Here they come: SDxx based DVR's & distro

[Dr Mordrid]

Last year when I mentioned the idea of HD DVR's and media distribution based on DD/SDHC/SDXC cards it was greeted with some skepticism. Well, prepare yourselves - here they come. The DVR's at least - distribution is next.

For starters Panasonic will intro them at the upcoming CES as a built-in feature of their Viera TV sets, but expect them to start appearing in cable & satellite boxes and as standalone devices. Functionally they behave like any other DVR with scheduling etc. The difference is the media; no moving parts and small size.

For starters a single 64 gigabyte SDXC will record about 5 hours of content, depending on quality setting, but these will be ramping up to 2 terabytes soon with a proportional increase in recording time, and price reductions for the cards as production ramps up.

Basically, this is the beginning of the end of HDD's and discs for media storage. It's been coming for quite a while in cameras, both still and video, and before long those shiny plastic discs, both DVD and BR, will follow 8-track, VHS & Beta into the sunset.

HDD's for general data too as solid state storage matures with spintronic & memristor techs.

[Jammrock]

I just saw this on Engadget. A good idea as a DVR but I'm still not sold as a rental replacement. Though I still see several problms with using SDXC right now. A good 64GB SDXC card runs $200+, the high-end stuff that can handle recoding multiple streams, or a single low compression stream, cost $500+.

Even a bigger problems is that 64GB is nothing on a DVR. I have a 500GB DVR that uses MPEG-4 compression and has a 125 hours of HD record time and my family still runs low on space constantly. I've been looking into adding a 1TB eSATA it's become such a problem. Until SDXC hits large volumes and faster speeds it's not a feasible tech.

I'm not saying it won't be, but right now it isn't.

Though with digital Internet distribution becoming commonplace I don't see sitting around for a data copy to catch on. I could be wrong, but I don't think it will.

[Dr Mordrid]

Many new cable/sat boxes now support USB & have card slots. I can ready store SD/HD movies on a big USB key and move them between 2 fixed devices; a Motorola set-top and a Sony BR, and computers. TV's were already getting USB & card slots before this. SDXC will just enhance the situation.

Red Box (20% of the rental market) and others are already moving in that direction, planning on SD/SDHC/SDXC/USB-key distro. An outfit called Mo-DV (Mobile Digital Video) is already getting studio support for their secured format for mobile use at the least. Rental and purchase capable using their DRM. They'll be at CES too.

It's real, and it's already happening. As for SDXC's cost: remember how much SD and SDHC were 6 months after they hit? Now look at them - cheap as hell. The same will be true of SDXC, but it'll happen faster.