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Sony PC/DVR Incorporates 7 Tuners & 1TB HD
GFD writes "TechJapan has an article on the 'Type X' Viao PC/DVR that will have 1TB and 7 tuners - allowing the recording of 7 shows at the same time. It also has a very cool look."
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Isn't this overkill? What consumer would honsestly need this! When have there ever been seven TV programs worth watching on at the same time?
~c
Ok, not complaining, I really just wanted to know how much the thing will cost and when I can get me one... Oh and of course, will it be cheaper than any other 1TB HD device for offline storage.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
....I'll buy it in no time flat, even if it costs US$2,200. :-) But we really don't need that many tuners built into the box--maybe three to four at most.
You have to wonder if Sony is using licensed TiVo technology for this box.
That's enough for anyone to record pretty much whatever they want to for enough viewing for a few weeks... or all the fansubbed anime on Animesuki.com for a few days.
Question, though - what manner of hookups are we talking about here? How many RF, A/V, S-video, and optical links must be necessary for this many recorders?
You'd think that the cabling alone would be prohibitive.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Recording 7 channels simultaneously for a week solid to a single drive has gotta take one seriously impressive bus. What are the data flow rates going to be for that? Something slightly ridiculous is my bet. And the hard drive write speed? Since it's unlikely to be a single terabyte-sized drive, I wonder how many drives are in this thing. One for each channel? And is it going to cost the earth? Probably...
"allowing the recording of 7 shows at the same time"
Thats great but its hard enough to find one good show on tv, is there really a time that 7 good shows are on?
it will look sexy, but will be crippled by some DRM, I'm afraid.
The article is slashdotted already, but what DRM will it have? Sony has too much to protect (Sony Music) to allow people to enjoy their hardware fully.
I've had a Sony MD, you could transfer from your PC to the MD with the USB cable, but what you recorded on the MD (even if recorded with an analog device, you couldn't transfer it back to your PC...)
I hope they haven't done the same kind of mistake: making a great hardware, with functionalities crippled by some DRM.
-- No signature yet.
In a non-home setting, this device could work really well as a video surveilance setup. I mean B&W vid @ low res, you could channel 7-sources into it, and keep a great deal of informatio stored. Now I am sure thats not the purpose of this, but that is the only thing I can think of, for seven tuners at one time. Unless you really want to watch every station's take on a presidential message, im sure the slight camera angles make all the difference in the world ;)
je suis parce que j'aime
Four people in the house watching different programs and two recording to watch later doesn't seem too far fetched.
But I agree, it does sound like overkill.
I'm thinking that the 1TB of space is constructed from some kind of RAID array; a single 1TB drive would be incredibly expensive to make at the present time. 120GB hard drives can be had for a (somewhat) reasonable price. Tied together in SATA RAID, I think that you could get something near the transfer rate you'd need. They also don't mention the quality of the recordings; when you have 7 channels piped at once it might start dropping frames and reducing resolution.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Analog = RIP. And dedicated separate digital tuners/descramblers = teh suck for timeshifting etc.
:(
What I need is a 1TB box with 2-3 *digital* (DVB-C or DVB-T for us euros) tuners, and with a Conax descrambler smartcard support. So I could record at least one channel while watching another (or maybe 2 channels while watching third). In full digital glory. HDTV support would be a bonus, but that is not happening in europe at such a fast rate - I think broadcasters first want to move to digital, and then its easier to reuse the spare frequencies for HDTV signals once analog is dead and buried.
But no. Sony is designing an obsolete analog tuner box with a ridiculous pricetag...
I thought they were meant for wasting money, guzzling fuel, polluting, creating false feelings of security and safety, increasing the feeling of separation from the dirty real world and giving people an excuse to drive badly. Thus 99% of people use them properly!
How is someone ever going to find seven shows they want to watch at once in general
.... but the real problem is finding the time to actually go back and watch all those shows.
Sometimes there probably are actually seven things on at the same time that I want to see. Fox News, Discovery, TLC, TechTV, Sci-Fi and/or Comedy Central, local news, and the Discovery Science channel
I only have 2 tuners on my PVR that I have now and I find myself going through and deleting unwatched shows a couple of times per week.
One of the great things about tiVo is how it buffers the show you're watching so you can pause rewind and skip commercials. When you change channels the buffer is gone and you can't rewind the new channel etc.
With this device you could (presumably) set it up to buffer your favorite channels as well as the one you're watching. You could watch one show and then jump over to CNN (or whatever) and rewind to watch the start of the news broadcast, then jump over to ESPN and watch the baseball game etc.
After reading this I was struck by the fact that we spend so much time watching and so little time doing. That is probably why humans are becoming a rather chubby lot. One doesn't see a pride of lions watching another pride of lions on a glass screen doing lion-like things.
It makes me very sad that we have become life voyeurs. Now we have a device that can rivet our buttocks even deeper into our recliners. I think we need to go for a walk, talk to friends, and turn the T.V. off.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
I'd have to agree. Before I buy a PVR its going to have to be able to handle at least two digital streams at once, preferably by directly storing the compressed video data without reencoding, ala DirecTivo.
Frankly, I'd prefer if the cable company would just store all this stuff at THEIR end, dump all the broadcast channels, and use the bandwidth to feed the cable modem system so I can watch anything I want, whenever I want, without having to make copies at my end. I'll even pay extra so I don't have to watch commercials, and I'll be happy to tell the networks which shows I watch, when I watch them, and if I thought they sucked or not.
They can even set up 'suggested lineups' for different viewing preferences so it works kind of like regular TV where shows come on at regular times, but they can talior the steams for more groups. This would let them take advantage of multicast capabilities and let them hit viewers with highly directed programming (ie, I want the sci-fi and technology stream, no chick flicks, and no horror-pretending-to-be-sci-fi, but my wife might want the cooking, home-improvement, and drama stream).
It would be nice to still have the stream cached locally so I can pause whatever I'm watching, but I don't really want to have to keep a terrabyte system sitting around so I can watch older stuff, that should be provided by the cable company.
Come on networks, use your imagination, this stuff shouldn't be too hard! I've already got purchase on demand, streaming, pause-able, rewindable digital movies, start doing it with regular TV too!
Because you don't have to worry about which shows you record. You set it up to record your favorite channels, let it run constantly, and time-shift everything. You can then watch what you want, when you want. According to the article, it will hold a weeks worth of programming from seven channels.
What good is 7 tuners if I have digital cable or sattelite?
They need to come up with a standardized way to interface tuner cards in TVs or generic set top boxes.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
SUV Sport utility Vehicle.
my jeep had the sport taken right out of it along with it's 4WD, but it stioll does utility well. I get groceries every week in it because ther simply isn't enough cargo capacity on my 50cc motor scooter. so yes, I don't use it as the trail blazing, mud slinging, fold down rear seats for humping in the back machine it was designed to be.
Before I buy a PVR its going to have to be able to handle at least two digital streams at once...
.50 cents a day for the privilige of never needing to sit through another commercial again. It was, and is WELL, WELL worth the price, and I just can't concieve having to deal with those inane, insulting, idiotic commercials again.
Whatever. I figured, at about $300 for my Tivo, if it lasted two years, that's
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I'll even pay extra so I don't have to watch commercials, and I'll be happy to tell the networks which shows I watch, when I watch them, and if I thought they sucked or not.
If you're not watching any commercials, why would they give a shit which shows you watched or what you thought about them?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
If you're not watching any commercials, why would they give a shit which shows you watched or what you thought about them?
A little something called Product Placement
"TV BAD! DOING THINGS GOOD! LOLOL"
/. thread that has anything to do with TV
/me sighs and crawls back into his hole.
There are so many downmods that suit this it's not even funny.
1) Offtopic - this crap has little to do with the actual PVR.
2) Redundant - It's been said on every
3) Troll - The poster is likely just wanting a response from anyone who still likes TV.
4) Overrated - granted this one's subjective, but it seems to fit.
But despite all these perfectly suitable mods, you give this rehashed, regurgitated crap Insightful?
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Only on Slashdot can you take a bogus URL thrown out there as a joke, wrap HTML around it to make it clickable, and get moderated "informative" for it.
I write in my journal
Not exactly. The key point to remember is that people watch shows *not* networks/channels. I watch The Sopranos, I don't watch HBO. I watch The West Wing, I don't watch NBC. Etc.
What the grandparent was getting at is that we currently have the technology to completely eliminate channels and simply offer shows. The current setup where shows are offered on channels is technologically obsolete.
We want to change from the model where networks broadcast shows on channels to one where the network-type companies are more like movie production companies. Where they finance the production of new shows and then send them to the distributor (probably the cable/satellite companies) who stores them for purchase by the viewer (then the shows are streamed/downloaded).
Of course, networks are going to fight this all the way. But the continued evolution of tivo-like devices makes it technologically inevitable.
I have a Tivo, which is great and all with 2 tuners. However, all that time that I am doing other things while the Tivo is working cuts into my time that I start watching the tube. Then I have a lot of 'whatever' to watch. I think that 7 shows at once is a little too much...and my 100g drive that came in my Tivo is plenty. (Atleast for me)
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
I'd love to have a system where the cabel companies feed stuff to us from their PVR dump, and then we store it on our harddrives with full control. Then I wouldn't have to wait for a certain time for a show to come on, and I can watch the news whenever I feel like it instead of only when a show isn't recording...
:)
I know I know, buy the two tuner version