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Pioneer To Release TiVo/DVD Burner Combo
TK-421 writes "According to an official Pioneer press release, 'Pioneer is revolutionizing home video recording with the introduction of the world's first DVD recorders featuring the TiVo service. These new recorders offer consumers the control provided by the easy-to-use TiVo service integrated with advanced DVD recording for the option of short-term storage on a hard drive or long-term archival of broadcast programming on DVD-R/RW discs.'" The options include both 80 and 120GB models, starting at a not-inexpensive $1199, and there's more information via a CNET News article.
... someone sues them for copyright infringement. The voting boot is open.
But please be quick: you can only vote while no litigation has been announced.
the pun is mightier than the sword
The options include both 80 and 120GB models, starting at a not-inexpensive $1199, and there's more information via a CNET News article.
not-inexpensive? I know slashdot editors aim for obscurity, but what's wrong with "expensive"?
No, you can't. I've seen the systems and they are pathetic in comparison to a £200 tivo.
It's like buying a replica ferrari, it may look like a good idea but it doesn't have the performance.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Why can't anyone make what consumers want?
Tivo would be great if it didn't require on-going charges (and doesn't allow anyone to screw around with the installed software).
Throwing a DVD burner into the mix is a great step-up, but only if there is some way to edit the program before burning it... I don't want to have a copy for 50 years on DVD that starts with the end of the program before it, has commercial breaks in the middle, etc. It wouldn't take much work to give editing functionality (even if edited content must be burned to DVD and can't be watched from the hard drive, I can live with that.)
So, when are we going to see some such system? Or are we going to have to wait until someone releases a distro that does all this on PC hardware?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
... since if I had not just bought a Tivo last week, and a DVD recorder the month before, this would never have happened.
*sobs*
_____
Jaylen
But more powerfull ... and older...
The first is already known by a lot of people
fujitsu-siemens Activy and work under XP embbed.
The second is less known and the site is not in english but it works really well. Dreambox and run under Linux !
I'd have thought that by now people would have started building the thing into the actual sets. It somehow seems more logical to do it that way than combine it with a DVD player.
This is a great idea, but it really depends on how well the implement the DVD burning from the harddrive.. This will need to have editing options to cut out commercials.. and that will bringe a whole wave of trouble onto the makers... replay TV fiasco, anyone? The real ticket would be fully editable shows, networking capability (at least 1394... that would be neat.. would encourage people to buy this instead of just a stand alone DVD recorder) Transfering all those babylon 5 SVCDs to this then burning them would be pretty sweet...
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Didn't one of the PVR's remove a feature to share recordings between networked PVR's for fear of MPAA lawsuits? This isn't even restricted to the same kind of machines. Now you can record movies off of showtime/hbo automatically and burn them to dvd. I wonder what MPAA will do about this.
Now if they added commercial skipping and the ability to burn commercial skipped shows to dvd, that would be really pushing things. Hopefully my homebrew PVR box will have a DVD burner soon, and it will be able to do this.
bananas like monkeys.
I've seen the systems and they are pathetic in comparison to a £200 tivo. It's like buying a replica ferrari, it may look like a good idea but it doesn't have the performance.
Well, Tivos are not available in all countries, so systems like MythTV provide at least a subset of the functionality of a Tivo, which is better than nothing at all.
Personally, I'm fairly happy with MythTV. It is certainly much more convenient than a VCR for recording (just select the show from the EPG), and the ability to pause live is a great bonus as well.
When Tivos are released in Australia, I will ceratinly consider getting one. But until then, MythTV is good enough for me.
It sounds like a good idea, but most TiVo users who wanted to have more space or convert their collection to DVD have already figured out how to do so with minimal investment (TiVoNet, DVD-R, hard drive) -- much less than the price of this new TiVo.
Another reason I wouldn't buy one is that I know the HDTV-based models are due out sometime in the near future, so investing $1,200 in something that will be obsolete in 1-2 years seems like a bad idea.
Still, it's nice for brand new users who have never owned a PVR and don't know how to use telnet.
The biggest difference my parents are aware of is they can't fast-forward the copyright warnings on DVDs...
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
Just a thought ...
What would it take to have a TiVo-like service for radio stations, that could be programmed to record all songs by a certain artist, or from an album, or one DJ'd by someone ... (analogous to Kazaalite choice of Song, Album, and User)
Could we then burn these songs on a DVD or CD from there ....
Many radio stations could release the playlist in advance to help in the recordings (aka TV listings) and in addition to the Clear Channel (go to hell) stations there could be many many many (maybe millions like kazaalite, or thousands like iTunes) of radio broadcasters ... broadcasting all the songs all the time ...
just a thought ....
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Both units are equipped to transfer old videotapes to longer-lasting DVD-R or DVD-RW discs for more permanent storage. By connecting a VCR via analog inputs to the DVD recorder, transferring content becomes a snap. Unlike videotape, DVD will not degrade over time when exposed to heat and humidity. Transferring home movies from tape to disc will preserve them for future generations. DVD-R discs are best for archiving because they are write-once discs (like CD-R) and cannot be accidentally erased. Once a consumer has transferred their videotape collection to DVD, the VCR is obsolete.
I wonder what they're doing about Macrovision with this feature. It would hardly be an improvement to copy a VHS casette to a DVD if there were messed up colours and wavy lines.
I don't see what this has to do with SCO. I read scodot.org for all the SCO news, not for some unrelated tosh about a piece of kit which is guaranteed to have the MPAA kicking your door down!
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Instead of pandering to the MPAA, and watching sales never really take off, Pioneer has decided to submit a potentially profitable piece of hardware to the market.
Now if it had 30sec forward, I'd actually buy it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Alternativily I was thinking about purchasing a silent PC (such as the one at Tranquil PC) and installing MythTV on it, but I don't know how well it would work given that it's a hell of a lot more expensive than TiVo off eBay.
Also just looking at mini-itx.com I see something called OneBox. It looks to be running Windows but apparantly it allows you to run MAME on it too.
So, ignoring the waffle above - what i'm saying is
- Is TiVo still a viable option in the UK despite the fact there is no hardware manfacturers? (ie. could they just pull out at any time)
- Would a homebrew PVR be better? (it would have to be substantially given that it costs twice as much and requires work from me)
- Would the tranquil PC or other box mentioned in the preview
/. article be any good as a PVR? (processor power, graphics, IR, to name three things to think about)
- Would something like a onebox be better?
I like Linux and I use it, but I'm loath to spend lots of money on a homebrew kit only to spend several hours tearing my hair out and not getting anywhere. If it's going to be that, I'd rather just pay more and have it work.Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
And since Thomson stopped making them a while back, there's no TiVos available in the UK, either (unless you want to trawl eBay and pay over the odds).
I believe there are limitations on what stations can do. This probably includes things like not posting a playlist in advance.
In australia I'm pretty sure it limits the number of songs from one artist (or is it album), you can play in a row. To stop people taping a whole album from radio etc.
Will this use TiVo's own closed file format or will disk created with TiVo/DVD Burner be playable with standard DVD-players?
No point in Canada last I looked - you just can't get the listings. Never seen a Tivo for sale here.
Bell Expressvu (Satellite company), offers a receiver with an integrated PVR which works very well (it'll even allow you to tape PPV stuff), 30 hour HDD, 1 hour buffer....I've been happy with it, although I think Tivo's have more bells and whistles.
The standard Tivo (though not the unit talked about here) is a good value for the money. It would be hard or impossible to build a similar system for the same price. However, when you build your own system, you can go beyond what a Tivo can do. For example, HDTV -- I can pop an HDTV card in my computer and record; Tivo has no models with HDTV capability, though there may be one offered later this year. Plus, with a home-built, you can skip the monthly fee.
I think the only truly unique capability in a Tivo is the ability to record a DirecTV signal without reencoding. But that only applies to the DirecTivo models, which can't record anything BUT DirecTV.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Someone should make a set-top-box thats a cross between:
A PC
A Games machine (perhaps)
A PVR
A DVD player/burner
Basicly, it would be a quiet-design, small-size PC with reasonable hardware and in a box that works well with your home entertainment box. Give it a USB thingo with a keyboard and trackball to use as input. And make it so you can plug in things like digital cameras, gamepads etc.
Then build in a ethernet port for network access and TV in/out for display and input of stuff.
And give it a big disk to store stuff
Also put in a DVD drive (perhaps with a DVD burner or one of those DVD drive/CD buruner combo) as options.
Build it around linux (because its free & its open, make all the software for this thing open) and bundle:
PVR software to make it work like a PVR
DVD player/burner software
Multimedia software so you can play audio, video and so on (by downloading it over the ethernet port or from CDs/DVDs containing audio or video data e.g. audio CDs, VCDs or whatever else the multimedia player supports.
So, basicly, this box would be usefull to:
1.record shows from the TV
2.play back the recorded shows
3.transfer the recorded shows over the ethernet link
4.burn the recorded shows to optical media (if you get the burner option)
5.watch DVDs, VCDs and whatever other video CD formats you want to install players for
6.watch video files in any format you have a player for
7.listen to Audio CDs and audio files in any format (being based on linux, supporting OGG for example would be dead simple)
You could also run anything else the hardware could support on it (for example, games or emulators).
Basicly, it would be a ready-made PC in a box designed to fit with an existing stereo, TV, VCR etc and capable of doing multimedia things. Would come with the software preinstalled and a nice GUI interface for the non-technical but those that know how could run anything from MAME to quake on it (if the hardware is up to it).
It's not uncommon.
... you can download the ISOs of your favorite TV programs (from any number of websites or P2P networks), burn it to CD with your existing burner (VCD format), then toss it in your fairly-new DVD player and watch it on TV? Savings: $1200.
Granted, the biggest issue here is sophistication: you need to know how to convert the media to VCD or whatever, how to burn files to CD-R, where to go to get the ISOs, etc. But as with all things, Linux especially, the more technically savvy you are, the less dependent you are on commercial software.
The heads of the MPAA executives exploded simultaneously today, for reasons unknown as of the time of this writing. Witnesses say they made a gurgling noise shortly before the intracranial blasts, just after being handed their daily printed media summary which included a digest of that day's Slashdot articles. Investigation continuing...
I have a Replay TV 5040 and a PC with DVArchive software and a DVD+R/RW drive. The DVArchive software transfers the mpg files off the RTV every night and stores them on the PC. I can then edit the file with any mpg editing tool and burn to a DVD.
-Jase
Comment, Mod, ARRGGH its so hard! :P but I'll bite ...
...
The recording of broadcast material (read news/live/tv/movies) by the home/consumer market is explicitly permitted* by the Sony v. Universal ruling [464 US 417 (1984)]. Therefore the MPAA doesn't have a foot to stand on if they attack PVR's which carry features qualitatively equivalent to that available on the VHS platform.
The issue with PVR's which go a step further to redistribute content to other users on the network is that in redistributing the content in a non-physical form to persons with whom you have loose if any affiliations opens up the end user for copyright infringement proceedings. Burning a DVD and redistributing the content doesn't carry the same issues or implecations as such use is effectively legalized by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and Sony v. Universal as this is seen as private non-commercial redistribution (such as sharing an Audio Tape or CD among friends).
Again, regarding adding features such as commercial skipping and burning commercial skipped shows to dvd (as the parent post requested), I highly doubt the addition of these features due to the chance, and high incentive, of advertisers then challenging whether or not the device is covered by Sony v. Universal or the AHRA of 1992. No longer is the device merely time-shifting or media-shifting the content, it is altering the content which is not explicitly covered (As far as I know).
* Note: Ok technically an action is not permitted or legalized by a court ruling, but such wording prevented me from saying: as is established as precedent by the case
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
There have been some stories about Tivo licensing their software in a 'lite' version which lops off some of the functionality (wishlists, season passes and only 3 days of guide data) to electronics manufacturers but doesn't cost anything.
I wonder if the Pioneer device is using FULL Tivo software or if its just the lite version. I would think that Tivo would find life a little hot under the collar if they started offering more automated archival options for programming under the full Tivo banner.
Or have Tivo decided to do something to counteract this by using nonstandard disk formats, ultra-low bitrates, no a/b editing, or even CSS encryption or other gimmicks to make the DVD copies less than desirable?
If I like the simpsons, I should be able to select 'simpsons' from a menu of this season's TV and have it downloaded to my box whenever a new one is released.
By using sensible proxying, relaying etc they would not need much more bandwidth than they already use for TV. If they ran it on a closed hardware platform then they wouldn't have any of the concerns associated with putting the shows on the 'net, since it would be a private network only accessible by their hardware much as the current cable system is (okay, so you can crack the cable TV system and get free movies, but how many people actually bother, as a percentage?)
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Toshiba will also release a similar recorder for $599 as well as a player/tivo device for only $299. http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/news/newsarticle.asp?n ewsid=107
most TiVo users who wanted to have more space or convert their collection to DVD have already figured out how to do so with minimal investment (TiVoNet, DVD-R, hard drive)
I suppose you think "most" = you and your friends.
Of the people I know with Tivos, including myself, about half have upgraded the hard drive. And none of them have set up video offloading, because we don't have the time to maintain such a cumbersome hack.
The half that haven't upgraded are generally our parents, who think the Tivo is the coolest thing ever, and would gladly buy a new unit instead of voiding the warentee.
Still, it's nice for brand new users who have never owned a PVR and don't know how to use telnet.
Which describes 249 Million Americans who don't own a PVR yet pretty well. I think they have a killer product on their hands, although it is a bit pricy.
-pmb
Deep at AMD headquarters, the intelligence report arrived.
"Here's the latest batch, sir."
"Hmm.. I see.. Hmm.. Oh! What's this?"
"It was a comment on Slashdot, sir. Someone used our notation for referring to the approximate speed of a microprocessor. But they didn't actually mention our name or the product's name. No unit of measurement or anything. Just a number with a postfix plus sign. And everyone knew what it meant. It was completely implicit."
The strategist smiled and pulled an Intel pin off a map, replacing it with the AMD pin. He leaned back in his chair and squinted at the map, nodding with satisfaction.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.