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Hardware

Video Storage And Hard Drive Manufacturers 254

Posted by timothy from the haitch-dee-tee-vee dept.
IrateSurf writes "A new column posted over at the Storage Supersite questions whether or not PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) are good for the hard drive industry. It's interesting, considering topics like whether the noise of a hard drive is worse than a VCR. The discussion is a response to an earlier column talking about the bad market for hard drive makers."
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Video Storage And Hard Drive Manufacturers More

Video Storage And Hard Drive Manufacturers

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  • If noise is an issue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:40PM (#4985157)
    It will lead to some manufacturer making quiet drives rather than the biggest and fastest possible. That's capitalism.

  • my hard drives (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vodak ( 119225 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:42PM (#4985169)
    Yeah Hard drive noise is bad but it's nothing like it used to be. I remember some of the older drives I had that made so much noise it scared away my cat. Of course I used to buy crappy hardware so the drives were bad to begin with.

    • Yeah Hard drive noise is bad but it's nothing like it used to be. I remember some of the older drives I had that made so much noise it scared away my cat.

      Still, there's nothing like the seismic rumble of one of the good old full-height 5.25" 20 megabyte Seagates starting up. And the squeak-squeak sounds of band-stepper actuators.

      Ahhh... remember the good old days where you always let the drive warm up for 20 minutes before you saved anything, because the old actuators didn't account for expansion and contraction of the platters and arm?

      I must resurrect one of those just for the fun of being able to stick, like, 4 MP3s on a drive which draws 12V @ 6A at startup.

      Of course I used to buy crappy hardware so the drives were bad to begin with.

      There was a company called Kalok which was producing mega-cheap hard disk drives in about 1995, before they got bought out by an even more fledgling JTS. They had a 100 megabyte 3.5" hard disk drive which was selling for about $75-$100 less than a comparable name-brand drive. 'Course, there was a catch... in fact, two of them.

      The Kalok had a band-stepper actuator - which is impressive because everything else from 40 megabytes and up seemed to have a voice-coil actuator. Needless to say, installing Windows 95 on a Kalok hard drive was a bad idea, since the system wrote to boot up logs and the like during startup - before the hard drive had a chance to warm up.

      The other catch reads like a bad joke: The hard drives were made in India.

    • Re:my hard drives (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sfe_software ( 220870 )
      I have a Maxtor 80 GB drive (5400 RPM, and I suspect it's a relabeled Quantum) that is pretty much silent. It looks just like the 13.6 GB Quantum drive that came in the Tivo, which is also pretty quiet (but not as quiet as the newer 80 GB).

      OTOH I had a Maxtor 7200 RPM 40 GB drive that I could hear spin up from two rooms over, and the idle (spinning) noise was pretty loud too. That drive died eventually, but all of Maxtor's 7200 RPM drives I've used (we used them in MySQL servers) were loud like that, though the Quantum Atlas 10k SCSI drives were like jets taking off on spinup...

      I'm pretty sure they already know how to make quieter drives, and it depends on the target application. Some of the Tivo drives run at 4400 RPM, and I'm sure there are many other tweaks that can be done. For realtime MPEG video, there's quite a bit of room to trade-off performance for speed, so any set-top box application can easily find quieter drives I'm sure.

      Going into a store (or a web site) and looking at drives, you rarely find any info on how much noise they make. But when you're building set-top boxes, planning to do a lot of business purchasing drives, I'm sure you will find that info quite easily...

      The Tivo is a LOT quieter than my VCR. I keep them both in an enclosed entertainment center (glass doors etc), and I never hear the Tivo.

  • HDD noise (Score:5, Informative)

    by mike449 ( 238450 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:43PM (#4985176)
    I've bought a Seagate HDD with fluid bearings recently, and I am very impressed. I don't hear it at all, except when it spins up. Its noise is well below the CPU fan noise (and I have a quiet Zalman one).
    My concern about the PVR application is HDD reliability, not the noise.
    • I have an old 5.25 Fujitsu that is acceptably quiet when running. However, it sounds like an accelerating jet engine when spinning up, and it rumbles like an earthquake when moving the disk head. I can feel the tremors two rooms away when it does heavy disk accessing.

      How is the seeking noise on these new drives?

      • Re:HDD noise (Score:5, Informative)

        by gordyf ( 23004 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:07PM (#4985315)
        New drives have varying acoustic states which can be changed with manufacturer-provided software.

        IBM drives, for instance, have two modes, full-performance mode and quiet mode. Performance mode has the usual seek noise, although all modern drives are quite quiet, but quiet mode is absolutely silent. Even with my ear inches from the drive, I can't hear it seeking at all. It's eerie when you're loading windows and you can't hear your drive - makes you think it locked up. :)

        You can use the "IBM Feature Tool" to manage IBM drives' acoustic management, along with monitoring drive temperature and setting power-saving modes. Maxtor drives, from what I've heard, have three modes, quiet, performance and a blend of the two.

        The schemes used to reduce seek noise introduce a slight penalty to seek time, however, but in many applications seek time is not that important (such as PVRs, where high throughput is needed). Quiet mode makes defragging take noticably longer, though.

    • Re:HDD noise (Score:3, Informative)

      by mackstann ( 586043 )
      yep yep, the Barracuda IV's and V's are amazingly quiet. You simply do not hear them, under any normal circumstances. to hear the drive, you need an absolutely silent room, and a silent or nearly silent computer, and then if you try hard enough you can hear the seeks going tick tick, but its still faint. if you put your ear on the thing, you'll definitely hear them, but its impressive how quiet it is. but if you have *any* other noise in the room, even just low level background noise, you'll never hear the thing.

      My name is mackstann and I'm a Barracuda IV user.

    • My vote's on the Seagate too. I bought a 60 GB Barracuda IV about a month ago to replace a dead drive (40 GB IBM 75GXP... made in Hungary... gah!). The drive now resides inside a Power Mac G4 Cube, and is almost completely silent; head activity is barely noticeable, and most of the time the video card fan is actually louder. I just wish Apple had used these from the beginning, since, compared to this, the IBM drive put out a genuine racket. Kudea to Seagate for a fine product.

  • Fluid Bearings? (Score:5, Informative)

    by deathcow ( 455995 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:44PM (#4985183)

    I have to say, bought three of these Seagate Barracuda IV's with the new fluid bearings, and they are extremely quiet. I wouldn't see one of these drives raising anyones hackles. Hell, have you heard how loud some DVD players are?? I've got a couple that the entire chassis vibrates!
  • Hard drive noise is a quiet hum while most VCRs sound like rampant screeching, hard to compare them.

  • Sound proofing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by div_2n ( 525075 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:46PM (#4985195)
    If the sound does become a problem, how about adding a little sound proof (dampening) enclosure around it?

    Just a thought.

    • Heat! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Heat is the enemy. If you sound proof your box, then the terrorists... err, heat has won.

    • Re:Sound proofing (Score:2, Informative)

      by dpp ( 585742 )
      If the sound does become a problem, how about adding a little sound proof (dampening) enclosure around it?

      I have my hard drive in an acoustic enclosure [quietpc.com] from www.quietpc.com [quietpc.com], and have been very happy with it. The only drawbacks are that hotter drives may overheat, and you need to put the whole thing in a 5.25" drive bay.

    • Instead of soundproofing the box,
      why not just use a network server, and put the drive(s) in another room.

      Cheap taps, (could have one per tv), no drive noise or fan noise.

  • Never mind the PVRs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:47PM (#4985205) Homepage
    If the HDD manufacturers are thinking that's going to save them, they're in for a surprise. Hard drives (like most other PC hardware) are becoming commodities, and the market is in for a long-due consolidation. IBM is already out of the biz. In a few years (say, end of 2005) there will be just a few companies making them. How many sound card companies existed in the 90s? How many today? Ditto the video card, modem, processor (we hardly knew ya Cyrix) and so on.

    Unless of course PVRs suddenly become hotter than DVD players in the consumer market, in which case I suppose demand will work things out. But the PVR is too much of a tech toy right now. I can't see grandma using one day to day to record her soap opera. Remember, millions of people out ther can't get rid of the blinbking 12:00 thing in their VCRs to save their lives.

    Noise levels are the least of their problems, I dare say.

    • How many sound card companies existed in the 90s? How many today? Ditto the video card, modem, processor (we hardly knew ya Cyrix) and so on.

      Sound cards, video cards, and modems all come embedded on the motherboard now. They usually aren't the highest quality, but they are good enough for 90% of the people, which is why there are only a few companies manufacturing high end replacements now. As for Cyrix, their chips were just crap so they never caught on.

      Remember, millions of people out ther can't get rid of the blinbking 12:00 thing in their VCRs to save their lives. Noise levels are the least of their problems, I dare say.

      I do agree with that point.

    • Re:Never mind the PVRs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dreadlocks ( 637491 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:24PM (#4985375)
      ---But the PVR is too much of a tech toy right now. I can't see grandma using one day to day to record her soap opera. Remember, millions of people out ther can't get rid of the blinbking 12:00 thing in their VCRs to save their lives.---

      the PVR is still a misunderstood toy now. Unfortunately, people still don't get it.

      When they were clearing out the showstoppers I found one for $80 after some rebate. I was talking to my office mate across the hall about how cool they were, because he was constantly whining about missed shows (forgot to put the tape in etc). I offered to pick it up for him (to be paid back of course), but he declined. He then went and bought another VCR to juggle more tapes. I'm sorry, but at $80 (no activation), you gotta be afraid of new technology or something to avoid a deal like that! Well, it went to my brother who appreciates it.

      My mother 65 and father 83 (grandparents!!) have one and love it. It was only after they saw it being used at my brother's house and how it caputured shows that they decided they had to have one. They really can be easier than a VCR to program.

      Other than the setup (which I handled over the phone) they have not had any issues with it.

      The PVR manufacturers should push them hard and offer a 30 day money back risk free sort of deal also. Getting them in the door is the hard part, but once they are in a home more tend to follow. I bet the growth of the industry is like the home PC market, people buying second and third machines with a small to moderate percentage being first time owners. I have 2 PVRs and 2 computers (well, I'm one data point at least)

      • The blinking 12:00 thing is not because people don't know how to set it. It is because they do not care about how to set it. In fact, my vcr doesn't have its time set, because I simply don't care about it. What the hell is it useful for, anyway? Programming those things involves pushing many buttons in a completely illogical sequence and provides few tangible benefits.

        • Re:Never mind the PVRs (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Bobartig ( 61456 )
          My vcr has no time read out whatsoever. It still knows what time it is (reads it from the cable signal, so you don't have to set it even), and records shows just fine. At least, it would if it weren't in a box, thanks to ReplayTV ;)

          The thing about PVR's is that both Tivo's and Replays are very well engineered devices. Any /.'er who time shifts broadcast television who hasn't tried one yet is SHOOTING themselves in the foot. With all the enthusiasm over cool time-saving gadgets, and good (humane) user interfaces, it amazes me that in all these PVR stories, tons of /.'ers talk about how they set their two VCR's to pick up shows during the week. PVR's offer 10x the functionality and are a lot easier to use. The magic of PVR's is the transparency of the technology. It doesn't require a tape every week, no rewinding, and it manages content dynamically based on a set of user-defined rules.

          Besides a lack of archiving function (ok, my roommate has a pretty good method that involves streaming MPEG2 off the box over TCP/IP to a G4, then scrubbing the video etc.. but that's besides the point) PVR's bring television watching to a new level.
      • i have to agree. my mom got sold on one by a salesman for dish sattelite, and so we had it; i had a pool party and left the tv running before everyone got there, ended up recording the simpsons and southpark magically.... anyways, after 20 people watching me pause, go get food, come back and play, and then rewind to the beginning so people could watch it again, they were pretty much sold. once someone sees how useful they are in real life, it's hard to persuade them that they dont' need one. i think 3 more families have gotten one since i "demonstrated" it that one night. i sure as hell would like one at the dorm...
    • (we hardly knew ya Cyrix)

      Get reacquainted [mini-itx.com]
    • "How many sound card companies existed in the 90s? How many today?"

      In the 90s? I don't know. Today? I can name 5 of the top of my head:

      Creative Labs
      Turtle Beach
      Guillemot
      Terratec
      Yamaha

      There are just the consumer-level soundcard makers I can think of. There are a number of intergrated only makers (nVidia, ESS, Texas Instruments) and a whole load of pro soundcard makers.

  • Noise? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry@w a y ga.net> on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:47PM (#4985210) Journal
    I get more noise from the whine when MediaT&Comcast compress their digital cable poorly, resulting in a high-pitched whine coming out of the audio of some stations (FoodTV for one, makes watching Good Eats a bit annoying).

    Then again, I have my Tivo sitting behind a piece of glass that makes up the entertainment center. But even with the door open, it's hard to hear the drive, and I've got an un-modded Tivo.

  • -1 Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:48PM (#4985212)
    Wow, talk about a flamebait article:

    "I do a fair amount of time-shifting now, using two S-VHS decks--a PVR would free me from the purchase of tapes and periodic cleaning," Jeff Carlson said. "But a PVR only duplicates the functions of a VCR; it doesn't provide any truly new-and-exciting, can't-live-without-it functions. "

    Only duplicates the functions of a VCR?

    - Random access to content
    - Pause live TV
    - Program it to tape a show instead of chunk of time on a particular channel
    - Commercial Skip
    - Dump it to your computer (more valuable than it'd seem)

    I don't think this guy was doing anything BUT looking for negatives about these things. He finds them noisy?

    Anyway, this guy doesn't really know what he's talking about. I think he's in the mode of "Well I can live without it if I just work a little harder". That's not a valid point or an educated opinion, it's a closed mind.
    • The article went on to quote extensively from someone who said why it wasn't like a VCR. I took the passage you site to be illustrative of the difficulty in getting across the benefits you listed to someone who hasn't experienced a PVR.

    • Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AxelTorvalds ( 544851 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:39PM (#4985436)
      People like him use VCRPlus numbers. They get them off of their digital cable or out of the TV guide or the tv guide channel they plug them in and then they do the rewind shuffle and remember counters. I've seen them do it. They are very similar, in a perverse way, to high end audiophiles who insist that nothing will ever perform as well as tubes and direct-drive turn tables. You can't argue with them, they are beyond reason and they've made their minds up regardless of continued innovation and fact. (You know the ones that think hiss and crackle add the "warmth," there are real audiophiles out there but there are also a fair number of cranks who are just luddites with money) There is something to be said for sticking with what works and enjoying it but many of us have to press onward and try to improve, even if we fall short.

      I spent close to 2 years developing a PVR at my ex company. I did the platform work. (GO LINUX!) Accoustics is everything, cheaper processor to get away from fans and fluidic barings in drives are the norm. I had a maxtor drive that I couldn't tell if it was on, seriously, dead on silent all of the time. Nothing sucks more than listening to the grinding noise when a PVR disk starts to "get tired" you can hear it through walls, at one point I didn't sleep for about a week because I couldn't not hear it. It's also a very minimal problem that is getting better and better, a good new PVR is probably more quite than a VCR.

      His points are valid. Nobody needs a PVR, until they see one in action. Nobody watches "that much TV" and then they see one and they're sold.

      Put a DVD player in them (been done, failed, it'll get done again) and you've got a single point of access to the digital TV experience. Explain it to a layperson who likes to not watch a lot of TV and it's a gadget. At my ex-company there were tons of people who didn't understand the PVR products until they saw them. His point about saving the industry is valid also, drives are already primarily being used for media. I've got a 600GB system and I can't even dent it with my "data," start putting movies, pictures and MP3s on it and I can fill it up.

      If you look at the health of Tivo and replay as companies and you know how easy it is to build a PVR (the code is simple, with digital TV, it's really pretty simple, it's moslty an excercise in cost reduction engineering) I kind of expect that PVRs may die and then come back in more favorable economic times. Tivo looks like they are getting traction and brand recog. but I have a hard time believing that Sony and Matsushita can't do it better and more cheaply if they choose to. I think that if a couple of Japanese companies put their minds to it they could simply wipe out Tivo and replay; they are hurting as it is and since the Japs aren't playing ball I'm guessing that nobody has figured out how to sell it to the masses and that's the bigger problem.


    • That's not flamebait. He's not saying that to provoke a reaction, he's saying it because he's dumb and doesn't know how wrong he is.

      You idiot!!! -- now THIS is flamebait

  • New and exciting features (Score:4, Interesting)

    by twoshortplanks ( 124523 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:53PM (#4985239) Homepage
    "But a PVR only duplicates the functions of a VCR; it doesn't provide any truly new-and-exciting, can't-live-without-it functions."

    Pausing and rewinding live TV is good example. I hate the culture that means that TV is so important that you can't be interrupted incase you miss anything. Ever had those "What was that they said?" moments? Where no-one heard the critical bit of dialog because someone was asking if anyone wanted a cup of tea? Well, I don't

    • Re:New and exciting features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:05PM (#4985306) Homepage
      Pausing and rewinding live TV is good example

      Whatever you want to make yourself believe.

      Is pausing/rewinding/ff'ing TV going to be the saving grace of mankind? Of course not. Is it a damn useful thing for watching TV? Yup.

      Frankly, being able to rehear that line I missed is a nice advantage. With a single press of a button, instead of the hopeless attempts of doing the same thing with a VCR. Of course, you could argue that that's irrelevant with live TV because any shows you actually care to watch are being taped anyway. And I'd agree with you.

      But what about the news or the weather? Sure, they'll repeat, or you can go get them off the net, but if you're watching TV already then going to the computer is a disconnect and an inconvienence. If you're watching TV, why on earth should you have to wait 15-30 minutes for the story to repeat if you've got rewind capability?

      Of course, you don't have the ability to pause live TV. Like so much else with PVRs, it's a situation where you don't get it until you've got it.

      But I presume that instead of grokking this you'll just continue snarky comments pretending that you're somehow superior to everyone else. Enjoy.

      • But I presume that instead of grokking this you'll just continue snarky comments pretending that you're somehow superior to everyone else. Enjoy.

        I am sorry if my comments have somehow offended you in a way that has escaped my attention, and you feel the need to insult me.

  • VCR? Oh brother. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MortisUmbra ( 569191 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @08:57PM (#4985263)
    Yes, lets see, lose all the fetures and the picture quality of a PVR and go back to a VCR? I think not. Besides, I don't have to remember to swap tapes when I want my favorite show recorded, or have to worry about swapping tapes, then in the interim someone decides to watch an old family movie and doesn't swap back, love that.

  • tv in the bedroom (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tzanger ( 1575 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:00PM (#4985279) Homepage

    This guy's pissing and moaning about his PVR in his bedroom. For fuck sakes, get the TV the hell out of there. What are you, in college or something? The bedroom's for sleeping and for fucking and quiet discussions with a loved one. It's not somewhere to have a TV or a telephone or even a laptop or PDA.

    Christ. I'm a geek and all but even I don't need to have the television or computer in every room of the house.

    • What other electronics placement decrees do you have for us, Feng Shui Hitler?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The bedroom's for sleeping and for fucking and quiet discussions with a loved one.

      I guess two out of three ain't bad. Wish I could just get some sleep then...

  • Why not stick them in DVD players? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:02PM (#4985285) Homepage
    I know it would never happen, but I'd like a DVD player that had a hard drive with space to cache say 10-15 of the most recently watched films so I didn't have to wait for menus and swap disks.

    Even if the hardware "expired" a copy after a week or so (to prevent permanent copies of rented films) it would still be useful.
    • I know it would never happen, but I'd like a DVD player that had a hard drive with space to cache say 10-15 of the most recently watched films so I didn't have to wait for menus and swap disks.

      I think most people watch a DVD once, and then put it away forever or for a long time. In light of that, what good would it do to cache the DVD to a hard drive?

      However, there are DVD players that incorporate PVR functionality with hard drives...

  • What? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:02PM (#4985286)
    HD noise? Please. Everytime I used to hit stop on my VCR, it clanked. Eject a tape, it clicks. Hit stop, it clicks. Rewind is about as loud as any fan setup on a home media pc as you are going to get. Tapes are freakin noisy as they come.

    Meanwhile, you can buy a mini itx case for $70 or less with a dc-dc power supply (although that buzzes a tad) and an epia 900 (933 mhz) and that's pretty quiet. Get some 5400 rpm hard drive or boot and save over a network.

    You can buy 200 gb 7200 rpm special edition/8mb cache western digitals for $250 or less after rebate nowadays. I just bought 2 in the past 2 weeks for recording use (I use a Hauppauge 250; I don't use it as a PVR really re the timeshifting). They are exclusively for video storage. I intend to buy 2 more in the next month, since maxtor seems to be dragging their feet on their 320s (I need capacity, not speed).

  • Noise? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 )
    I have a fairly old TIVO and have never noticed any noise from it. On the other hand, all of my VCRs are very noisy, especially when rewinding which is something the PVR eliminates.

  • Why I haven't purchased a PVR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:09PM (#4985330)

    In reality what I really want IS just a glorified VCR. I don't want to have to pay monthly fees for their service. I don't want to record every instance of "Whose Line..." available - I really only want the one that's on once a week at a particular time. I don't want TiVo (or ReplayTV, or whoever) to tell my machine to occasionally record things I haven't asked for, whether its because of their attempts at marketing or a lame attempt at "profiling" my viewing habits. I don't want these companies using my viewing habits for their gain, even if its anonymous and aggregate. But the PVR manufacturers seem hell-bent on only letting you use their device if you pay their monthly fee for their "service".

    Until this is addressed, I'll just keep rotating tapes in my VCR.

    • Let's try and address your concerns:

      I don't want to have to pay monthly fees for their service.

      But you pay for cable service, yes?

      I don't want to record every instance of "Whose Line..." available - I really only want the one that's on once a week at a particular time.

      You can do that, at least with Tivo. Just say "first run only".

      I don't want TiVo (or ReplayTV, or whoever) to tell my machine to occasionally record things I haven't asked for, whether its because of their attempts at marketing or a lame attempt at "profiling" my viewing habits.

      *shrug* See below. I like the feature, as it grabs shows I only occasionally watch (TNG, Twiglight Zone, some HGTV programs, etc.)

      I don't want these companies using my viewing habits for their gain, even if its anonymous and aggregate.

      Fine. Opt out then. Tivo doesn't hide the fact that they know what you're watching and report it. But they do it in a way that you remain anonymous. Personally, I like it, as it allows networks to know what I'm watching. Just wait till Tivo announces that last week's episode of Junkyard Wars beat out whatever dreck was on Fox.

      • You can do that, at least with Tivo. Just say "first run only".


        It's my understanding that "first run" isn't first-time-Tivo-sees-it, it's first-time-shown-on-tv, a flag that doesn't always get set in the databases these guys resell.

        I have an additional complaint about Tivos, or at least the DirecTivo I had access to recently: the response is sometimes almost as slow as those notorious digital cable boxes that show ads at the bottom of every screen while you are flipping channels. I want my menus to go by fast - with my regular VCR, when I hit channel up, it doesn't think about it, it just does it.
    • In reality what I really want IS just a glorified VCR. I don't want to have to pay monthly fees for their service.
      You can buy, at Circuit City, right now (at least as of yesterday in Boise, Idaho) a ReplayTV 5040 for $200 after rebates. Once you get it home, you pay a one-time fee of $250, and you have a lifetime subscription. That means no service fee, ever.
      I don't want to record every instance of "Whose Line..." available - I really only want the one that's on once a week at a particular time.
      To do that, you'd just tell it to record the "Who's line..." that's on every Thursday on channel 9 at 8:30pm. OTOH, what do you care if it records stuff you don't ultimately watch? I watch maybe 10% of the Star Treks that I record.
      I don't want TiVo (or ReplayTV, or whoever) to tell my machine to occasionally record things I haven't asked for, whether its because of their attempts at marketing or a lame attempt at "profiling" my viewing habits.
      ReplayTV never records anything except what you tell it to. You can be specific -- "Channel 287 from 3:30pm until 5:00pm on Thursday, January 2, 2003" -- or vague -- "Star Trek, whenever and wherever it's on". However, no program appears on your hard drive unless you do something that causes it to record.
      I don't want these companies using my viewing habits for their gain, even if its anonymous and aggregate.
      Don't know what to tell you on that one. I'm pretty concerned about privacy, but I just can't get excited about them using my anonymous, aggregate data. Besides, admit it: we all got a good laugh at the beginning of the year when TiVo told us that the most rewatched part of the Super Bowl was not the final dramatic game-winning kick, but the Brittney Spears commercial.
      But the PVR manufacturers seem hell-bent on only letting you use their device if you pay their monthly fee for their "service".
      If you really don't want their service, your other option is a PVR made by RCA. The channel guide is genuinely free, and it even has a built-in DVD player. The channel guide also only goes three days out and doesn't work with satellite dishes. But, you get what you pay for. I've been a Replay owner for two years now, and I still think that it's one of the best consumer electronics devices I've ever owned. I would give up color and my remote contrtol before I gave up my Replay. I would rather watch my Replay on a 19" black-and-white TV, walking over to change the channel, than watch live HDTV.

    • Please educate yourself (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:37PM (#4985423) Journal
      In reality what I really want IS just a glorified VCR.

      That's cool... that's what TiVo is, and more if you want it.

      I don't want to have to pay monthly fees for their service.

      Pay the lifetime fee one time, then. The service fee is basically a way to subsidize the device. You could either buy a cheap device and the monthly service, or the more expensive device (i.e. paying the lifetime fee along with the TiVo cost).

      I don't want to record every instance of "Whose Line..." available - I really only want the one that's on once a week at a particular time.

      You can do that with TiVo. Or better yet, you can tell it to record only new episodes of your show, and keep only X number of episodes (in your example, 1 episode). If they shift the time from 10pm to 11pm, TiVo knows it, your VCR doesn't.

      I don't want TiVo (or ReplayTV, or whoever) to tell my machine to occasionally record things I haven't asked for, whether its because of their attempts at marketing or a lame attempt at "profiling" my viewing habits.

      So turn that feature off. It doesn't hurt anything to leave it on, though. It only uses up free space, and if you need space for a show you're recording, it automatically deletes the auto-recorded shows to free up space. They never interfere, and you just might find some new shows you like (I did).

      I don't want these companies using my viewing habits for their gain, even if its anonymous and aggregate.

      So turn that off. I don't see the harm, but if you really are that anal, turn that off.

      But the PVR manufacturers seem hell-bent on only letting you use their device if you pay their monthly fee for their "service".

      Until this is addressed, I'll just keep rotating tapes in my VCR.

      Your loss... just try to keep the FUD to a minimum in the future, please.
      • Pay the lifetime fee one time, then.

        My concerns are twofold.

        The problem with lifetime service is that my impression is that it is just for the lifetime of that device, if the device dies, one cannot transfer that service, can they?

        Another concern is if TiVo (or Replay) goes belly up, will the PVR still function or become yet another door stop? That is a bet that some people don't really seem to realize they might be making, particularly with the warning signs in this industry. So lifetime just might mean live of the company or life of the device, whichever dies sooner.

        Normally I prefer dedicated set-top boxes because of their quality of integration, but I think for this, particularly the costs and potential perils involved, I'll just get a TV card with PVR-like software. I have already built a functioning HTPC, maybe it's time to add on, a $50 addition vs. maybe $500 seems like an easy choice, given that much of the latter is redundant to a computer.
        • The problem with lifetime service is that my impression is that it is just for the lifetime of that device, if the device dies, one cannot transfer that service, can they?

          If the device is still under warranty, yes.

          Then again, TiVo is hacked so much, chances are good you will be able to fix the box on your own, even if its out of warranty.

          Another concern is if TiVo (or Replay) goes belly up, will the PVR still function or become yet another door stop?

          I would be very surprised if a company didn't come along and take over where TiVo leaves off, but if that did happen, you'd be left with a fancy VCR -- until such time as someone develops a hack to import TV guide data. I've also heard that if TiVo goes belly up, the company would release information to the hacker community to help keep the devices alive... rumors though.

          Normally I prefer dedicated set-top boxes because of their quality of integration, but I think for this, particularly the costs and potential perils involved, I'll just get a TV card with PVR-like software. I have already built a functioning HTPC, maybe it's time to add on, a $50 addition vs. maybe $500 seems like an easy choice

          Why not just $299 (or cheaper) for the TiVo, and the monthly service plan, if you're worried about TiVo going under?

          I guarantee you that no TV card with PVR software can compete to the usability and coolness of a TiVo. You just have to use it for a week, and you'll be hooked.
      • Interface

        Tivo's interface blows away any VCR interface. An easy to use GUI with an up-to-date channel guide that can list every show on television this month if need be is very handy. VCR+ is nice, but its nothing compared Tivos programming features.

        No Tape Management

        No one archives everything. When I use a VCR its always, "Where on this 4 hour tape is that episode I want to put on a compilation tape." Or "Hold on, its on here somewhere!" On top of that is the terrible loss of quality of a tape to tape copy. Tivo has one non-removable disk with a simple "Send to VCR" function if you want to record or capture something.

        Pausing

        It doesn't seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but it sucks not having it. If I'm watching a normal TV I feel like its in controt. My instict is to hit pause when life interrupts. Its just weird being forced to miss part of a movie when you haven't missed a second of anything in months.

        Fast Forward/Rewind/Slow-Mo

        These are handier than you'd think. They're actually usable in digital form. Consumer level tape machines have horrible controls. Its more like a high-speed beta with a nice toggle wheel than a VCR. As cool as commercial skipping is, there's nothing like "Bad Conan guest" skipping.

        Picture Quality

        My tivo records the MPEG-2 stream from Direct TV directly to disk. Can't beat that.
      • Wow. Has anybody else noticed that the VCR vs. PVR discussions are starting to become more and more like the Vi vs. Emacs "discussions"?
        • Not really.

          Frankly, everytime someone says something against PVRs they're saying it out of misinformation. About the only valid argument is cost, since the upfront cost of a PVR is higher. But you'll eventually make that back in tapes and time.

          The Vi vs Emacs wars at least have two viable options... VCRs are only viable if you don't know the entire truth.

          Oh, and Emacs sucks. Vi(m) forever.
      • I don't see any fud in that message. Is it possible to a Tivo without registering it or connecting it to a phone line? I mean, can you go to the store, buy a Tivo with cash, and take it home and start using it without ever "activating" it? You can do that with a VCR, so if you can't do it with a Tivo, then Tivo hasn't caught up.
        • I don't see any fud in that message.

          Are you joking? Everything the guy said about PVR's was WRONG.

          Is it possible to a Tivo without registering it or connecting it to a phone line? I mean, can you go to the store, buy a Tivo with cash, and take it home and start using it without ever "activating" it?

          Yes, it is.
    • Errr uhm. You realize that you can get this functionality simply by not subscribing to the service right?

      Tivo has simple record by time and channel functions. No service required.
      • Last year or so they have stopped selling that feature. Now you have to sign up, or the Tivo won't do anything.
        • Last year or so they have stopped selling that feature. Now you have to sign up, or the Tivo won't do anything.

          Yeah, I was actually pretty pissed when they did that. I cancelled my service when I moved (decided not to get cable this time, not much need for Tivo), and it seems one of the software updates added nag screens if you don't have a service account. It spams you in the "Message Center", and gives you a nag screen every time you try to use certain functions -- functions that wouldn't have needed a service account. Very annoying.

          If I were worried about it, I'd complain, since the Tivo I purchased was perfectly functional without service; now it's not, and I don't even have it connected anymore because of it. The worst part is, I've paid more in monthly fees by now than the lifetime subscription would have cost...

          I plan to go Satellite eventually, and I'll make sure I get a good tuner with built-in PVR, which IMO is the next logical step in PVR technology (no subscription fees (I hope? Sat. tuners already have this data...), no clumbsy IR-blaster, dual-tuners, etc).
    • Exactly. This is why I didn't get a PVR. I will wait until it is cheaper and there is no required subscription (the lifetime one is still expensive).
    • One of the two allow you to use the thing without buying a service, I forget which.

      What you can do is buy a TV capture card, a video card with TV out and make your own HTPC/PVR. There's software on the 'net and also TV capture cards that include it for free. It's supposed to be pretty easy to do, and you don't need to juggle tapes.

      Speaking of which, I really didn't mind juggling tapes as I do try to keep some shows long term or until it is out on DVD.

  • Noise (Score:4, Informative)

    by mgs1000 ( 583340 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:16PM (#4985358) Journal
    This might be off-topic, but...

    My wife complained that the Tivo (Sony SAT-T60) in our bedroom made too much noise at night and it bothered her. I replaced the stock cooling fan in it with one of those quiet models, and it cut down on the noise enough to where the noise from the Tivo is imperceptible to her.

    Anyway, the point of the story is that noise from a PVR's hard drive is not such a big a deal to my wife, and I suspect that most consumers wouldn't disagree. (They just need to put quiter fans in 'em)

    (BTW, this Tivo has the stock hard drive, nothing special)

  • VCR noise != PVR noise (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:19PM (#4985364) Homepage Journal
    Comparing VCR noise against PVR noise is not an apples to apples comparison.

    The VCR makes its noise most commonly when operating, with either the TV on or the user away.

    The PVR makes its noise most of the time, regardless of the presence of the user.

    A Tivo is pretty annoying at night in a quiet bedroom. The low levels of noise become much much more audible and annoying in that environment.
  • I remember when I got an Acer 486 with a 500 MB hard drive. I was thinking "500 MB... what am I going to do with all that space?"

    Now there's just so much space available for so little cost... People can store full length movies, entire series of TV shows, not to mention a multitude of rather bloated programs on a single drive, and I have to ask... how much more will we really need?

    At the risk of starting my own 640K outta be enough quote here... really, isn't there a theoretical limit to the amount of digital media one can collect? I think I read in the BeOS Bible that all of recorded human history would fit into a few petabytes...

    • Well, I have 60GB now, and that's enough. I could use more - every few weeks, I do some housecleaning and move a few gigabytes onto CDs for long-term storage - but I can pretty easily make do with this.

      The real difference is that bigger hard drives allow for increased laziness. It's so convenient to have all my media on my computer, even in compressed/low-quality formats. No more sifting through my 500+ CDs to find the one I want: I can find it instantly with a few keystrokes on my computer. One thing I'd really love to have is all my books transcribed into "e-texts." This would be especially great for huge books and trilogies (or worse) that I like to discuss with other people, like The Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time. It would be so incredibly useful to be able to search through for a passage that I know I read but just can't find.

      So while I'll probably never be able to do what I want with books, unless I steal bad OCR scans of them, at least I can do it with music and movies. Right up until I hit 60GB and have to pull out CDs again. (Having a recording of a TV program on CD is still better than having to wait for it to air again. I would buy DVDs of whole seasons, but so often I like "weird" shows that aren't on DVD and probably never will be.)

    • I've got around 300Gb of downloaded movies and TV shows (over 90% I already had on VHS tape: but my VCR is downstairs and my computer is in my bedroom) - but I haven't downloaded anything in a couple of weeks now as I just can't think of anything else I want/need. Ok, if you are one of those people that will watch "anything" then you might eat up a bit more storage - but I know what I like (comedy shows, bit of sci-fi) and that's mainly what I watch.
      Ok - so the quality of some of the films could be a bit better - but I still reckon I could have more than enough viewing material for a year in 1Tb.
      Oh - the quote about human memory storage in a petrabyte comes from Arthur C. Clarke's 3001 [google.co.uk] "'Shame on you! Kilo, mega, giga, tera... that's ten to the twelfth bytes. Then the petabyte - ten to the fifteenth - that's as far as I ever got.'...'That's about where we start. It's enough to record everything any person can experience during one lifetime.'"
  • My Maxtor HD is the worst. I have heard airplanes that make less noise than that.

  • Hard drives are dead silent. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by miffo.swe ( 547642 ) <daniel@hedblom.gmail@com> on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:30PM (#4985392) Homepage Journal
    The thing that makes the noise is that they are screwed to the metal. If you put a new HD on some rubber foam it is very silent. Its so easy to make the sound dissapear. Lazy designers should be shot but then half the PC industry would be gone tomorrow.

  • Use 2.5" drives, lower rpm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sean Clifford ( 322444 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:32PM (#4985405) Journal
    If you want to reduce noise, use 2.5" drives at lower rpms. Yeah, they're a bit more expensive. But I daresay that a pair of 30GB notebook drives would make a PVR whisper quiet without significantly impacting performance. Smaller unit too, though I suspect size will remain pretty constant even when space isn't really an issue. Crack open your VCR sometime to check out the wasted space.
    • Two points:

      1. It's not the drive that makes the worst noise in the latest gen PVRs, it's the fan. And if you're willing to void the warranty, you can swap that sucka out for something quieter.

      2. 4200rpm 2.5" drives run both hotter (bad for PVRs - less tolerant to heat) and, well, slower, than desktop drives (both in terms of rotational speed and seeks). They're too slow and hot to handle the disk I/O.

      Even a 7200rpm WD drive rated at around 45 decibels is quieter than the stock fan in a ReplayTV 5xxx series.

  • There are far more pressing problems than noise (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ThresholdRPG ( 310239 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @09:33PM (#4985410) Homepage Journal
    The HD noise issue is completely and totally irrelevant. First of all, most people use PVRs in their living room or (if they have one) media room. You put your PVR where you watch TV the most, and that isn't the bedroom.

    Furthermore, there are a million ways to deal with the noise issue if you really needed to. Put the PVR in a cabinet, turn on the ceiling fan, get a cheap "white noise" generator, etc, etc.

    The article touches on one of the two *REAL* problems with PVR adoption. I say this as as huge TIVO fanatic (I own three DirecTV TiVOs currently and I've converted 7 friends so far into fellow TiVO-haulics).

    NUMBER 1) The difficulty in quickly explaining "the magic" of PVRs to the consumer. This is the big problem that the article mentioned more as an aside than as a major problem. Sales people talk about things like "pause live tv!" and other gimmicks that don't suck people in. The real joys of PVRs are:

    1. The fact that it holds 60-120 hours of entertainment. You don't swap tapes. You don't have to run out to the store to buy tapes. It is all there, at your fingertips.

    2. You can tell it your favorite shows and it will record them EVERY WEEK with no further input from you (even if the show gets moved to a different day or time, the PVR will STILL record it). It can even seek out your favorite show(s) over multiple channels if you so wish.

    3. It has tons of built in features to find other shows you might like. You can search by genre, type of show or movie, etc. This is pretty handy.

    4. It actively SEEKS OUT shows you might like (and while there are many strikeouts, it does hit a home run quite often). It does this by comparing the actors, genres, and other information of shows you LIKED (indicated by you giving it a thumbs up or just the fact that you recorded it on purpose) and seeking out other shows that are similar. I have started watching a number of really cool shows solely because TiVO grabbed a few of them for me.

    5. PVRs are digital, which means fast forward, reverse, etc. work much better. This makes it a lot easier to motor through commercials (and Replay TV even has a +30 second button. TiVO only has a - 8 second button, but you can do a little remote trick to convert one of your buttons to a +30 second button).

    NUMBER 2) This is a big issue that the article is not aware of: TIVO has failed to innovate over the last 1-2 years. There have been no significant new features and they have not improved the organization of your recorded shows (which gets to be a problem at 100+ hours of shows). This failure to innovate has served to reduce the "excitement level" of current PVR adoptees, and that slows down the rate at which they fervently try to convince friends to get one.

    These 2 problems are what really matters in the PVR space. I haven't mentioned pressure from MPAA, Hollywood, etc. because that is the 600 pound gorilla that hangs over ALL entertainment, not just PVRs.

    The point is, hard drive noise is irrelevanat compared to the MUCH larger issues that face the popularity and success of the PVR.
    • 5. PVRs are digital, which means fast forward, reverse, etc. work much better.

      Yes yes yes, but it ASTOUNDS me how many people today still have no idea of the differences between random-access and sequential-access media. To me, it's like going back to the horror of Vic-20 cassette tapes again. One of Tivo's problems is that people really just have no idea of the difference - as an example (and I swear this actually happened) my girlfriend's sister reminded me to REWIND MY DVDS when I'd been playing them on Christmas morning at their place. Scary.
  • Here is my take. My brother has a TiVo series 2, and it's a quiet little thing. It's defianlty quieter than my nice Sony VCR. But, I'm not sure I'd like it in my bedroom recording stuff at 2 A.M., I think it could wake me up (I sleep light). Hard drives have gotten much quieter though. In recent years they're doing good, but that's nothing compared to what it used to be. In high-school, my computer teacher kept an old hard drive around to show people. The thing was amazing. It had four platters, each the size of an LP. It had a big bubble top and a massive power brick and everything. He couldn't attach it to a PC, but he could turn it on which he almost never did because it's so old. But he did do it once where I was there, and you'd swear a 747 was landing on your head. But it had a ton of storage, a few MB I think ;). It looked something like this [utexas.edu], but not exactly. Very cool thing.

    But things could still be improved. The HD and the fan are the nosiest things in any computer (they are just about the only moving parts though ;). The new TMD fans are helping with that, let's hope HDs get even better. They are quite quiet though.

  • It was drowning out the sound from the soothing cd [purewhitenoise.com] I listen to while I sleep.
  • Since most HD makers have seriously reduced their warranties,will this affect the warranties on these consumer devices?
    Currently, most HD only have a 1 yr warranty.
    Will this mean a PVR is only good for that long?
    • I just swapped a new drive into my series 1 TiVo. It was one of the original models. The thing lasted a number of years, and I'm the second owner, and the hard drive upgrade was a snap. Easy upgrade ... and tripled the storage at the same time.

  • Seems to me you could just put the display/user input hardware near the TV and put the storage in a computer somewhere else. 100Mb/s is _plenty_ for the kind of video streams most people use. That and you could serve multiple displays out of one central server.

    You could even network boot the display unit and use a little, quiet computer. Problem solved.

  • What noise? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Jahf ( 21968 )
    I have a first gen Tivo with a cheap second hard drive. The only time I've ever heard any mechanical noise from it is when the entire house was empty and nothing was running. It's quieter than my amplifier most times. If I stick my head to the back of the Tivo I can hear the drives and fan, but that's the only time.

    My VCR on the other hand makes a pretty massive amount of sound on fast forwarding, rewinding, and when dis/engaging the heads. Hands down it's the noisiest appliance we own.

    This guy either got a model with a total clunker of a drive or he's nuts.
  • It's often cited as a PVR feature because it's easy to explain. But PVR owners know the truth -- they hardly ever use that feature, because they hardly ever watch live TV any more. That's the real change.

    I do see heavy VCR users saying they don't think they need a PVR or listing data. But, I have yet to see sombody say they got a PVR and then got rid of it. In spite of all you think you know about them, you really don't understand what they do until you get one.

    I know. I thought I knew what it would do, and I'm usually very good at predicting such things, often better than their own designers, but I was just as surprised.

    They will take over, to the same extent CDs took over from vinyl, and as DVDs are taking over from VHS because the difference is even more dramatic.

    They will get better user interfaces. In fact, today, they could put a mic on the remote control so you don't even push buttons, you just hold it up and say "Record Every Matlock". Even Grandma can handle that.

    So they will cause every home to buy 200gb of disk space, and that will be good for HD makers, though they won't want to pay a lot for that 200gb of space.
  • And, I'm a tech dude: 2xCat5e and 2xRG-6/U structured wiring throughout the house (soon to be sold), satelite multiswitch, dual twin-LNBs, HDTV, you name it. But, I don't get the idea of a box that ties me down to one location, i.e. a media room, which requires a subscription service.

    Sure, sure, I can pause and rewind live TV and have it record what I'm likely to like, and it gets rid of all those messy tapes. But, ya know, what? I can take that tape and shove it into any VCR in the house... or any other VCR, if mine break. While that's possible with Replay units, it's kinda klunky still.

    Here's what I want: recordings in my inbox. Well, perhaps not emailed to me via the usual route, but dumped to some server in my home from some local device with a cable or satellite feed. But, I want the flexibility to deal with them as I would any other data in my home: stream them to whatever playback device I desire, make archival copies, etc.

    I know, DRM prevents this. And it's true, but it does so in a far to heavyhanded way -- I want the days of fair use, and I'd accept mechanisms to constrain that use to being far, but not DRM as presently proposed or implemented.

    As for a program guide subscription service: Unbundle it! Tell me how to tell the box what to record and let mo choose the service that will I can subscribe to to get that information in the necessary format to seamlessly integrate with the recorder. Yeah, if that means the recorder has to be sold for it's actually retail price, if I don't accept the manufacturer's subscription service, so be it.

    • I'm all with you on the subscription thing (adding $250 makes its value suddenly var less than a $120 VCR), but...

      If you have structured wiring, I'll presume you have enough clue to say run the Tivo output to all the VCRs...
      Actually, if you want to filter out say, channel 18 (arbitrary choice) and modulate the Tivo, it will just be on channel 18 on all your TVs. A little IR relaying and you have full control

    • Sheesh, you can have recordings in your inbox. Select what you want to record, and they'll come in your "inbox". You'd have to do something like that from what you describe anyway.

      What does "kinda klunky still" mean? It's video streaming.

      Tell me how to tell the box what to record and let mo choose the service that will I can subscribe to to get that information in the necessary format to seamlessly integrate with the recorder.

      Okay, I'll tell you: you subscribe to their service and they'll give you all of that information seemlessly. Don't like that option? Want it from a third party? Do you think there's a big enough market for a third party to care about making a compatible guide to download? Even if there was, what's wrong with subscribing through the same company from whom you bought the PVR? That is mindless, "nothing will come between me and my free speech/anti-DRM rights" thinking.

      Yeah, if that means the recorder has to be sold for it's actually retail price, if I don't accept the manufacturer's subscription service, so be it.

      Let me get this straight.. you want one option of pricing instead of two? You can have your "unbundled" price... 400 bucks.

      If I were a PVR manufacturer, you're the type of consumer I could care less whether I pleased.. because it's just not possible.
  • I've given up trying to make the case for PVRs. At this point, I'm just selfish.

    My ReplayTV 2020, which I upgraded a while back with a somewhat noisier but much larger drive, will be perfectly good enough for me until I move to digital television. That is, as long as the nightly feeds continue.

    I hope enough people buy MP3 players to keep SonicBlue afloat for a few more years, for that reason alone. (When I bought my machine, it came with a lifetime subscription.)

    By that time, the concept of an analog tape recorder for video will seem so hopelessly outdated to everyone (as they do to me today), PVRs will be plentiful, and I'll have plenty of options for my next generation.

    Now, I must say, I think people are just plain used to recording onto some kind of removable media. So, DVD recorders may wean some people off VCRs in the interim. But I just can't imagine why we will need to rely on hideous bastardizations like these HD Videocasette players available now. With hard drives at 200GB and counting, by the NTSC "cutoff date" (yeah, right), there is no way anybody will argue that random access media don't have the data density and economy to serve in this market.

  • My Tivo is very quiet, and I only notice it when the living room is shut down for the night. Even then, hardly a whisper. I sleep in a room w. a humidifier which is much louder.

    Also, as long as I am here..PVR's RULE!!! They totally, 100% change the way you watch TV. Yes, the hardware is important, but the monthly fee that allows the unit to download programming data AND (this is the important part) search it at will is where the PVR's really shine. If Modern Marvels conflicts with Buffy, no sweat, click a button and record the show when it is shown again at 3AM. I totally love it and recommend a PVR to anyone who watches TV. End of evangalism!
  • Where is my HDTivo? We have 200GB drives around, plenty of space...
    HD coming soon, cable sitting on their butts with that...

    I have an HD ready wide TV. I ain't getting a PVR until it can record higher resolutions and do progressive scan.

    I want my
    I want my HDTV

  • The program guide data needs to come in on the same pipe as the video, and the "service" thing has to go. Then these things will become commodities. I give it three years.

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