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Television Media

Digital VCRs end Tape Tyranny 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the cool-hardware dept.
Rick writes "Several companies now market digital VCR-like devices ReplayTV and TiVo). Articles on such were featured in this weeks Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. These offer 10-14 hours of archivial TV, computer recording setup, random access playback, and easy commercial skipping. These free you from fumbling with tapes or arranging your evening around a TV schedule. A bit pricey now- $699/$499- but as with all new technology, should decline. "
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Digital VCRs end Tape Tyranny More

Digital VCRs end Tape Tyranny

Comments Filter:

  • Re:Firewire port... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just don't get it. Why do they freak about people having copies of TV shows they *broadcast*?

  • Re:The TiVo box looks cool. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Please do yourself a favor and go to www.replaytv.com and check out their unit. I saw pictures of the interface in Sound & Vision, and it is very cool (like Program: Star Trek Voyager, Quality: 2Mbps, Number of episodes to keep: 3)

    Tivo, IMHO, is crap. There is no 30-second skip button on their machine. The program guide is 1/3 advertising and it costs - something like $10/month. All these hassles to save a couple hundred bucks. (which you end up paying in less than 2 years through the program guide fee).

    I will pay a bit more for the replay unit, but I've heard they are looking to build a unit in the future with some kind of long-term storage (lets hope it's DVD-RAM, but it may be D-VHS or some other such media). I am trying to wait for this unit, but I might not be able to.
  • There are channels on IRC that have been doing this for quite a while with certain shows. I've got copies of all the Futurama episodes, for instance. South Park is another favorite. At around 200 MB per show, you can easily fit three of them onto a CD-R.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • I was very excited about these, until I found out that the advertised recording time of 14 hours is on a low-quality mode...

    ...and that high-quality mode would be needed to avoid artifacting on anything with more motion than a talking head...

    ...and that the record time on high-quality mode is closer to 4 hours.

    I guess we have to wait for the next generation of cheap huge drives to come out. Of course, now with non-PC consumer devices to use them, the pressure will be on to provide for it, and perhaps the next generation will be out in six months (as opposed to the usual 12). OK, I guess I'm still excited, but I certainly won't be first on the gadget bus for this particular product.

  • Wow, that ReplayTV box has a jack for a phone line so the box can interface with their network.. I wonder what kinds of viewing-habit tidbits are getting sent back to them.

  • Yes! (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    This would make home-based non-linear video editing as easy as desktop publishing.
  • Posted by The Incredible Mr. Limpett:

    Or also if it's pre-empted by a sporting event or the president blabbing about something or another on TV.

    I guess that last one can't be helped but we all know like football games always go over like at least half an hour...then they STILL show that damn post game coverage or whatever---another half hour of slo-mo on something you just saw!

    Not that missing the Simpsons once will kill me or anything, just wondering if they've thought about these situations. Futurama on the other hand...heheh

    Anyways, will it be able to handle that?

    Sounds cool but lots of caveats...

    Oscar
    ----
    "Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a
    villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
  • Posted by My_Favorite_Anonymous_Coward:

    Heh.....every lamer's ReplayTV is going to be flashing 12:00 over and over.


    Hey at least it won't crash at the midnight of Dec 31, 99 will it.

    I think this is a killer app. Maybe some one ought to start a daily ad-filter script site that ofter the commercial time table on every Simpson and Law and Order. You can charge me for 5 dollars a month. Heck, I'd jump ship for 9.99/m.


    cy
  • Posted by My_Favorite_Anonymous_Coward:

    Read an article about this in some 'zine. There will be a thirty second skip button, and with 99.9% of all comercials being 30 seconds... well, the articles example was that if you have your vcr start "taping" ER, and you start watching it 17 minutes into it, you will be able to skip all the comercials and finish watching it within a minute of people who sat down for the whole hour. Still cool, but I'd rather have a dvd-recorder. And a T1. Heck, I'd settle for a voodoo2 so I can play quake. And as a side note, for those who can't play quake, check out interactive fiction, and the fifth year contest, at www.textfire.com

    You are absolutely correct. The more I use the net, the less I can tolerate commercial, of any form. Every ad looks like spam to me. It's to the stage that I simply can't watch live show anymore because I can't even watch 240 seconds of ads. Besides, I have dejanews, I don't need TV to tell me what should I buy.
    CY
  • Hmmm. Replay seems a bit US centric... when are they going to do a PAL version? They could increase the quality by missing out the analog rubbish altogether now that we have Digital MPEG II terestrial and satellite TV (in the UK anyway).

    Other than that...I want one!!!!(5 years ago)

  • TiVo is a Linux box (Score:3)

    by Bryan Ischo ( 893 ) on Friday April 30, 1999 @03:20PM (#1908815) Homepage
    My friend works at TivO, I got a demo of it at a New Year's Eve party last year (Dec 31 '98), it was super cool.

    And it's a Linux box. No kidding. I hope I am not giving away trade secrets or anything but it is essentially a Linux box (PPC architecture, I believe) with a big honking SCSI drive for storing the feed and proprietary video encoding and decoding libraries. Plus UI, scheduling, etc etc.

    My friend worked on the filesystem (it uses a custom filesystem that is compressed and formatted in such a way to make streaming digital video feeds very fast); they chose Linux partly because the available source made hacking your own filesystem possible. And no, there are no GPL violations because the filesystem is a self-contained kernel module.
  • DISH Network Model 7100 [dishnetwork.com] now has the digital recording system on its hardrive. Take a look at it, it even plays Doom.

    Unfortunately it has been blessed by the Evil Lord Gates.

  • No. If you have studied state machines, VCR programming is simple.
  • And you *ACTUALLY* believe them when they say they aren't collecting user info. More fool you. They're most likely calling it something else....
  • >I think both sites make the point in their FAQs that if you put a VCR >between the box and the TV then you can transfer stuff from memory to tape. If you are going to be using a VCR to record programs from this box to play back later, what's the point of shelling out $500-$700 dollars for this box? There really doesn't to seem to be much of a real-world reason to run out and buy either of these boxes...
  • Why not just DVD-RW, then you only need to buy a drive, and can do the same thing?

    Or are DVD standards still not pinned down so it's easier to do something totally diffrent.

  • So? My vcr has a 30 sec ff button too. Granted, with this it will probably be instantaneous, but its still nothing new...
  • How about SECAM (the French "standard")?

    PAL = Picture Always Lousy
    NTSC = Never Twice the Same Colour (Color!)
    SECAM = Sedom Ever Compatible!

    Though won't there be problems with the 60/50Hz beating with the differing mains supplies? A 10Hz beat could be quite irritating (there again I might not have a clue what I'm talking about)
  • Well, the problem I see with using 10-inch disks is that they'd be fscking big. One of the advantages of CD's that won them the throne once occupied by vinyl LP's is the size. That's also the reason why laserdiscs weren't very popular (12-inch double sized monsters). Besides being costlier, people prefer smaller thingees.
  • Well I didn't mean removable discs. I meant the built in hard drive kind of disc. These would take up about as much space as a VCR and if it was attached to a LAN you could stick in a cupboard somewhere.

    Torbjörn.
  • So these new uses for hd's need lots of space cheep and don't really care for acces times. How about making very large(physically) discs. Since the amount of data on the drive is proportional to the square of the radius a 10" disc could hold more than eight times the amount of a 3.5" one, at the same data density. Correct me if I'm wrong but the mechanics of the drive is the expensive part right? So once new fabrication facilitys have been built, the price for a 10" drive wouldn't be much higher than for a 3.5" but it could hold 8 times more!
    Quantum used to make a line of 5.25" drives a couple of years ago, when all other hd makers made 3.5" ones. They could hold more data at a comparable price than the 3.5 drives but had slower access times because the heads had to be moved longer. But with these new applications access time isn't that important. So how about it, 60 gig drives for 200$. Such drives could hold about 100 uncompressed CD's or a 1000 hours of mp3! And with gmr heads you could probably start having your entire video collection on hd's.

    I see a future where every house or apartment have a central storage box connected to output terminals like TV's, Speakers and computers through a LAN. No more need for CD's, DVD's or video cassets.

    Torbjörn
  • I can program in multiple languages, configure routers and do hardware maintainance, yet I still cannot program the da*m VCR. Anyone else feel the same way?



    Usually a manual is included with a new VCR. Read yours. VCRs can be as convoluted as PCs but they are still far simpler.


  • Could it be that your clock is two minutes ahead?

    --
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address
  • Can you say "Mega-marketable Linux niche?" One of these days, an OEM will get off its butt and start shipping Linux-based information appliances for a few hundred bucks. If I had a few hundred spare bucks, I'd be building one for myself right now. Why buy a separate receiver, TV, DVD player, MP3 player, and VCR when you could have them all in one nifty little box for so much less money?
    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product
  • These boxes are seriously tied up from a political point of view. I asked one of the companies about downloading the files to a computer and they said no way, no how, and that they couldn't say why.
  • Two words: random access

    Two more words: no rewinding

    No more cleaning heads that get clogged with magnetic scum or a broken head, no more broken and jammed tapes, complicated loading mechanisms, no worry about magnets...

    Life will be good.
  • Say I wanted to tape all Simpsons episodes. On channel 24 (UPN?) in Milwaukee, they air Simpsons episodes at 6PM. However, the show actually starts at 5:57 or 5:58. Likewise, when channel 18 (WB) airs Simpsons at 10PM, it's actually 9:58. How can these devices handle these broadcast time errors?
  • There's a few reasons I can't do that. First off, Time Warner sends a time signal through the entire cable system to automatically set converter boxes to the correct time. Secondly, the shows actually do start 2-3 minutes before the hour. On those two networks (WB and UPN), the non-prime-time shows are the only ones that broadcast a few minutes earlier. Prime-time gets broadcast at the correct time. And the TW time signal is, in fact, the correct time, +/- 15 seconds.
    It's just darn annoying, and it's been like that for years...
  • I recently bought a Panasonic VCR (the best VCR rated by Consumer Reports) and after recording a program it will go back and mark the commercials-- then upon playback it automatically fast forwards through them. Works VERY well too!
    It also will skip over movie previews on rental tapes as well, but I've seen this fail many times.
  • An open system? Hahahaha! The Powers That Be are already pissed about MP3. Are we going to see FireWire ports on any of these things? Not a CHANCE.

    How many years did it take that US company to get a dual-VHS deck on the market. The same Sony that owns makes hardware also makes content, and they and others kept the company in court for YEARS with frivalous lawsuits.

    We'll see devices like this, but only as they allow GREATER copy protection. Hollywood (and their overseas owners...) *still* view home taping as piracy - BUT - they are helpless to stop it and the law does not favor them.

    Don't think they won't try again with digital... it's their "IP" and they'll wring every dollar they can out of it. This is another reason we need to fight for openness on the computer... because with an open system we an defeat greedy corporations. Rest assured, with closed systems the battle will be lost, unless you want to be driven underground with the real pirates just to tape TV. :-

  • Ugh! If the most recent version of Windows you have is 3.1, buying Windows 98 is pricey. Cheaper to buy a VCR.
  • Actually, I contacted ReplayTV tech support
    and they said that without the service you CAN "press record", rewind and pause live television, but CAN NOT record by date and time. This is in
    the current version of the software, and they
    indicated that an upgrade that does let you record by date and time was possible/likely.
  • how long till the tv industry lashes out against
    this stuff, having taken a cue from riaa?

  • "IP" (Score:1)

    by Demona ( 7994 )
    Intellectual Property != Internet Protocol.
  • Is anyone else reminded of the Castlewood Orbs? "Cough cough, grumblesmurf, X gigabytes. Is that with or without compression? Um...um, well, with. But -- hey, where are you going?"

    Give it time. Hey, things are moving faster every day.

  • Heh.....every lamer's ReplayTV is going to be flashing 12:00 over and over.


    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • So now that Tivo has done it with a harddrive, why not do it with software and perhaps some video hardware on my computer. What kind of compression are they using?
  • Then we won't need archaic tapes any longer. Tape your TV shows into the hard drive for viewing (and archiving to computer, perhaps?) and watch features on DVD. Seems like the perfect solution to me.
  • No, actually, HDs do NOT do variable speed. The amount of information on the inner sectors is the same as the outer sectors to combat this problem. Some floppies, and CD-Roms, however, are variable-speed.

    I think the reason the industry has moved away from larger disks is many-fold. The power demands of larger disks are greater. The seek times are definitely greater, along with the latency. And there is a great advantage to the smaller size with a completely uniform form factor.

    I think, however, that big IBM iron still may use special large disks.
  • I don't know about replaytv but I saw a demo of the TiVo box and it looks good. The UI is slick,
    the image quality is OK, comparable to VCR quality. Definatly a order of magnitude improvement over a conventional VCR.
  • No DVD, 16 MB ram
  • A while back when the 7100 was announced, it was also announced that Gateway would be selling Destination systems with a PCI Dish Network reciever. Hopefully these cards will be for sale to the public. If not, I still will get one. (Working at Gateway has it's advantages :-)

  • Count me out on this one. I will not use a service that tracks what I do, no matter how "neat" the technology. Let the sheep use it.
  • It's not the same, for several reasons. First and foremost, I seriously doubt that Rob is prostituting everyone's personal information (what little he has) for his own personal gain. Second, there doesn't exist any tie to the information someone posts on Slashdot, and any concrete form of identification. If Rob starts requiring people to submit their credit card or social security numbers, then I'll start to be concerned.
  • With this new technology you can start viewing a show that is still being recorded: Let's say you are "taping" a program, and arrive at home just about 10 minutes into the two hour movie. Now with a "real" tape you have to wait until the show's over to rewind and watch the tape. With the new technology it's possible to start watching right away. while the rest of the program is still written to disk.

    Or even better: You don't want to miss a second of a show, but you run out of beer in the fridge next to your sofa. So you have to get up, go to the kitchen and get a new sixpack. In this situation you just press some buttons on this new device and it starts recording. Once youre back you can jump into the movie right away.

    I think this is cool.
  • okay that thing sucks. What makes it different? People like to have New media with new devices. I think that you should be able to record a show on the internal HD and then if you want to keep it, Burn it to either a CD or a DVD. Now that would be cool.
  • Or perhaps I should say, the limitations of streaming video.

    Apart from bandwidth, which greatly limits quality of both video and audio streams, the biggest problem with streaming video is that, so far, the software guys don't "get it". That is, they don't get why streaming video is a different medium from broadcast video, and exploit that potential. Sure, there's room on the internet for all sorts of niche video-on-demand applications -- such as the Rotary Rocket test article rollout, or an architectural walkthrough on a real estate site -- as well as the TV-to-net shift of stuff like CNN news stories.

    But what really would juice the potential of these would be fully controllable video with VCR-like functionality. I don't know how many times I've sat through a Realvideo presentation while talking heads droned on about X when I'm waiting for them to get to Y, or the times I've had a hard time hearing something, or just something neat-o that I'd love to play back again. Real don't have no rewind.

    (Another feature that would be terrific is a fast-play feature, like many voicemail systems: twice the replay speed, where the sound isn't mickey-mousey, but engineered to normal tone ranges. Again, a convenience for getting past stuff of little or no interest to you, especially as streaming-video files expand from 3 minutes to 30 or more.)

    This box sounds like it has those features, so it's already infinitely more digital in essence than streaming video. Perhaps if people take to it like MP3/Rio momentum, we'll start to see the real on-demand video applications arise.

  • Before you whip out your big ten inch, consider this: if access time doesn't really matter, then there's a media that easily creams hard disks in terms of $/meg. It's tape.

    Hmm... that's what we need: digital tape VCRs. VCRs with SCSI ports.

  • So how hard would it be to us the Video For Linux support to create a digital VCR with Linux?
  • To make use of the larger area of larger drives, they have to spin more slowly when reading the outside of the disk. Also, the manufacturing tollerances are probably tighter.

    I'm not a hardware engineer; would someone who knows the technology better care to comment?

    (BTW, they still make 5.25" drives--we use them in some of our storage products at EMC.)
  • Here's my page that discusses the full potential of a Linux entertainment system. Not just a digital VCR, but everything from an MP3 player to a web TV to a game console.

    http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~crow/media.html
  • Or just wait a few months for the 7100 to appear, it'll have the same capability as the replay-type units, and a built-in webtv (crud!) unit.

    Or hope that they'll actually sell the PCI reciever card as a separate unit....
  • Why put it onto a tape at all? It's only a matter of time before someone puts a network interface on one of these things. After that it will be a simple matter to burn the MPEG onto a CD/CDRW/CDRAM/DVD/ZIP/ORB/JAZZ/HOLOCUBE/HYPERMEM/W HATEVER and pass it off to a bud. You could even edit out the comercials.

    Heck! this might even be possible through the firewire port on the thing.
  • Actually, they record viewing habits (so do the new Digital CableBoxes) and transmit that to the central network. Possible uses of it is to be seeing which commercials keep viewers, which ones don't. How often do viewer record and rewatch certain movies, what type, how often. What shows are watched and taped and the like. This is supposed to help the network pinpoint which shows you may be interested in, and for marketing uses. Although they are not saying they will sell the information, they are also not denying it.

    Hmmm....

    Mage...
  • I asked the Reply guys about the firewire port and if they would let us access it to pull stuff off. They said that all the hardware was there, but there was nothing in the software to use it yet. ie you'd have to download new software to use it. They're planning on using it for an add on drive to give you more space.

    Looking at the specs I'd say Reply over Tivo, even with the cost. The real question is, can you find an MPEG2 encoder for cheaper. They thought the Matrix on the net was a problem, wait till people are swaping episodes of the X-files and Seinfield. Somebody's going to prevent them from letting that export option out. Someone's going to have to leak/hack the update software.
  • Heck, I paid twice that for my first VCR, back when the Beta/VHS wars were going on. (I chose VHS, the outcome was obvious by then.)
  • On the other hand, for just a little bit more one could put together a PC with huge hardrives and a good video editing card to capture/replay, and give you a lot more options.

    Of course, consumers tend to go for the one button simplicity.
  • http://www.dishnetwork.com/systems/receivers/jvcdv hs.htm

    Record stuff with the same quality.
    only $800 bucks.
  • I don't like ads for one reason: they make no sense. Now, I'm 18, so probably a main target, but most commercials make no sense to me at all. I understand David Lynch movies a lot more.
    Surrealism doesn't work well for ads, be it cargo jeans, soda or (shudder) the Gap.
  • But this gives a near simutanois (i can't spell) broadcast, and the fast forwarding would be painless. Fastforwarding for short amounts of time on a normal VCR is almost not worth it for the speed-up to take effect and all that stuff.

  • Why tv channles don't like it. (Score:4)

    by dayeight ( 21335 ) on Friday April 30, 1999 @09:47AM (#1908873) Homepage Journal
    Read an article about this in some 'zine. There will be a thirty second skip button, and with 99.9% of all comercials being 30 seconds... well, the articles example was that if you have your vcr start "taping" ER, and you start watching it 17 minutes into it, you will be able to skip all the comercials and finish watching it within a minute of people who sat down for the whole hour. Still cool, but I'd rather have a dvd-recorder. And a T1. Heck, I'd settle for a voodoo2 so I can play quake. And as a side note, for those who can't play quake, check out interactive fiction, and the fifth year contest, at www.textfire.com

    Remember infocom?
  • I think all hard disks are thermal re-calibrated. That is when you record video on a normal hard drive, you get skipped frames...
    AV drives can sense that a continuous transfer is going on so they don't re-calibrate during the write.
    Cable

  • The data is already coming down as an MPEG-2 datastream. (on dish network anyway)

    We need to capture the data as it comes of the dish, and save it to disk.

    Mpeg-2 decoder cards are already around for DVD, why not use those?


  • Larger disks also expand more with heat. Thermal re-calibration is more necessary.

  • Most of the equipment gets its time from the networks.

  • If digital sat is already in Mpeg2, should just be a matter of tapping the info as it goes by.

  • I can program in multiple languages, configure routers and do hardware maintainance, yet I still cannot program the da*m VCR. Anyone else feel the same way?
  • Replay doesn't send anything to the server.

    TiVo does collect information, but they claim that anything they release to advertisers will be collective data, i.e. they can't trace it to one specific user. TiVo also plans to use targetted advertising in the future.

    ReplayTV really looks like the good guy in this one.

    Mike
    (Not-so-patiently waiting for the prices to go down.)
  • The ATI all-in-wonder 128 has a digital vcr feature. After Linux drivers are available, then that would probably be the best way to go.

    But you can't get the priace down much, unless you already have some of the hardware. The video card costs $200, plus a Celeron, motherboard, case, memory and big hard drive.

    The costs would easily push you up to the $500-$700 range, and you still wouldn't have the convience of a set-top box. No remote control, etc.

    Maybe if you combined it with an mp3 player, it would be cost effective enough, but from what I've heard the all-in-wonder takes over the machine while you are using it.

    Mike
  • But with these devices, you don't have to record the whole thing before you can start skipping - so you can actually watch it while it's on, or just skip back a bit if you missed something, again all while it's being broadcast.
  • Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But for one thing look at MP3, even The Powers That Be haven't been able to stop it (hehehe, or at least not for me, 20 gigs and climbing).

    The problem is, is there any way around having an IP? I mean if you are a network there is always a way to tag you. I don't see any way around them being able to take a peek at us.
  • Working with "some of the nation's largest advertisers", great, just link this to like the home shopping network or tie in an ability to buy via a credit card on TV... give them a month and they'll be able to know everything about us. The more I think about this, the more I realize it is a bad idea.
  • Possibly, but (and I can say this with 100% accuracy) it's more likely that the station's clock is slightly off (or possibly, the air-switcher/channel operator is way off due to an error, I have switched on-air before, and been nearly 1 1/2 minutes early one time due to a bonehead error in the traffic department, where there was an entire comm. break left off). Many (but less than it used to be) WB and especially UPN stations are smaller stations (the local UPN station, which is a sister station to the local ABC station, has five tape machines and a simple routing switcher instead of a full-fledged air switcher) and are not automated, leaving large room for human error. I have seen some of our shows start *way* early. One time due to equipment error, our local 6pm newscast was almost required to go on the air *10* minutes early (the commercial spot server went down, and we ended the previous show that early because the breaks had to be skipped)!
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / WKPT-TV 19
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • I've been thinking about building one of these: The cost aren't that bad for a 24+hour unit. All you need is:

    $110 Motherboard with K6 266 and sound/video
    $25 16MB RAM
    $240 17Gig HD
    $200 mpeg encoder board
    $70 TV tuner
    -----
    $755

    Technically you need 95/98, as I don't think there are any drivers for mpeg encoder boards for linux.


    And, if you want to go real cheap.. Use a wireless ethernet card and boot off another computer -- geting dual use of your big fat
    hard drive.

    if anyone is think about doing this, let me know.. I want to do it so I can keep my video collection digital and watch it anywhere in my house with the press of a button (as well as MP3s!)

    Jonathan
  • oops I can't add. that comes out to
    ~$645, of course you will probably pay $50-$100 in shipping.
  • why is 10mbit too slow? You can play TV quality mpeg over it just fine (~190K/sec). You shouldn't have trouble with DVD quality even. You could probably stream 6 different movies using wireless. Wireless is nice if you have a big house and don't want to run wires everywhere (or are renting like me). Of course wireless is a little more expensive for the cards and you can usually only have ~10 computers on the same frequency band (not bad for a house).


  • You are using one now. It's called slashdot.
  • DVD-RAM? Anybody?
  • I've been using one of these for over a year.
    It is wonderful - it records the satellite signal digitally onto a digital tape. Actually, I
    record using Sony SVHS tapes - it recognizes
    them as "digital" tapes and records a digital
    signal just fine. On an ST160, it can
    record 5 hours with NO degradation. (ST160 = 320
    digital minutes, which the literature says is > 30Gb of data)

    The integration with the program guide is REALLY
    easy. You see all the programs like a spreadsheet
    and you can scroll around looking at programs.
    You can press the INFO button for a description of
    the program, or press REC to schedule the program
    to be recorded.

    It is compatible with regular VHS as well. It
    can record and playback in VHS mode if you want
    to take the quality hit (or are recording from
    an analog source)

    The firmware is remotely upgraded from time to
    time to add features (and fix bugs). Since I
    bought it, it has been upgraded to PCM/AC3
    digital sound output and it now knows about
    two more satellites.

    The only bad point I've found is that fast forward
    and rewind show a blank screen because of the
    digital nature of things.

    No way does it cost $800, I think I paid ~$530, and now you can get it for less.

    [glav.com]
    http://www.glav.com

    sells it for $444. (I'm not affiliated with them, etc...)

    I'm surprised more people don't know about them.
  • The boxes won't add any macrovision information. They will just pass it along if it's already present. So you can't hook your VCR or DVD to the Replay or TiVo box, save the pre-recorded movie to the HD, then try to record a copy of that movie. The resultant tape copy will be squirrely.
  • AFAIK, both boxes are US-only right now, i.e. only NTSC. I'm sure they're both working on PAL and SECAM, looking ahead to the various HD formats and thinking about I18N and L10N.
  • Where'd you hear that? Is it on their website? Have they made public, bindable statements to that effect?

    They've made public statements to the media on at least one occasion (a Wired article). I could go dig out the references if you'd like. IANAL, so I don't know about bindable. (I doubt anything posted on a website is bindable.) That is certainly not their intent, AFAICT.

    Until they do, they can do whatever they want. At least TiVo has a very comprehensive privacy policy out there for all to see, and also has opt-out available.

    Bzzt. Thanks for playing. TiVo's opt-out is for lots of extra information. They will always be collecting what stuff you watch and how you watch it. Go read the TiVo privacy policy [tivo.com] again, specifically part 3 that starts with "Other than as described above..."

    Haven't seen anything at all from Replay about privacy.

    I agree that Replay should post a policy.
  • Except that you can use Replay's box without the service. You don't get the channel guide, but you can use it as a "digital VCR" without connecting it to the phone line. So if they go out of business or you don't trust them, you can still use it.

    TiVo's box won't work without the service. Period. End of story.

    But the big difference here, and the reason that, so far, TiVo is actually the good guy of the two, is that they're disclosing their plans and offering opt out

    I corrected your opt-out assertion above; read the privacy policy [tivo.com] again.

  • This new web site ( www.tele-portal.com [tele-portal.com]) has got lots of news and reviews of ReplayTV, TiVo and other digital devices that will help users control when they watch their programs. It's pretty comprehensive.
  • AFAIK, both boxes pass macrovision information on, so if you try to archive recorded info to tape, it's just like a VCR, it gets all squirrelly.
  • Are we going to see FireWire ports on any of these things? Not a CHANCE. Umm... methinks you're wrong...

    http://www.replaytv.com/aboutreplaytv.ht ml [replaytv.com]

    Plus both pass macrovision along; they don't create it themselves. So they're not adding to copy protection; just maintaining the status quo. (No judgments here about whether the status quo is bad or good.)

  • Okay forgive me, but I don't see what the big deal is.

    So, they learn what you watch, and use that for targetted advertising. So? I'd rather receive ads for things I may be interested in, than ads for stuff I'll never buy. For example, I'd rather see computer related advertising than ads for makeup.

    Targetted advertising can be a good thing. Advertising will be worth more to those providing it, so they'll make money. You'll learn about products you may find useful that you didn't even know about. All those ads for crap you'd never buy will be gone.

    Maybe someone could explain to me what all the paranoia is about?

  • Damn - you make me feel old! ;-)
    Does no-one remember 14" removable disk packs, or the first 5 (yes, five) MB hard drives, or 8" floppies... For that matter, my first mass storage device was a 300 baud audio casette recorder - that's unless you count punched cards! :)

  • I went through both of their web sites because
    I thought this product was an incredible idea.
    After reading through both web sites I'll be
    going with Replay. Why? I'm not crazy about the
    TiVO box being connected to a phone line and
    TiVO collecting information on my watching habits.

    More disturbing is the last answer in their FAQ
    where TiVO will work with "some of the nation's largest advertisers" (presumably with the
    information they've gathered) "to better target ads so that you are exposed to advertising that is more relevant to you".
  • I think both sites make the point in their FAQs that if you put a VCR between the box and the TV then you can transfer stuff from memory to tape.

    True it's not ideal, and transfer would take as long as the programme's duration, but you're not restricted.

    PTDC
  • I saw an article recently (on Wired, I think, but I can't find it) how somebody had figured a way to transfer whole movies over the modem in an hour or two. You pick the film and it's securely transmitted.

    They should get together with the Replay people - the replay box sounds like the ideal device to store and play the movie.

    PTDC
  • Digital VCR sounds interesting, but people do collect episodes of their favourite programmes on large numbers of Video Cassettes. There might be some consumer resistance if they realise they're limited to a cache of 24/48 hours worth of recorded programmes.

    Some form of removable "backup" media would be interesting to allow folks to build up their own digital video collections. Tivo + dvdram backup unit?

    If you follow negroponte's ideas of the digital future, backups probably wouldn't need to be done on site and we'd have full media on demand. But hey, we're a long way off from having a T1 in everyones house so, for the short term at least, home backup of favourite programs would be useful.

    Of course, there are copyright issues involved in keeping collections of recorded TV shows. Perhaps the unit's modem could be used to implement some kind of fair priced pay per re-view instead of counting the average amount of time people stay tuned to the playboy/girl channel... Oops ;)

    -ad :)
  • Actually, my guess is that the industry should love it. There's no removable media for you to lend to your friends or sell on the street corner :)

    Wonder when it'll have a remote interface so you can connect in over the 'net and program it for those times when you forget to before leaving for home...

  • Linux entrepreneurs - take this one and run! (Score:3)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Friday April 30, 1999 @11:34AM (#1908906) Journal
    Hello all:

    I'm not the only one of course, but a big memory buffer to allow replays, commerical skipping, etc has been on my 'why don't they have' list for at least 5 years ... the more things are genericized into bits, the less the price of the format per se matters ... prices on hard drive storage fall nicely, but how much have video cassette prices changed in the last year?

    Now, the question is: What hardware / software requirments would there have to be for this to work under Linux / other Free OS?

    Here are the ones I see. Please correct my non-techy but sincere self!

    Hardware:
    - Big, fast hard drive (a given), probably one dedicated to this task
    - Video card with appropriate ins (as many formats as possible) and lots of memory
    - Firewire input

    Software:
    MPEG (some other acceptable) compression to turn incoming video into files on the hard drive
    MPEG (or whatever) playback to replay said files.
    Management software that lets you select time and date to record, or what to playback, or what to edit etc, with a nice graphical interface.

    Again, please let me know if what I'm saying is obviously silly (it's happened before), but:

    For the cost of the video systems described (around $700), wouldn't it be possible to outfit a PC with the above hardware and software?

    Or better, couldn't some smart Linux entrepreneur package appropriate software and hardware (matching what's in those ready-made boxes) for people to install on their linux boxes?

    Does Linux have no MPEG compressors right now, or are they not fast enough for this task? (head spins, confused.)

    I would pay happily for a dedicated hard drive, CD-ROM full of appropriate software and maybe some games or something, too, and a new video card that was appropriate to the task, if it would let me watch Ally McBeal at my leisure and without interruptions.

    If you have the know how to do what I'm saying, your market is out there.

    Timothy [monkey.org]
  • I was looking at the Dishnetwork DVHS receiver, but I think it has only analog I/O. If you have to go through analog RCA jacks to get to/from a digital camcorder or a computer, this system and the ones in the original post have much less appeal. Does anyone know of any way to record a digital satellite signal and then copy/edit it digitally?
  • For the most part the disks spin at the same rate on the inner tracks as the outer ones but the outer tracks have more sectors.
  • Sony alerdy coming out with one. They were making deals with Quantum and WDC to make HDD for them. I believe Quatum won the deal because their QuickView Drive technology. Just you wait.


    Zaw-
  • Good question - and I just asked it, since there's not a WORD about privacy on the entire site that I could find, and certainly not in the technical FAQ where it should be.

    We'll see what (or if) they reply. I told them I wouldn't even consider their box until they answer, and neither would a lot of techies, who are, of course, their target audience.

    This whole Network thing kinda scares me in general. Regardless of whether they collect info or not, being dependent on that isn't too great. What happens to the functionality if this thing is a general bomb and they run out of money? That's barely even improbable in this day and age. Does the box turn into a doorstop without the network?

    I'd like this exact box, but let me set up the programs by hand, give them a name, and forget the Network stuff - i.e. automatic timeshifting, programs categorized, but no tapes to futz with. I don't need my hand held with network updates and neither do most techies - I'm most interested to see their reply to the privacy matter.

    I have a nasty feeling ReplayTV is being heavily subsidized by some advertising interests who are slobbering to get viewership data...

    Maybe I should look at the TiVo box - I've only seen Replay's site so far.
  • Bzzzt, thanks for playing!

    I'm not defending either company - this whole "service" thing is there for a reason, and it's not just to make it more convenient to record shows - it's a coverup for the marketing part.

    But the big difference here, and the reason that, so far, TiVo is actually the good guy of the two, is that they're disclosing their plans and offering opt out, while Replay has nothing about privacy on their site so far.

    Right now, given a choice between the two I'd take TiVo in a second. No way I'm going to plunk down $699 cash for something that very well may report every show I watch, with my name, back to central.
  • For recording, TiVo works much like a regular VCR if you disconnect the phone line. You tell it the time, channel, and quality, and it records a show. You will still have all the pause, frame-forward and back, fast-forward and back and slow motion features in live tv.

    However, without dialing in, the box won't know what shows are coming on or when, so the shows won't be labeled and you won't have any information on them. And if the networks move the show, the box won't know.

    I have heard of customers who plug the phone line in, get the data, and then un-plug for a while. The TiVo downloads 14 days in advance, so the occasional download works well for people with RVs and shortage of phonelines.

    Hope this answers your question.

    Richard Bullwinkle
    TiVo Webmaster

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