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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."
This baby is poised to 'piss-off' Hollywood.
Or the Sony studio execs down the hall.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
But isn't Sony part of Hollywood?
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.
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*
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
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.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
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?
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...
teeker
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.
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.
>>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.
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.
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.
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.
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