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."

Picture quality for "28 days" level will suck hard

[Rude Turnip]

My 80Gb Tivo will record 80 hours (3 1/3 days) of video at "Basic Quality," which is equivalent to a low quality VHS recording (by VHS standards). Therefore, a 400Gb hard drive, using Tivo's standards anyway, will yield 16 2/3 days of video--yet they claim 28 days at that capacity. If that is the case, the picture will suck so much that you'll have to up the recording quality level and will get much less than 28 days worth of video.

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.

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.

Re:Typo: I think it's a DVR not DVD.

[BenFranske]

No! RTFA, it's a combined unit (Panasonic has other ones already availible) think DVR with the capability to burn DVDs. The article headline is correct (well maybe not about the 28 day part unless you don't mind your video looking like crap)

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.

Re:Picture quality for "28 days" level will suck h

[BenFranske]

"Excellent Picture Quality" is in the eye of the beholder. I still think that VHS looks better than SVCD OR those DIVX files you speak of. Besides, if they allow burning to DVD they are probably using MPEG2.

Re:709 hours into 400GB?

[ashre]

It's perfectly possible to get (pretty low quality) broadcast video into 160kB/s (Bytes not bits).

Tivo varies from 192kB/s for its lowest quality (giving 12 and a half days on this machine) to 672kB/s for the highest (giving about 3 and a half days).

28 days will only allow VCD quality but people put up with VHS for 20 years, and that was worse than VCD.

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.

Alternate product info links (thanks Google News)

[MojoStan]

BTW, the model number of the top model is the DMR-E500H (can't find link on Panasonic's site [panasonic.com] yet). Here's two more links with product info, both based on the press release:

Panasonic Unveil New DVRs [dvd-recordable.org] (includes photo)

Panasonic Unveils New DVRs [designtechnica.com]

Important additional details I noticed:

• will be introduced in Japanese market Sept 21 (no info on non-Japanese markets in press release)
• recording capacity of 709 hours of video in EP mode (?)
• offers high-speed dubbing from hard disk drive onto DVD-RAM at speeds of 40x and onto DVD-R disc up to 64x in EP mode
• no pricing details in the press release

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.

Re:How's that supposed to work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or for people who didn't understand the above:

1 hour of recording for this device = 577 MB
8x writing = 10.57 MB/s

577 MB / 15.57 MB/s = 55 s