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Sony's Linux DVR Can Record Two Weeks of TV
DoctorNo writes "Sony will introduce - in Japan only - a Linux based video recorder in early November which can store 342 hours of content with 500GB of hard drive space. As well as the highend machine, Sony will also offer a cut down version with a 250GB drive. They will be priced at $1380(500GB) and $1035(250GB). More information,
specs
, and pictures
(Japanese). Add another to the list of consumer
Linux devices..."
Please be more careful next time.
Sadly, given the major networks' lineups, I'd say that this is likely a feature I'd never use.
57 channels and nothing on...
On the other hand, pushing the envelope further and further makes the lesser powered models come down in price - which makes everyone happier.
Although, I am a Time Warner subscriber and there OnDemand service does quite enough for me IF they expand it to more channels. I can start and stop shows all I want.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Considering that Sony and Philips used to be the manufacturers of TiVo units, and TiVos are Linux-based - Are these just new TiVos with huge hard drives?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Close to 1500 for a suped up VCR. Ouch.
I have a question, would you all be as excited about yet another PVR, would this be newsworthy, if it ran Windows CE or anything other than linux?
And why does it not bother anyone that the OSS community will get nothing out of this, like improved video capture drivers for your linux box?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You might as well just pay the extra $245 for the 500GB model.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
Or, after you remove the commercials, about 24 real hours...
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Slick micro-atx case: $59
Athlon and mainboard with integrated sound/video: $160
2x 250GB harddrives: $500
The Sony logo to put on it: priceless
For everything else there's a cheap x86 box.
-AX
^I'm with stupid.^
The device comes with a mandatory 'automatic purge' feature. Each recording is marked by a timestamp on disk and thirty one days after a recording has been made, it is automatically deleted. This feature fits in with Japanese copyright rules.
Oh great, what next? A 'will not record porn because it's not good for the children' feature? When will consumers get treated like adults? This sucks about as much as the end of Jeepers Creepers 2 where all the people except the hot chick die.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Why in the world would you want 2 weeks of TV?
Because Comcast screwed up and gave you the Spice Channel. You want to capture as much as possible before they realize their mistake.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
the average consumer doesn't need this, but a business might. Imagine being able to record 2 weeks worth of security footage without having to change a tape.
More information, specs , and pictures (Japanese).
I can't make out any of the information or specs but hey, it seems I am fully fluent in looking at Japanese pictures. And I never even took lessons!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
* Keyword just is registered, gathers favorite program,new "entrust roundly record 2".
* You study the taste, the favorite so being automatic, you videotape program,"the male be completed algorithm".
* Ground wave 2 tuner loading which corresponds to CATV. 2 programs where broadcast is piled up can be recorded simultaneously,"2 program simultaneous video recordings".
* Relay of the baseball and the soccer becoming extension, without letting escape, you can record,"baseball extended corresponding function".
* Without overlapping it can videotape can reserve continual drama and animation"series reservation".
* It can enjoy to seamless also program and the still picture which are video recording program and in the midst of broadcasting"MyCast view".
* The attachment remote control which adheres to ease of use, actualizes comfortableoperativity.
* with cooperating, recording favorite video recordingprogram to DVD.
* Bulk hard disk loading which records favorite program and the program which becomes matter of concern, steadily and is accumulated."
What does "entrust roundly record " mean?
Sounds nice tho'!!
I have a MythTV box which can store about 100 hours on a 120G drive right now. A MythTV box can be built for easily under $500 including the cost of the hardware encoding Hauppauge Wintv PVR 250 card and a 120G harddrive.
Keep your Tivos and your monthly subscription.... MythTV is the best/cheapest PVR out there. I can watch any live or recorded show on any linux box in my house or on the TV in the living room using the TVout of my Linux box in the other room.
I also reencode shows for watching on my Dell Axim PocketPC (they are just Mpeg2 files after all) when I travel. 3 one hours shows fit onto a 256M CF card.
No proprietary formats to mess with either.
Why is it that all the linux geeks Woop and Holler when Linux is used in a consumer product. I got news for them. It is not because its open source, it's not because its politically correct, it's not because its the best OS.
It's because it's FREE! The time and money to develop an embedded OS, or licensing fees for using a pre-existing one used to be a very expensive undertaking. Now with Linux it's free with minimal R&D.
Celebrating price only reflects one thing, price. It has nothing to do with stability, or politics.
Great, now I can take a 2 week vacation and catch up on the 2 weeks of TV that I missed while the machine records the current 2 weeks of TV I'm missing while I catch up on the 2 weeks of TV that I missed while on vacation.
/.)
Something tells me that people watch too much TV and should get back to work
(as I sit here at work, posting on
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I'll grant that it has neato geek factor, but I only paid $99 for my DirecTivo. For $1,400 I could have DirecTivos in every room of my house and my garage and still have plenty of money left to install mega hard drives in each one to up the capacity. And for the record, Tivos ARE Linux boxen which is why they are so geek-friendly when you want to mod them. So other than having a large hard drive stuffed into it I don't really see what makes this device all that special, and certainly not at that price.
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
When you have that much space available, you tend to leave certain recordings for easy access. I have a number of movies - Office Space, LotR-FotR - on my box for almost a year now. Whenever the mood strikes, I can fire them up.
TiVo has the advantage over other video recorders in that it will take advantage of unused capacity to capture programs it thinks you might like. It will frequently stumble upon things I like but didn't know were on since they appear on a channel I don't usually watch. Most recently I rediscovered "Family Guy" on cartoon network thanks to TiVo. TiVo probably predicted that, since I watch "The Simpsons" religiously, I would probably like "The Family Guy".
High capacity DVRs have the advantage that one can leave the programming they like on the machine until they feel like watching it. There is little impulse to watch something now because it will be over-written tomorrow. TNT ran a best of "Law and Order" marathon last weekend. Now I have a resovoir of 10 hours of high quality programming that I can watch when I want.
Disk space is cheap. There is no reason a DVR should have less than 100 hours of capacity. The expense part of the DVR is the mpeg encoder.
15 years from now PVRs will hold more information than we could watch in a lifetime
for anyone saying that, give it a try. I doubt it will last past the novelty phase, and will NOT pass the girlfriend test... It simply is way too cumbersome to be a usable solution.
My girlfriend complains (sort of) that she spends more time watching TV now that I have a Tivo.
My girlfriend doesn't really watch TV anyway. She sits around all day reading books. And I haven't noticed the TV watching reducing the number of books she burns through in a week.
I enjoy tv a LOT more with the Tivo. I can sit down and watch a few hours of tv if I like, or I can stop watching something and meet up with some friends. Come back later and finish watching it.
More than once I've been able to tell a friend that I have that episode they missed recorded and they can come by my place and watch it. Grab some snacks on the way and enjoy it.
(It's funny, I dislike watching some shows multiple times, but I find with the Tivo recorded shows they tend to be stuff I don't mind seeing multiple times, and/or it's worth it to let a friend watch it.).
Technology needs to become more universal, but its expense in implementation costs makes that hard to do. If you, in the US, are having problems enough getting hold of this kind of thing, can you imagine how hard it is for someone in, say, Russia, Egypt, or Australia, to gain access? And yet there's no technical reason why they shouldn't, and there are people within those nations who can afford such equipment and see it as worth while. But we limit the marketing of technologies, slavishly obeying arbitrary national borders, because of the difficulties associated with expansion.
Expanding means creating new marketing networks and providing the means of transporting this equipment to other countries. This is expensive, though if done with a shared spirit of cooperation and determination, there's no reason why, say, an open distribution network shared by any number of vendors, might not make such things possible. Such a network is, for all intents and purposes, impossible, because it relies upon there already being a large enough momentum towards unfettered distribution to work.
This quagmire of national boundaries restricting the flow of goods and services will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Write also to Jack Valenti, the CEO and chair of the MPAA, whose address and telephone number can be found at the About the MPAA page. Write too to Bill Gates, Chief of Technologies and thus in overall charge of systems like Windows NT, at Microsoft. Tell them that technologies and spreading the good they do to everyone, not just those in the very largest first world countries, is important to you. Tell them that open, standardized, distribution networks would help open up the free export of technologies across the world, bettering mankind. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by individual manufacturers and individual store chains to try and provide some of this functionality but that if the insistance of exclusivity and the lack of standardization in business practices are not dealt with you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how a lack of a free and open technology distribution network harms all three. Let your legislators know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies concerning the distribution of technologies to everyone.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
The stock TiVo kernel doesn't support anything better than LBA28 but with a custom kernel you can do better (I have a 300GB maxtor in mine). Currently Series1 only but now that people are hacking Series2 TiVo proms it would be trivial to add LBA48 support to the 2.4 kernel on those boxes.
- Company cleverly circumvents GPL to have its software development subsidized. No source code to community.
- No average end-user will ever know what the underlying operating system is.
- The OS licensing bit is less than 2% of the final cost of the product - in other words, the price savings will not appreciably passed along.
In other words, to parahprase that cleverApparently, TiVo Inc., doesn't see a market for such high-end PVRs. But the secondary market has picked up the slack. Weakknees.com sells a 320 GB TiVo for $660 (but remember that it's another $300 for lifetime service; the article doesn't state whether Sony's prices include service). The one big advantage of the Sony unit over TiVo is that it provides a save-to-DVR option--but only if you link it to a Sony-brand computer.