Watch TV the Way You've Always Wanted

by Jody A. Baram
Summer/Fall 1999

When it comes to recording television, the good old VCR is the technology of choice. Unfortunately, the VCR has lots of weaknesses we've grown all too accustomed to. It's confusing to program, it doesn't remember what you like to watch, and you can only watch what you've recorded when you're finished recording the whole thing. And don't forget how the clock resets to that pesky blinking "12:00" every time the VCR gets unplugged.

Take heart. A smarter, more powerful, more useful video recording alternative is here. The earliest consumer incarnations of the device are being unveiled as we speak. In the simplest terms, we're talking about a black, VCR-sized box that sits on the TV set-top and contains a computer-style hard drive that captures, stores and plays back a TV signal on the fly. They don't use videotape and they don't need rewinding or fast-forwarding.

The product category is so new, there's no official name for it yet. Elsewhere in this issue, Smart TV editor and publisher Matt York dubs these devices Video Recording Computers, or VRCs. The name is based not only on the design of the set-top devices, but on the increasing ability of general purpose desktop computers to capture and display full-screen, full-motion television.

Name brands of set-top VRCs that have or soon will hit consumer shelves include ReplayTV by Replay Networks, PersonalTV by TiVo and Philips Consumer Electronics, and a WebTV version being released in conjunction with satellite TV provider Echostar.

Super Surf Power
A VRC improves on old VCR recording capability in several ways. First, everything is recorded to a computer hard disk digitally. Provided the signal compression and decompression are adequate, the picture and sound will remain true replicas of their originals. No matter how many times a show or movie is played back, there's no signal breakdown.

Second, the program content is available in a digital nonlinear fashion, meaning the viewer can play back any part of the recorded program at any time, even while the device is still recording the same program. This ability gives rise to some of the most compelling and innovative uses of VRC technology.

Finally, the set-top VRCs currently on the market come with associated subscription services that help viewers manage their media. These services maintain lists of viewer selections, take note of a viewer's watching habits and make viewing recommendations by comparing what's on with viewing history.

Couch Potato Case Studies
So what would you use a VRC for?

Scenario 1: Say, for example, there's a movie marathon happening one weekend featuring 10 hours of movies with your favorite actor. There's no way you're going to be able to tie up the TV for 10 straight hours to watch them all, even if you did want to sit on your rear for that long on a beautiful weekend day, which you don't. The kids want the TV for their Teletubbies, Looney Tunes or PlayStation; the spouse wants to take you shopping for furniture; there's your afternoon tee-time and you were hoping to catch some of the basketball game. You could program your old VCR, if you remember how, and hope that no one changes the settings and that you'll remember to swap out tapes.

With a VRC, it's a different world. Bring up the movies on the electronic program guide with one click of a button. Select the ones you want to record with another, and you're finished. When it's time to watch them, select from your list which you want to watch first. Watch them incrementally over the next few days. Skip commercials with a single click. If you want to archive a couple on VHS tape, plug your VCR into your VRC and dub a tape of just the ones you want. If the marathon is a multi-day affair, with two movies every night, tell the VRC with a click you want to capture all the movies in the next week that feature your actor.

Scenario 2: Now say you're watching the season finale of your favorite series. Five years worth of dedicated viewing have led up to this moment. All will be revealed. The show starts, and right on cue, Mom calls. You press "pause" and take the call. 45-minutes later, after you've had a nice relaxing conversation with Mom, you restart the show exactly where you left off. When you hit a commercial, skip it. Within a half hour or so, you've caught up with the real-time broadcast, and you finish the rest of the program with everyone else in the world.

Scenario 3: It's the big game, and you think the referee's blown a call. How could he do that! You are able to stop everything, rewind to the alleged infraction, and play it back in super slow motion. It's your own instant replay. On a more positive note, the game-winning play can live on forever.

Scenario 4: It's a slow night at the homestead and you and the kids are looking for something good to watch. The satellite electronic program guide has 250 different channels to blindly surf through, but your VRC offers you a convenient list of recommended viewing based on what you've all watched before. Pick from a dozen top choices.

How They Do It
The technology that's required to record live television to a hard drive is hardly new. A cost-effective consumer set-top version of the technology is the breakthrough. The dropping cost of hard drives for data storage is one factor, as are faster, cheaper and more powerful chips to encode and decode the video signal. The set-top VRCs on the market now all use the MPEG-2 video standard, which is a high-quality digital compression/decompression format. With the lower cost of hard drives, storage capacity will be easy to upgrade. Software and interface upgrades will be sent automatically via a built-in modem. To keep the boxes updated, an associated service comes with each box. Like the boxes, the services offer different features and different price models, from free to $24.95 per month.

ReplayTV
ReplayTV, by Replay Networks of Palo Alto, garnered several high-profile awards at recent trade shows and technology events. Not only does ReplayTV offer a full electronic program guide, but it allows users to create their own "channels" of preselected content in the guide. You could, for example, give each family member his or her own channel. A stereotypical example might be a Clint Eastwood channel for Dad, a Blues Clues channel for Junior and a Martha Stewart channel for Mom. Any time any of those programs airs, the ReplayTV unit will capture them to the hard drive. You can create channels by themes, directors, sports teams or program titles. The ReplayTV unit comes with a finite amount of hard disk space, so you can't record everything and keep it forever. When you create a Replay Channel for a favorite show, you tell it how many episodes to keep. The box informs you if you are selecting more than you can store and asks for your preference: purge old programs or ignore new ones.

The ReplayTV Electronic Program Guide will pull and display programming information from all available TV sources: antenna, cable and/or satellite. It displays them all in a single guide you can surf to select programs to view or record. Replay will search all available programming based on user preferences to find programming that meets the criteria (Clint, Martha Stewart, drama, action, Stanley Kubrick, etc.)

Subscription to the Replay Networks service is free with the purchase of a unit. The unit dials the home service once per day for program guide updates, periodic software upgrades, to set its clock and to perform other administrative tasks.

Three units are shipping: ReplayTV 2001 has six hours of storage priced at $699; ReplayTV 2003 has 14 hours of storage for $999; and ReplayTV 2004 has 28 hours of storage for $1,499.

PersonalTV
TiVo Inc. of Sunnyvale, Ca. is another strong contender in the nascent video recording computer market. Backed by the hardware muscle of Philips Consumer Electronics and the branding power of the DirecTV digital broadcast satellite service, the PersonalTV box offers nonlinear record and playback capabilities.

The Philips PersonalTV box learns viewer preferences over time and will automatically record a program or type of program that has been frequently recorded in the past, even if it isn't currently selected. The TiVo learning technology will also search and make recommendations about what to view based on what's currently airing.

The PersonalTV interface will include "network showcases" on its main page, which will provide a collection of the premier programming content its partners are scheduled to broadcast, including HBO and E!

The TiVo-enabled DirecTV box will be available later this year and will bring TiVo search and learn power to the more than 200 channels offered through the DirecTV satellite TV service.

TiVo and Philips are aiming for a $300-$500 price point for a PersonalTV box that will record 10 hours of programming. A monthly Personal TV Service subscription fee of $7-$10 will balance the lower price for hardware.

WebTV
The other players in the VRC market will be WebTV and Echostar, who have announced they will be selling a WebTV Plus-enabled DISH Network satellite TV this spring. Along with Web browsing and satellite TV receiving, the Echostar 7100 will initially have the ability to pause a TV show for up to a half-hour (for a phone call or bathroom break, for example). Later this year, owners will get a free software upgrade that will enable up to eight hours of program recording capability on the installed 8.6 GB hard drive, said Marc Lumpkin, Echostar communications manager.

Model 7100 will be sold off the shelf this spring with its own custom WebTV/DISH Network interactive program guide, so you can access 7 days of listings by TV program, title, actor, keyword or type of program, as opposed to the 48 hours currently available, Lumpkin said. The Model 7100 will notify you before your favorite shows air and offer the TV Pause feature.

Pricing for the Echostar 7100 is announced to be $499, and will require a $24.95 per month subscription to WebTV Networks Internet Service Provider (or some other ISP) and a DISH Network subscription, which starts at $19.99 per month.

What the Future Holds
Since it is the service as much as the hardware that will be the deciding purchase factor for many people, each service provider is taking a different approach to gain the competitive advantage. TiVo and WebTV are charging subscription fees for basic service. TiVo also plans to use excess bandwidth on the DirecTV satellite to download broadband data like trailers and commercials. WebTV wants to enhance the TV viewing experience not only by allowing digital video capture and playback, but also by providing full-blown Web access at a premium price. Replay plans to offer its service for free, however, it will also offer a premium subscription as well as pay-per-view and commerce transactions.

DuckVision and MGI MaxMedia
Then there's always the option of doing it yourself. DuckVision is an existing product that captures TV to a hard drive using software. With the release of faster and faster processors, like the Pentium III, inexpensive software solutions are more viable for the technology-talented who are able and willing to devote a PC to the task. Another product in this category is MGI's MaxMedia, developed and released in conjunction with Intel's Pentium III processor. The MGI software also captures high-quality TV to a Pentium III-enabled hard drive. With both of these options, the Pentium computer has to be within a cable's length of the TV, but for anyone considering a PC/TV, it's a natural fit.

No matter what route people take to freedom, it's clear from the increasing power they wield over their programming that the days of being held prisoner to the TV scheduler are over. It's only a matter of time and method.