ReplayTV 4000 Series Shares TV Over Net 142
REden writes " ReplayTV announces their ReplayTV 4000 Series networkable PVR. Features include video sharing between LAN attached Replays, sending a show to another Replay over the internet, and automatic commercial skip. Prices start at $700 for a 40 hour unit and max out at $2000 for a 320 hour unit. ReplayTV guide service included. Units are scheduled to ship November 14th." 320 hours. I can't imagine holding on to that much TV - but space is cheap, so, eh, why not?
Re: ReplayTV 4000 Series Announced (Score:4, Interesting)
Sean
How closely... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'll tell you why not! (Score:1, Interesting)
doesn't look like it will be mainstream (Score:2, Interesting)
from the faq...
Q. I don't have a home network. Will I need to get one?
A. Yes. ReplayTV 4000's are enabled by an Ethernet connection only. There are also all kinds of incredible features that work only when your ReplayTV is connected to your PC. But don't worry, home networks are relatively inexpensive and easy to install. And, to make this even easier, ReplayTV is providing, for a limited time, a choice of promotional offers including a Free NETGEAR Home Network (a $100 value), with the purchase of an RTV4080, RTV4160 or RTV4320.
The fact that you can bypass commercials still will affect a very limited number of users. Yes, home networks are relatively inexpensive (less than $2000), but your average consumer will not want to set up a firewall/router and a home network just to watch TV. Looks like the mainstream is still bound to low quality "VHS" technology for a little while longer.
who watches 320 hours of TV? (Score:4, Interesting)
from night to day or to weekends etc, I'd need
a maximum of 20-30 hours on the laziest weeks.
I have seven four-hour tapes now for this purpose,
and rarely time shift ten hours a week.
I suppose the other 300 hours could be for
archiving, but there isn't that much I'd want.
I'd guestimate 100 hours would satisfy all
but the hard core vegetables.
Re:I'll tell you why not! (Score:3, Interesting)
Esp. since I expect someone to figure out how to send shows to a Linux box rather then another ReplayTV, so you don't need to store everything on the Replay, just whatever you don't have time to transfer.
There is some advantage to having a dedicated device with (I assume) a real OS. Maybe not such an issue if your PC runs Linux, but I'm expecting it will be a while until you can use the NVidia with ease to capture TV shows (including tuning the cable box) under Linux. I have the competing product (TiVo) and it has never ever crashed. It has lost power a few times, but never had some random DLL blow up and cause me to miss a TV show.
Back To School, VideoOnDemand, Demographics (Score:3, Interesting)
I can just see the net admins at colleges trying to deal with this. They've had to deal with napster and the like and all the bandwidth they'd consume on their LAN. Now imagine an entire dorm (or campus!) sending saved shows to each other.
If there's a way to hack the system, I can well imagine folks at the likes of MIT will find a way to do it. The result is that the initial broadcast of a show over the airwaves, cable, satelite, etc. could eventually be dwarfed by the time-delayed transmissions.
The Result? Bypass the current transmission media and get your shows direct from Replay! Sign up for the shows you want and they'd send it to you, over the internet. Then, just add video servers on the internet with pre-compressed movies available on a pay-per-view basis and you've got all you need to bypass the Blockbuster video rental shops -- just watch what you want, when you want it, without having to go out to get / return a video and no worry about late fees. Sure, it'll be free to share between RePlays for now, but I suspect that's just the initial push to build market share, and then there'd be a rollout of central server subscriptions, copy protection, and per-show charges.
Really a whole house media server (Score:2, Interesting)
The idea is you can keep video, audio (not yet discussed, but I'm sure is in there), pictures, etc in this unit, share it with your desktop, TV and other units, download video/audio/movies from the internet/etc/etc. Just like a file server, but geared toward multimedia (with the requisite MM oriented management tools).
It's really a powerful idea (IMHO) and while you can do this with a PC, they have a very nice interface and management tools and a nice "black box" approach. I think the $2000 for the extra space is silly, but...
I've already updated my ReplayTV 3030 to 80 Hours and will go to 160 soon. Once you start using these things with expanded capacity, you do start to "cache" programs/movies more and more. In fact, once you get over 60 hours or so, you start thinking of the device as some sort of server/respository (unlike with the 30 hour models where you are frequently deleting things when done, making it feel much more like just a time shifter). I really hope the "folders" stuff they mention will be in the next firmware update for all ReplayTV units though. I could really use it about now...
Unfortunatly, I think their likely to get sued to oblivion, but I have to beleive they expected this and have been preparing for it. I'd love to see them get through such a case unscathed as it would put a nice hole in the RIAA's dike.
I don't work for Replay, just been a pretty satisfied user for 1.5 years :-)
Gerry
Nothing New (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'll tell you why not! (Score:2, Interesting)
space not really the issue (Score:2, Interesting)
As the space you have for storage goes up, the problem you immediately run into is the inability to record two things at the same time. This happens more often than you might think, principally because networks compete for the same audience by sheduling shows that have similar appeal opposite each other (the bastards) like for example, X-Files and Dark Angel.
So, personally, i think that ReplayTV would be better served by sticking in an extra tuner in there in preference to a bigger harddrive.
Tivo has announced a unit with two tuners, but i believe it only works with directtv. similarly, the microsoft ultimatetv can record two things at the same time, but only off directtv.
Of course, once there are two tuners in there, it will be easier to use up the space. Harddrives are upgradeable, however.
Another approach, since these new units are going to be networkable, would be to be able to network two or more units together. Have them negotiate between them who is going to record what when, and then present one user interface to control all of them. that would be nifty, though an expensive way to be able to record two things at once...
It's not really 320 hours (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I'm assuming that ReplayTV advertises their hours just like TiVo does, which is based on the lowest quality setting. If it's similar to TiVo, here is what it is probably like:
Re:Cunning... (Score:2, Interesting)
But that might be sufficient for peer-to-peer transmission; if I send it to 15 people, who each send it to 15 people, etc. Or does it have some sort of serial copy protection, so that you can only send it once and your friend can't send on your copy to anyone else?
Re:doesn't look like it will be mainstream (Score:2, Interesting)
Ethernet? Who still uses that? I want 802.11b (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, since I've had my ReplayTV, I've wished that it could get show listings, etc., over my home network. It was obvious when I first got it that one of the future upgrades should be an ethernet port. But my home network cabling doesn't go near the TV, as I suspect is the case for a lot of people.
On the other hand, I now have an 802.11b base station. Wi-Fi would be perfect in this situation. No need to run cable out to the TV! Hopefully, the ReplayTV people are working on that right now. (Also, Xbox could use an 802.11b option, too. Listening, Xbox designers?)
Needed: peer-to-peer automatic commercial skipping (Score:3, Interesting)
All that has to be shared is information like station="WMAL" date="2002-06-03" skip-start="08:31:00" skip-end="08:31:30". Every time you push the "30 second skip" button, an entry like that gets created. Entries are distributed over Gnutella or Freenet. When watching a show, your player queries the net for entries with appropriate station, date, and time info. If a few different people have skipped over the same time slot, your player should skip it too.
Great open source project for somebody.