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

[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..."

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.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.