Digital Video Recorders ROCK!
The digital video recorder, or DVR, is so compelling it’s likely to become as common as the VCR. TV viewers love convenience, and this new black box is the most convenient way to watch TV yet. The digital video recorder allows viewers to control “live” TV programs as if they were playing from a regular VCR or DVD, with pause, play, replay, shuttle, search and a variety of other capabilities. The DVR works with regular broadcast, cable or satellite TV signals.
It has the kind of technology that you’ll quickly grow to covet. It’s pretty easy to understand: a computer-style hard drive captures whatever TV signal you feed it and keeps it available for you to watch at your leisure. With low-powered computer-type processing under the hood and a viewer-friendly interface on the front-end, DVRs bring digital video storage to the living room, including random access of stored programs through the remote control, smart electronic program guides that remember your viewing preferences, instant slow-motion replay of key scenes and much more.
There are a variety of digital video recorders on the market that are manufactured by consumer electronics giants such as Philips, Sony and Panasonic. As purveyors of program content and drivers of TV-viewing innovation, the digital broadcast satellite providers, EchoStar-DISHNetwork and DirecTV, are also heavily involved in the research, development and implementation of digital video recorders. The other names behind the phenomenon are not as familiar yet to the living room console: names like ReplayTV, TiVo and even Microsoft. You can bet though with all these guns competing in a market that is still young, ripe and relatively undefined, the current products differ significantly in prices and features. This overview and the accompanying Buyer’s Guide grid will help you understand who offers what and compare which features are at the crux of the viewing matter.
Pause and Play
Sit down and watch TV for a couple of hours, and you are bound to be interrupted by something—a bathroom break, a telephone call, children requiring attention. Something is going to get you. Dealing with these interruptions is the DVR stock-in-trade. Hit pause on the remote, and whatever you are watching is instantly frozen. Take care of your business and when you return to the sanctity of the living room—be it minutes or hours later—you can pick up watching your program right where you left off.
If you don’t want to watch commercials or the half-time show, fast-forward through them until you catch-up with the program as it’s being broadcast in “real-time.”
If a scene in that movie particularly intrigues you, you can replay it again and again to your heart’s content. When you are finished, you can pick up watching where you left off.
The ability to pause and play live TV is an especially powerful yet intuitive tool and is what makes the digital video recorder truly unique as a technology. Because of the back-end power the DVR needs to work this magic, it’s easy for it to do a whole series of other things as well.
Recording Time and Quality
Digital video recorders use video compression technology to squeeze the signal to a size small enough to fit on a computer-style hard disk. Some DVRs allow the user to determine the extent of this compression. Less compression means better quality but less recording time. More compression means more recording time but lower video quality. Lower video quality results in “artifacts” such as blurred sections of video, particularly in fast-moving scenes. In many instances, these lapses are brief and unnoticeable to the average viewer, but for connoisseurs they may be distracting. In most instances, the size of the hard drive is in direct correlation to the price of the unit. The hard drive requires space management as you use it to keep program selections up to date. If you select too much content, you have to determine what to save and what to dump. To more permanently archive program content, you can play it to a VCR and record it onto VHS tape.
Electronic Program Guide
The Players
Sweet Power
The power of the EPG lives in the speed and comfort of the interface and in the number of days of programming it offers. You want to surf fast and smart and stay a week in advance to make sure you catch everything worth watching? Just use your remote to scroll through a grid of program listings and click on the titles that interest you. Once you’ve made your selections, your system automatically records the programs to the DVR hard drive as they air. When you are ready to watch some TV, you are able to select from the list those programs you’ve already said you want to watch.
The EPGs on all models of DVRs released to date also provide theme-based, program-based and keyword-based searching. For example, you could run a theme-based search for “sports,” a program-based search for X-Files and a keyword search for Jackie Chan.
Some models go so far as to “learn” your viewing preferences, and will actually record programs for you they “think” you might like to watch.
The ease with which you can make these programming selections, whether the DVR will make programming suggestions for you and whether you pay a separate subscription for the service are main points of comparison between makes and models.
ReplayTV and TiVo offer different pricing and service models. ReplayTV service comes with its own brand DVR or in boxes manufactured by Panasonic. TiVo is available in boxes by Philips and Sony. Microsoft is the wildcard of the bunch. It provided the DVR-style software for DISHNetwork’s DISHPlayer and has announced it will release its own full-featured DVR with Sony and DirecTV later this year.
ReplayTV is betting that consumers would rather pay more up front for a unit than be responsible for a monthly subscription fee. The ReplayTV 3020 and Panasonic ShowStopper 1000 (with ReplayTV) both list for $499 and include 20GB hard drives. This equates to about 20 hours of recording time, somewhat less at highest quality. The next step up is the ReplayTV 3030 and the Panasonic ShowStopper 2000, each with 30GB hard drives that can record up to 30 hours of programming. All of the ReplayTV units also have a seven-day EPG and VCR control.
TiVo believes it can capture the market with a cheaper off-the-shelf unit and a $9.95 per month subscription fee (though it is possible to buy a lifetime subscription at time of purchase for $199). Unlike RePlay devices, TiVo DVRs will track and “learn” what you like to watch, provide viewing suggestions and automatically record programs. The Philips HDR-212, with a 20GB hard drive, lists for $299. The Philips HDR-312, with a 30 GB hard drive, lists for $399. The HDR-612, with a 60GB hard drive, lists for $699. They allow 20, 30 and 60 hours of recording, respectively, with somewhat less at highest quality. TiVo is also available in two models by Sony, the SAT-T60 and the SVR-2000, each of which has a 30GB hard drive and retail for $399. TiVo units have 14 days of programming available in the EPG.
Satellite provider DISH Network offers a WebTV Plus-based unit in its DISHPlayer model 7200. With a 17GB hard drive allowing 12 hours of recording and Internet access built into the box, the DISHPlayer is the first unit to combine satellite service, Web browsing and DVR features in one device.
Following suit, DirecTV plans to release a receiver this fall that will make use of Microsoft’s UltimateTV software. The SAT-W60 DirecTV by Sony, due out this fall, will retail for $450 and will include DVR features, a 30GB hard drive, Internet access and a wireless keyboard. At press time all appearances indicate that UltimateTV is the next incarnation of Microsoft’s WebTV. No word yet on monthly subscription fee. Additionally, DirecTV has announced satellite tuners with TiVo Service. They are available now through DirecTV, Philips and Sony.
Your own particular tendencies will determine which make and model is right for you. One thing that’s certain: the DVR is coming to the living room to stay. Combining pause-and-resume with EPG-based search, program and record, these boxes are worth their prices. Get one soon and take easy, powerful control of your television viewing.
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