Nokia Enters PVR Market

Daaelar writes "Nokia has just recently announced their entrance into the PVR market with the realease of their Mediamaster 260 S. It apparently has PVR capabilities as well as the ability to receive small images via Bluetooth for viewing on a larger screen, i.e. your television. It also includes some built-in games, as well as a feature to record from a digital camera or camcorder."

Comments

Link to non-flash and much more informative page-

[ultrapenguin]

here. The flash intro linked in the article doesnt even provide any specifications.

404

[Dreadlord]

the link in the story gives 404 error, go to nokia's home and click on " Nokia Mediamaster 260 S " link in the middle, this is the only way ican find to get to the product page.

I hope this is better than their firewall offering

[General_Corto]

The company I work for ordered several Nokia firewall devices. They list for about $35,000 US.

Not one of them worked.

We ended up having their top tech staff in the country give us a visit, with everyone wondering why a six figure purchase should be quite so DOA. At first, there was a lot of head scratching, but it turned out that the machines had a variety of hardware and some software problems.

Allegedly these systems are well tested prior to shipping. At that price, you'd hope so! I hope they test these PVRs well, otherwise they're in for a world of support pain.

It only needs one

[tessaiga]

You can watch other channels while recording using the tuner in your TV. That's how people used to tape shows on their VCR while watching another on the TV.

Multiple tuners only comes into play if you want to record multiple shows simultaneously. Which would be kinda sketchy anyhow due to limits on how fast the hardware they're listing could do video compression on more than one stream.

Re:It only needs one

[gpw213]

Not really. If you read carefully, you will see that this box is a satellite receiver. Your TV tuner will not hook right up to your dish. If you want to record one show and watch another, you would need a second satellite receiver box.

Also note that there is only one input from the dish. Dual-tuner DirectTV-Tivo's have two inputs, one per tuner. While I have never really understood why this is required, it does make me tend to believe that this box is only single tuner.

Finally, the hardware specs are not all that relevent, but not for the reasons stated. Satellite broadcasts are already MPEG encoded, so there is no need for the box to do compression. They only need to do the much less computationally intensive decompression.

Re:It only needs one

[raynet]

Except there is no need for compression because the video is already in mpeg-2. And you would need more than one reciever to record multiple shows unless you have multiple video streams in the frequency you're watching/recording.

Re:It only needs one

[arafel]

The DVR boxes don't do recompression. Usually the incoming stream just gets laid down on disk - either as raw transport data or as packetised data - and it's just replayed later.

(That's skipping a whole mess of detail, but...)

Re:I'll bite...

[HarveyBirdman]

FWIW, you might want to look at the DirecTivo- Tivos integrated with a DirecTV tuner. I have the Hughes HDVR2 (they changed the name just recently to SD-something) with dual tuners.

1. It records the original data stream off the satellite, so playback is as good as the original. There's no high, medium, low quality settings on this one. There's about 35 hours on this model, which I find is way more than enough.

2. With DirecTV, the monthly Tivo charge is reduced to $6. Personally, I make good living, so this really doesn't bother me. If it pays for new features now and then, fine. And the guide data is pretty good.

3. Tivo simply has the best software. I love 'puters, but I can't imagine wasting the time to set up some kludge using Windows or Linux or whatever. Nothing beats an integrated box for $199. Nice conflict resolution and the To Do list is more useful than you might initially think. Nice search functions, too.

Re:The corporate PVR killer, a MythTV distro

[The Irish Jew]

Have a look at KnoppMyth Haven't tried it yet as I didn't have any trouble getting MythTV working, but it might be what you're looking for.

DTV set-top boxes

[Nexus Seven]

Actually, Nokia has been making Digital TV decoder set-top boxes for a while in the UK - probably Europe, too.

I can't imagine it's much of a stretch, therefore, to move into the PVR market.

Re:DTV set-top boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Well - That might be true, but it's NOT true when it comes to set top boxes. Even if Nokia has done some branding of bought-in hardware, most of their digital-TV set top boxes are made within Nokia, by Nokia engineers.

Re:Do one thing, do it well

[rjkm]

Get a clue.

Nokia has been bulding TVs and (first analog and then) digital satellite receivers for a LONG time. I think this even started before their phone business.

The Linux DVB API was developed by them about 3 years ago and they funded implementations of it for the most popular cards here in Europe.
The API (after some changes) basically is still in use and part of the 2.6.x kernel.

This is also not the first digital PVR box developed by Nokia. Not all of them made it to the market but at least one is available here for months now.

Intended for European Users

[-tji]

The information on TV reception mentions Analog and Digital reception. For Digital, they talk about DVB digital Satellite TV, which is used in Europe. In the US, we use a terrestrial broadcast mechanism (ATSC).

Zenith/LG has an . But it doesn't do satellite..

Tivo has been rumored to have an HD/ATSC DirecTivo for forever. Who knows if it will ever come out.

Re:Do one thing, do it well

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they started out as a paper company. Tires came later.

European TV rules.

[JonMartin]

Not what is on TV, but how you get it. In Europe there is a standard that all digital (cable and satellite) signals use. There is a standard for decryption units/cards. When you sign up for service with FooTelly(tm) they give you a card. You can then stick that card in any third party decoder box (like this Nokia) and it will work. Great for competition and do-it-yourself-ers (check this project out).

But not here in North America. Nope, everything here has to be proprietary. We have to "let the market decide" (translation: "let the corps screw us over"). The result less competition and little innovation. I am guessing Europe is at least three years ahead on TV tech and they are pulling away because they picked ONE standard and ran with it.

Re:European TV rules.

[pe1chl]

You may have misunderstood the situation in Europe.
There is a single DVB standard, the encryption is standard, but the entitlement management isn't.
There is a single standard interface to content access modules (it is very much like PCMCIA) and you will have to install a module in your receiver that in turn accepts a smartcard from your provider.
There are several systems in use (Mediaguard, Viaccess, Conax, Cryptoworks, Nagravision, Betacrypt to name a few).

Receivers exist that support all systems without additional module, but of course they are always under close scrutiny and often removed from the market after they turn out to be "to open".

Why? Europe is not a single market for the entertainment industry. They are about the only industry that escaped the big "there has to be equal competition everywhere" dogma of the EU.
So, when a German entertainment firm launches a service for German customers, Dutch customers are not allowed to view that, not even to subscribe to it!
The only way to view other countries' services is through hacking. Which largely explains the large amount of activity you see in this field.

The entertainment industry of course does not get the message. Like with MP3 distribution over the Internet. They try to get out the message that they are treated unjustly, camouflaging the fact that they themselves are unjustly handling their customers.

Re:Do one thing, do it well

[Anonymous Coward]

Right.. get clue:

The roots of Nokia go back to the year 1865 with the establishment of a forest industry enterprise in South-Western Finland by mining engineer Fredrik Idestam. Elsewhere, the year 1898 witnessed the foundation of Finnish Rubber Works Ltd, and in 1912 Finnish Cable Works began operations. Gradually, the ownership of these two companies and Nokia began to shift into hands of just a few owners. Finally in 1967 the three companies were merged to form Nokia Corporation.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Nokia strengthened its position in the telecommunications and consumer electronics markets through the acquisitions of Mobira, Salora, Televa and Luxor of Sweden. In 1987, Nokia acquired the consumer electronics operations and part of the component business of the German Standard Elektrik Lorenz, as well as the French consumer electronics company Oceanic. In 1987, Nokia also purchased the Swiss cable machinery company Maillefer.

In the late 1980s, Nokia became the largest Scandinavian information technology company through the acquisition of Ericsson's data systems division. In 1989, Nokia conducted a significant expansion of its cable industry into Continental Europe by acquiring the Dutch cable company NKF.

Since the beginning of the 1990's, Nokia has concentrated on its core business, telecommunications, by divesting its information technology and basic industry operations.

(More at http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,1125,00.html)

DVB *isn't* Satellite...

[Jack Hughes]

... It is a "terrestrial" system. i.e. lots of big antenna masts stuck on hills all over the place.

You can find out about the UK's digital transmitters here.

Of course, DVB is just an output format.. DTT (digital terrestrial tv) is a way of delivering DVB).

Re:DVB *isn't* Satellite...

[konfoo]

DVB IS satellite. DVB-T is terrestrial. Its all about the modulation system. Sorry.

Re:Convergance again?

[evilandi]

stay out of markets for which they are not suited

Er, mate, Nokia have been making superb digital TV set-top-boxes for the European market for donkey's years. Mobile phones are the new market for them, they've been making STBs for longer than that.

Ask anyone about the UK's digital terrestrial system (multi-channel digital TV through an aerial- no subscription, no cable, no dish required) and everyone will tell you that Nokia is one of the top three brands- faster channel switching, faster menus, faster multimedia content, and it doesn't crash.

Re:What's a PVR?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

That is a VERY GOOD suggestion, thanks.

And I would like to add, from your reference, that if using the acronym tag, even IE (granted, 5+) will display it, although withouth the nice dashed underline Mozilla puts out.

Example: (hold mouse over to try)

PVR

Code for the example:

<acronym title="Personal Video Recorder">PVR</acronym>

Now for the problem: I just found out the hard way that Slashdot strips-out the acronym tag, d'oh! Editors, take note, this is something usefull!!!