the value of spending millions of dollars to produce 30 to 90 second spots will diminish. I'd gladly take the three icon-ish adverts on the stats line of the Laker's game, that sit through commercials. The fact that advertisers are paying more for product placement now and just getting their logo displayed during the program will be a blessing in the long run.

Re:I'm not surprised - American TV is rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, all I can say is that you must have a very basic tv package. When I had sky in the UK, it was getting pretty close to what you get with US tv. Sky 1, big US programmes, and advert right after the credits. They've been doing it for years. The BBC uses product placement in soaps, ITV is nothing but shit, Channel 4 is a gays only channel these days. I have the full time warner digital package here in the US, and there really is plenty to watch and way too many bible bashing offerings! Personally, I prefer a simple book.

Re:I'm not surprised - American TV is rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

When I had sky in the UK, it was getting pretty close to what you get with US tv. Sky 1, big US programmes, and advert right after the credits.

He didn't complain about adverts after the credits dumbass, but right before them. That makes a huge difference.

Re:I'm not surprised - American TV is rubbish

[nessus42]

Some study recently showed (and I think there was a slashdot article about it) that people who fast forward through commercials remember them just as must as those who watch TV in realtime. If true, it means that there will be no end to commercials.

Does anyone else remember the Blipverts from Max Headroom?

145,000 yen is about $1200 usa dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

still expensive.

There are already some of these type of machines on the market, even available at Best Buy.

Panasonic models cost about $700 but have a smaller hard disk.

Basic dvd recorder without a hard disk run $400 now.

Is this the same Sony?

[The Tyro]

that supports DRM?

that shat upon Aibo owners and hackers when they tried to exchange info on how to do new/cool stuff with their hardware?

Hmmph... I can already hear their CEO addressing the division heads:

"What we've got here is... a failure to communicate!"

Re:Is this the same Sony?

[rifter]

Sony has since changed their stance on the aibo hacking. Besides, it is a misunderstanding of Sony's corporate culture to speak of them as one entity. Sony is a very large company which is run as seperate business units acting as self-contained businesses with unique goals. This results sometimes in situations like others have pointed out in this and other articles where one part of Sony is doing something which seems to violate the spirit of what another part of Sony is doing. The Playstation project was a good example of this, where the people working on the playstation were essentially handled as renegades, and had to become profitable on their project's own merits.

To be fair, this kind of thing seems to be a fairly comon business practice, and the resultant social interactions and consequences are fairly representative of any large organization of humans.

Won't Piss Off Hollywood, Sony is Hollywood

[Locus Mote]

Sony owns a large chunk of Hollywood right now, don't they? Unless the company has grown so large that it's achieved schizoid-hydra-status, where one branch doesn't care about the rest of the corporate branches, I doubt it will step on any Hollywood toes.

Perhaps Sony has build in data detectors that sense Sony Pictures intellectual property and refuses to record it.

Knowing Sony, they've made the box based on some organo-computing principle and engineered that component to have to eat cookies to function. But not just any cookies... SONY-branded cookies. And any attempts at reverse-engineering them to produce aftermarket nourishment would result in a viral state that would eat the processor. Or something like that. ;-)

build a cdrw digital vcr for alot less

[Anonymous Coward]

Sourceforge has a couple of real good digital vcr projects going. Buy yourself a mini-itx board for 99$, with processor included, just add a breadbox around 7$ for a case, a cdrw, a stick of ram and a hardrive, I imagine you could build a much more functional device. Face it, the ppl pushing expensive dvd devices don't have a clue, why not spend way less, use a divx encoder and rip em to cdr's, and then upload them via ethernet to your freenet node for the world to enjoy. If memory serves me correct, the entertainment companies bought up the electronic makers, but with pc's and software, every man his own electronics maker and company dictated cost and standards go out the window.

PVR with Ethernet?

[RaboKrabekian]

I'm looking to get a PVR, but I need one with an ethernet port, as I don't pay for a phone line in my apartment. SonicBlue's ReplayTV seemed to be the right choice, except with Sonic Blue's financial troubles I don't think buying a replaytv is a good idea at the moment. Are there any other options? Tivo seems to be phone line only. This unit seems great, except I dont need or want to pay for DVD burning features.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Re:PVR with Ethernet?

[Big Boss]

TiVo units can work over Ethernet. All Series 2 units have USB ports that will accept many off the shelf USB-Ethernet devices.

Re:PVR with Ethernet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I have a Tivo and I just got rid of my land line. Tivo ships with a serial port connector. The latest version of the tivo software will allow you to easily grab program data over the Internet.

If you have a PC near your tivo, you can hook the tivo up to the pc through the serial port using the serial connector and a null modem adapter, and use a ppp daemon to enable the tivo to pull the program guide data off the internet.

search google for: ppp tivo

Re:PVR with Ethernet?

[RaboKrabekian]

What if my pc is no where near the tivo?

Exactly!

[SuperKendall]

That's one of the ones high on my list!

And that's the beauty of a recording system...

[SuperKendall]

Is that they can collect all of the "Greg The Bunny" material they like, while you can record "Sports Night"! And since neither is going to be released on DVD as long as anyone lives, you'll both have something you wouldn't otherwise... plus, perhaps you could trade an old recording of "Greg the Bunny" that you accidentally saved for a recording of "Sports Night" that you missed.

Re:And that's the beauty of a recording system...

[jimand]

as long as anyone lives

are we all dead yet?

Imagine..

[Anonymous Coward]

a beowulf cluster of these with 250GB S/ATA drives, gigabit ethernet, and, and, free caffeine!

Ya, we know it sucks

[t0ny]

Yes, American TV sucks. Sadly, we know it. The only things worth watching are "Seinfeld" reruns and "The Simpsons" (new AND reruns). Other than that, I just surf the internet or read a book, or (most likely) play a video game.

speed programming?

[oever]

Wow, how fast is the average programmer supposed to type these days?

The system can record up to 90 hours of programming on the 80GB Hard drive.

I'm glad when I type 64k in 90 hours, so why does this thing have 80GB?

RCA has one

[Fisty]

RCA has one that you can buy now (DRS7000N). Its hard drive is about half the size, but it still looks good. It's a little under $900 Canadian.

I guess so!!

[SuperKendall]

And I was expecting something different. Oh well!

Who'd have thought it? I had never even heard of Sports Night!!

But Sony IS Hollywood

[MMHere]

Sony pictures is one of the largest hollywood studios, isn't it?

Why won't this machine have DRM capabilities built in, so that Sony can stop you from recording and writing to DVD _their_ stuff?

Sony products have a lifespan 1.1 year

[skintigh2]

Great, so I can spend $1,000 on yet another Sony product that will die after one year?

My Sony 200-disc CD player stopped playing CDs after 1 year and a few days, but they were kind enough to fix that, even though it was almost a week out of warantee.

My Sony DVD player would turn off after one second of use a little more than a year after I bought it. Turns out this has happened to over 50% of owners of this player according to several audiophile websites. I called Sony, but they denied they had ever heard of the problem and said it would cost $179 for them just to LOOK at my player!!! I could buy 3 for that much money.

[I eventually fixed my DVD player with a lot of bending, some tinfoil, and silver paste. Others cut holes in the case and added fans. Others also have out-of-sync problems]

My Sony receiver, bought at the same time as my DVD player, started acting up after a year. Sometimes it crashes completely or just "mutes" and has to be unplugged and plugged back in. Sometimes it blasts noise at full volume then goes back to normal. At least I don't get error messages on the screen like other owners. Sony also denies they have ever heard of this problem.

Sony also refuses to divulge information about their big screen TV's, like how many pixels the can display. Sony claims this is unimportant. Call them and ask if you don't believe me. Luckily people like me set up very outdated web pages that divulge all sorts of things they don't want to get out, like how to adjust you convergence without paying a Sony tech:

Hack your Sony big screen

I bought Sony because I heard they were quality. What they were was overpriced and low quality. Never again.

/rant

Sony product line

[buss_error]

Sounds cool. I might even buy one, but for the fact it would be a deal with the devil.

I won't see a Sony movie.
I won't listen to Sony music.
I won't buy a Sony product.

Sony is evil. Sony is greedy. Sony can Kilo-Mike-Alpha.

Go ahead. Give more money to the people persecuiting Jon Johnson and others for Sony's own failed business model.

Cool Commercials

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the world of commercials gets a bad rap. Some are just awesome. One in particular showed this dad driving along with his child and the thing I remember was something like..." taking the long way just to slow down his child's growing up too fast..." I saw that and it hit me like a ton of bricks- a total epiphany. It literally changed a part of my life. Now, instead of of the greuling rat race hustling kids too-and-fro, I DO take the long way. Sometimes I'm late, but so what.

How's this different from the VAIO RZ line?

[TechnoWitch]

I just recently picked up a VAIO PCG-RZ22G desktop a couple weeks ago, after my homebuilt system finally had a complete meltdown.

This thing isn't even top-of-the-line, and yet it has video capture and recording software -- a thing they call 'Gigapocket' (whatever the hell that actually means). In preactical terms though, what it does mean is that I can record and playback video. And yes -- this thing also has a DVD burner.

I think I paid about $1350 for the unit. Could've gotten an even faster one, but this was good enough, and I could only just barely justify the 'extra toys' expense of this one.

So... I don't know why people are all excited about some model available in Japan. This one's available right now, in the U.S. and elsewhere. And it's CHEAP!

-Technowitch

C|Net article on same

[ReverendLoki]

C|net article on this piece of hardware, no translation required:

http://news.com.com/2100-1041-995549.html?tag=fd_t op

Re:Sony products have a lifespan 1.1 year

[kobotronic]

I won't disagree with your comments, but FWIW Sony products don't suck anywhere near as much in Europe and Japan as they do in the U.S. Different factories, and very much different product lines, even if the boxes look similar. In general the European and Japanese Sony DVD players and TVs are loaded with features that you don't see in the U.S. because (no offense, I assure you) the AVERAGE american consumer doesn't give a shit about quality and features and so Sony can get away with competing mostly on price and gimmicks and living large from an undeservedly inflated brand reputation.

Example : I bought a Sony VHS while in the U.S. - it reeked to high heaven of cheapo plastic, and the firmware was buggy as fuck. You couldn't select channel 11 without the machine powering itself down. The OSD menus were white block letters on blue background looking like Atari 2600 graphics.

In Europe and Japan at the same time (late 90s) the cheapest Sony VHS videos on the market all had multicolor OSD menus, better mechanics and much better design in general.

Last Post!

[alpg]

Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band
together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a
tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo
on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others.
They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk
clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix.
Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean
well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They
like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time,
which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...