Harddisk TV recorder

[IgnatiusTam]

Ok guys I'm new to this forum, so don't get mad at me if I asked something that was answered b4.

I went to Japan in April and hang around in Sony Plaza, not surprisingly I saw a lot of cool stuff that even us HK people can ever dream of. And then I saw that Hard disk recorder, which actually dumped the idea of VHS tapes and record everything in MPEG2 into its internal harddisk. It's something like 200K yen, and even have to take orders. It's build is silver in colour, sleek and stylish, just like everything from Sony.

Now then I think of myself, isn't every this thingy does is capable in our PCs? I can think of is getting a G450eTV or whatever like that, feed cable and everything into the card and do the capture, and replay output on the other display to my amp. The thing i can think of is lacking a sleek User Interface on a computer.

I know many of you are doing this kind of thing, but is it possible to make it user friendly that even my girlfriend can handle? (hahaha)

check it out, it's japanese though.

http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Style-d/Clipon/index.html

[cjyo~]

this is a Japanese Tivo or Replay tv, etc, you must have something similar in Hong Kong. Actually, in this case I think Japan may actually be behind the US in set-top hard disk player availability and sales.

Yes you could do something similar with the 450etv, etc, but I don't know if your girlfriend could deal with Windows fubars. Just by a Tivo and be done with it...

[IgnatiusTam]

Pure NTSC is the problem that force me buying that thing.

[IgnatiusTam]

oh i mean.. NOT buying that thing...

I know, the Japanese is always lacking behind technology-wise, but the itchy-bitchy thing is that they can make it sleek and very user friendly, that's the point.

[This_Idiot]

The 450eTV does exactly this, it's what the Matrox sales blurb refers to as "Timeshifting". The reviewers guide gives more detail :

..Live video is recorded in MPEG-2 format and stored in a cicular buffer on the hard drive. In parallel, the eTV decodes the video signal in another part of the circular buffer and transfers the data to on-board memory for display". Further on under the Q&A, there are more details of the circular buffer, and it clearly states that there is a limit to the size of the buffer, and that when this is reached then the data at the beginning of the circular buffer is overwritten. The default buffer size (at least on my installation on PC2) is 400Mb, which gives a maximum duration of 27 minutes in LP mode. This can be adjusted using the Settings/Timeshift menu, and it allowed me to specify 2000Mb which gives 137 minutes in LP mode and 85 minutes in SP. The controls are very simple : Start Timeshifting, Display Timeshifting Progress, Instant Replay, Return to live, Picture in Picture, and Swap PIP. The "video" controls of PC-VCR can also be used to "pause" the playback of the program while you answer the phone, fetch a beer, whatever, and then clicking the pause again will cause playback to resume where you left it while still recording "live".

Chris
(T_I)

[This message has been edited by This_Idiot (edited 04 May 2001).]

[matroxg200]

Take a look here:
http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/mediaterminal.html
It's not available yet...but everytime I look at it I'm drooling, especially since it's Linux powered

I've recorded *digitally* some satellite dvb mpeg2 streams using a nokia 9500 sat receiver
via its scsi2 connection to my pc and I can tell you it's great at doing this

No useless digital/analog/digital conversions at all

[xortam]

The HiPix card will record OTA HDTV MPEG2 directly to HDD.

[Nethermancer]

The Nokia device is not as good as the Pace XTV which should be available here in the UK in a couple of months. It has a built-in SKY DIGIBOX with two inputs (from a twin LNB) so it can record 2 channels at once. Since there is no Analog<->Digital conversion like the TIVO the datastreams are recorded directly to the hard drive resulting in no loss of quality. I can only hope it has a firewire connector or something similar to get the recorded programs into my PC for editing.