DVD / Hard Drive Recorder With 28-Day Capacity

fenimor writes "Panasonic today unveiled new DVD-recoders with astonishing 709 hours video recording capacity. The top model has onboard components of a good PC: 400GB hard drive, Ethernet port, broadband receiver, SD Memory Card slot, and a PCMCIA card. The DVD recorder is the fastest in the industry as it can record a one-hour program onto DVD-R disc in just 56 seconds. Internet access allows users to program recording through cell phones or PCs while away from home."

Comments

burnin'

[dirvish]

Oooh, that will go nicely with my Netflix account. ;)

Re:burnin'

[Nos.]

Exactly... I think we're going to see some decrease in sales of DVD's as products like this start becoming popular (and cheaper). How long before the MPAA attacks these sort of devices (again) especially ones like this that will allow trading of content very easily.

plenty

[el_salvador]

of space for the sex lifes of all slashdot readers i guess

Re:plenty

[Oxy the moron]

Though I was thinking that the majority of /. sex lives could be contained on the now dead floppy disk. =]

One hour in 56 seconds

[jrumney]

The DVD recorder is the fastest in the industry as it can record a one-hour program onto DVD-R disc in just 56 seconds.

Easy! All it needs to do is detect and remove the ad breaks.

Re:One hour in 56 seconds

[jrumney]

seriously, doesn't 56 seconds seem like a typo?

Not really. It does seem like the marketing version of the story though, as they are certainly talking about raw write time, not including compression time etc. My guess is the steps go like this:

1. Capture one hour of TV.
2. Possibly cheat by removing ad breaks, leaving around 40 minutes.
3. Compress to MPEG4. Think VHS quality, not near-DVD.
4. Defrag hard drive
5. Start timer
6. Write to DVD
7. Stop timer: 56 seconds.

Re:One hour in 56 seconds

[DotDotSlasher]

If it's coming out this month, they must be using a 12x DVD burner. A DVD stream is about 1MB/sec, so 12x is 12MB/sec. 56sec at 12MB/sec is 672MB per hour of video. I'm sure they have MPEG-2 streams where an hour takes up 672MB.
But, since 400GB can store 709 hours, they must have a quality setting of about 400000MB/709hr=565MB/hr. Maybe they're allowing some overhead in their write-to-DVD time.
So they're not recording "normal" DVD video, a typical movie is about 1MB/sec. They're saving off MPEG streams to DVD-R which save video at about 160KB/sec. Much less than DVD-quality and doesn't play back in your DVD player -- but should play in their fancy player.

Cost inefficient?

[scowling]

OK. I have a computer with video in, a DVD+-R drive and 300 GB of hard drive space. Just about anybody upgrade their system with the same for about $400. Right? A little more if you want digital video in.

And it's user-friendly. Got a remote control and everything.

So how much is Panasonic's system, and how would it be better for me than what I've already got.

Re:Cost inefficient?

[j-turkey]

So how much is Panasonic's system, and how would it be better for me than what I've already got.

I've set up a few PC-based PVR's and the TiVo and Panasonic ReplayTV's that I've used kick the crap out of them all (I haven't seen MythTV yet).

The interface is cleaner, it's easier to use, there is very little to set up, it doesn't require a clunky PC, and integrates nicely with whatever you've got in your home entertainment system (except for HDTV).

What can it offer you? I don't know. Maybe you're superman with your gear and can set up a seamless MythTV install in minutes. I'm not, although I have the know-how to do what I need -- and in my house, I don't even own a TV, so it's all via my personal computer. The prepackaged systems are pretty cool though -- it's a compelling package no matter who you are.

IMO, where your PC is really cool is for things like watching DivX and other downloaded videos...trying to integrate it into a system that you can use every day. I don't mind using my OS for that -- but again, the TiVo and Replay systems are pretty compelling like that. Cheaper to run, and they just work.

Heh

[shutdown -p now]

I wonder if you can plug a webcam into one of those things. 700 hours... yep, no need to change tape too often, and that DVD burning speed will also be handy for archiving. But now you will always be able to tell your girlgriend what exactly she did at 16:34, 15 days ago.

How soon till it becomes illegal?

[gambit3]

Surely, we can't let these BLATANTLY piracy-inducing machines to make criminals of all our poor innocent children!!

Quick, someone call Jack Valenti!

Oh. Duh

[boomgopher]

I first thought "28-Day Capacity" meant the contents disappear after 28 days, and that this was just another MPAA scheme. :)

28 Days

[Mateito]

DVD / Hard Drive Recorder With 28-Day Capacity

Obviously, to fill that capacity you'll need one of these.

Okay... so its a dumb joke. Give me a break. I've got a chronic ear-wax build up and its giving me a migraine.

How can you WATCH that much TV?!?

[the_skywise]

I've got a Tivo with 120 hours on it. I can't KEEP UP with it. Half the stuff "spills off" for having too many copies (I stick with the default 5 episodes max for most things) or the suggestions just time out.

Granted, it's nice to be able to thumb through that much content when I don't feel like my normal stuff, but 700 hours worth!? (Yeah, there's always archival and keeping your DVD library on the hard drive is convenient but... c'mon... how hard is it to pull the DVD out of the case and put it into the drive?)

700 hours of TV!

[Kotukunui]

Great. Now all we need is some decent programs to record. I don't think there has been 700 hours of quality television in the history of the medium. (called a medium because it is neither rare nor well done - ba-dum-chhh!)

Finally a product that people want.

[Facekhan]

As to a commercial deletion feature. I will settle for a gain detector (in case you had not noticed commercials are significantly louder than the program itself) that creates a seperate chapter for commercial breaks that can be skipped easily if the viewer desires. That will satisfy the broadcasters that the commercials are being seen, while letting the users do what they have every right to do, skip the ads on recordings.

This will be handy...

[penguinoid]

a very useful part for my electrical engineering project,
which I will be setting up in the girl's bathroom.

Re:709 hours into 400GB?

[Eric Sharkey]

That's around 160 KB/s, not Kb/s. That works out to 1.2Mb/s, which is passable for basic quality video.

not really

[shutdown -p now]

Actually, I doubt you can fit the pr0n collection of a single slashdotter on that 400Gb drive.

Remote Programming(!)

[ackthpt]

Internet access allows users to program recording through cell phones or PCs while away from home."

This would be highly welcome as I'm often away from home and miss shows I might want to record, also could give peace of mind that it is programmed to record the show you really really really don't want to miss.

Of course, it being PC-like and on the internet, I wonder how secure it is. I'd hate to got on a trip in July, hoping this is recording stages of the Tour de France and coming home to a title "SUXX0RS11 UR 0WN3D1!" and a mess of Oprah shows.

the horror, the horror

Re:How's that supposed to work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see.

400 GB/709 HR = 577 MB per minute.

1x DVD is about 4.8 GB/HR.
8X DVD is 8 times faster or 600 MB per minute.

PCMCIA

[Sunkist]

Personally, I am in favor of devices that carry PCMCIA because I like saying that acronym.

I have an older model

[SiliconEntity]

I have an older model Panasonic DVD recorder with hard drive, the DMR-E100H. It's got a 120 GB disk which they describe as holding 160 hours. I usually record in higher quality so it holds half that or less.

It does have a high-speed record feature and can record an hour DVD in a couple of minutes. I'm not sure how it works. Sometimes it seems like the quality is not as high when I do it like this, but maybe that's my imagination.

I also have a TiVo and what I miss most on the Panasonic is the lack of a program guide. The best you can do is use the VCR Plus codes from TV Guide but otherwise you have to manually enter the time and channel. And the worst is, you have to manually enter the program name! Using a letter grid that you move a cursor around with the remote control! It's awful. I hate it when I record a movie with a long title, but I'm too compulsive to allow myself to abbreviate it.

The remaining major problem is that you can't copy from a DVD to the HD, you can only go in the other direction. I'd think this was a copy protection thing, but you actually can do it if you use a DVD-RAM format disk, just not a DVD-video. So once you back up something from the HD to a DVD, you can't copy it back to re-edit it or burn to a new DVD. I don't know whether the new box will fix this.

Pioneer already did this and has TiVo to boot

[Whatchamacallit]

Pioneer already did this and has TiVo to boot. DVR-57H DVD Recorder Player with Hard Disc Record and TiVo.

Sure it's only 120 Hours but who really cares? I get 9 hours with a Series 1 TiVo right now and it's fine. I could upgrade it to 130 by replacing the one drive with two big one's but seriously, 9 hours is enough for me.

I don't record movies most of the time. It's just shows that I watch and most of them are an hour.

Frankly just waiting for both the Pioneer and Panasonic devices to drop in cost and I will buy them. But the Pioneer is $1,800.00 for 120 Hours plus you still need to subscribe to TiVo or buy a lifetime connection. I would rather buy a new PowerBook then spend the money on a new TiVo when I am still not exceeding the capacity of the series 1 unit I have now.

Seriously, how many would really record a lot onto DVD just to avoid buying a series on DVD when it's released at the end of a season?

Why rip movies from HBO, etc. to DVD when you could just stream it from Comcast or rent it?

I have friends who rent and rip DVD's using 321 Studio's software. But I tell ya, it's easier for me to rent the iffy movies and buy the ones I care about. I just don't have the time to rip to DVD.

Panasonic

[payndz]

Panasonic's DVD recorders that I used in my (not long past) days as a tech reviewer, I rated pretty highly. Yes, they had their annoying quirks, but probably less than the equivalent Pioneer-clone units, and certainly a lot less than the Philips +RW machines. It comes down to format - Panasonic, IIRC, uses DVD-RAM, and as yet none of the three (three!) rival formats have yet established a convincing lead in the market.

The big question is, can they still be snapped up before Broadcast Flag compatibility becomes mandatory?

Re:A 'good' PC?

[sl4shd0rk]

>If 'good' is 400GB, I wonder what constitutes 'great?'

A 400 GB model that comes pre-loaded with porn.