TiVo Buries the VCR 210
Biul drolly writes "Apparently, TiVo's marketing department had difficulty with figurative speech in school." Specifically, News.com reports that TiVo held a mock funeral for the VCR this week. From the article: "While the death of VCRs and the VHS format has been long expected, it may be a bit premature to announce its arrival. Some 97 million households still have at least one VCR, according to the International Recording Media Association. However, TiVo's stunt does point out how fragile the VCR market is. Panasonic and Toshiba still make VCRs, as do lesser-known companies such as Lite-On, a Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer that sells its recorders through Wal-Mart Stores. But several manufactures have quit making VCRs. Brian Lucas, a spokesman for Best Buy, said that the retailer carries less than 10 models of standalone VCRs now. Ten years ago, it carried more than two dozen."
Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And TiVo will be buried by... (Score:5, Interesting)
vcr with a hard drive (Score:2, Interesting)
What I would ideally like is just something that I can set my own programs for, just like a vcr, and it records them. Then, I can watch them later; just like a vcr, except with a hard drive. I can set the time on my own, thank you very much, and set up my own recording times. If the tivo box allowed me to do that without having to pay their stupid subscription fee, then I would have bought one already. Sure, I wouldn't have their tv guide and preference matching and all that fancy shit, but I really don't care. If the tivo box would just let me set some start and end times to record, they would have made some money off of me.
And please don't say mythTV. Sure, it's nice and cool and open source and teh shizit and all that, but if I could just buy a ready-made box with a decent small remote for ~$250 or less, that would be great. I don't want to spend over $500 for a computer that I have to do a bunch of install crap on (and possibly have to build), and then not have a decent remote control for it; and $500 is the lowest realistic amount for a computer that can handle the video feeds decently. No, a remote keyboard isn't an option since that's another $50 at least just for that and it's big and clunky and looks weird sitting in your living room. All I want is a box that works like a vcr, but records to a hard drive, and that's small and just sits on top of my tv and has a normal remote. No big computer boxes please.
So, does anybody actually know of such a device? They sure don't exist at best buy. All they have is tivo and tivo clones. Somebody help me.
Re:vcr with a hard drive (Score:3, Interesting)
There [solarpc.com] are a [d1.com.au] few [mythic.tv] companies doing just that. The prices are much more than 299 though. It would be cheaper to build it yourself, or even to find a friendly linux geek who will do it for kicks for you, or for a little bit of money.
You'd still have to put out for the parts.
I'm purchasing my own bits and pieces to build a MythTV box little by little. It does take some time, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.
H.
Still very useful for professionals (Score:2, Interesting)
If you need to show the work in progress to someone, the fastest, cheapest and most reliable way is to output from your Final Cut/Avid to VHS.
Sure, you could make a DVD, but many editors don't know how to do that, and if they do know, they just don't have the time for it. The VHS is done in real time, and you can be sure there will be a player for it, and the tape will just play in it.
With a DVD, it will take at least twice the time of what you are recording, and maybe a lot more if you edit on older equipment, and you cannot even be really sure the disc will play on the DVD player that will be used. (I have received several self-made DVDs which play in my computer, but from which I get no sound out of my normal DVD player.)
Re:it works.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Buy a real DVD player, not the $19 Wallyworld special.
With decent error compensation, a badly scratched DVD player gives basically the same effect as a badly worn section of tape - Sure, you get digital crap instead of analog crap (I personally prefer static over giant blocky colors), but it doesn't need to skip.
Though admittedly, tape has a nice suit of armor, and only has one small section exposed at a time. I've always considered that one of the shortcomings of current optical discs, that they don't live in a replaceable-but-basically-sealed caddy of some sort. They come in bigger plastic cases, why not just shove that case directly in the player rather than needing to expose the disc itself?
And as a nice side effect, they would all have the exact same shape and size, making my CD collection look much tidier, rather than mostly little plastic boxes, with a few bigger plastic boxes, some pseudo-vinyl-like boxes, some paper envelopes, some "oh look at the book" boxes, and all the rest. Free clue for marketing weenies - I buy a CD for the music it contains. If it doesn't come in a standard jewel case, that gives me a reason not to buy it. And if it doesn't fit on a 4 7/8" high shelf, I'd rather download it illegally than buy your stupid novelty packaging.
WOW did I get side-tracked there. Okay, rant over. Done.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Interesting)