The death of the DVR?

[britcub]

Saw this article (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1943624,00.asp) recently... could this be the death of the physical DVR?

[terryeden]

This is how the NTL DRV that I played with last year worked. If you think about it, it solves all the problems that current DVRs have - multiple tuners, missed programmes, power and hardware failures etc.

As long as you have a sufficiently fast pipe and low enough latency - it works fine.

[cyril]

It also depends on content available and how long you want to timeshift it for.

I've got Homechoice, but have only used the VOD feature once in 9 months for the Apprentice. Their availibilty of shows I am interested in is just one - the Apprentice - and that is only available for 7 days at most.

I suspect DVRs with hard drives will still be useful for the next 15 years or so, and will probably be my main viewing source for the next 5 years unless NTL or Homechoice miraculously have ALL my favourite programmes in HD and on VOD..

[aerialplug]

... plus this isn't a solution for areas that don't have cable. There are quite large rural areas that aren't served by cable and won't be for the foreseeable future, some of these have sizeable populations. The town I came from in South Wales has a population >120,000 and had cable of sorts until about 5 years ago - it was originally called Pipe and was in place to provide early TVs in the 1960s & 1970s with signals before the main transmitter mast went up. Initially VHF, when UHF TVs came out the signal could be transcoded using e televerter from VHF into the UHF band with variable results.

When a local UHF transmitter was built, many people held on to Pipe as it not only provided local BBC & ITV but it also provided an Enlgish regional variation from Devon - a major advantage to non-Welsh speakers as prior to S4C, a large junk of primetime programming on BBC1 Cymru/Wales and HTV were welsh language.

When S4C arrived, we as a family carried on recieving Pipe as it now carried Channel 4 UK, something not available in most of Wales, and certainly not available in our valley.

But even by the mid-1980s, the system was in decline, and there was little interest from the cable company in upgrading. The end came for us as a household when a neigbrour further up the street decided to have a PVC facia on their house, whch involved chopping the cable (which ran from house to house at roof level). Although this annoyed the street, the cable company didn't have the resources to bury a new cable (which by now they were required to do) so the street was disconnected.

Not long after this, some basic "cable" channels were placed on the pipe, replacing the english regions - Sky One, MTV, UK Gold (and a few others, many of these were time-shared onto the same channel) and a movie channel (barely encrypted). Picture quality on these channels was mediocre to say the least.

About 5 years ago, the entire system was shut down because it had simply outlasted its use with most people now opting for the superior picture quality of Sky (and then On Digital).

No replacement was put in place and there's no replacement coming in the forseeable future. The cables are still there for the most part - they're now jusd dead, with no signal coming from the head-end.

So, PVRs will still have a use for this kind of community where cable is uneconomincal.

[AMc]

Keep your eyes peeled for Video on Demand delivery over broadband. Although high speed DSL links aren't available to absolutely everyone range and bandwidth have been improving steadily over the last few years.

[britcub]

There are quite large rural areas that aren't served by cable and won't be for the foreseeable future, some of these have sizeable populations.

LOL You don't have to be in a rural area for this... I live within a mile of Manchester city centre, and can't get cable - NTL refuse to put any new infrastructure in, even though all the surrounding areas have it!

This doesn't, of course, stop them sending me junk mail inviting me to subscribe...

[katman]

LOL You don't have to be in a rural area for this... I live within a mile of Manchester city centre, and can't get cable - NTL refuse to put any new infrastructure in, even though all the surrounding areas have it!

This doesn't, of course, stop them sending me junk mail inviting me to subscribe...

I can beat that distance wise.... the NTL cable runs across the end of my street approx 30m away but they wont come down my street !!!

[Tony Hoyle]

I can beat that distance wise.... the NTL cable runs across the end of my street approx 30m away but they wont come down my street !!!

I can beat that! I can *see* the NTL green box out of my front window and they won't run the cable 20 feet.

I still get the NTL promotional crap through the letterbox every couple of weeks.

[katman]

All we need now is for someone to say they have an NTL box in their lounge and NTL wont turn it on again :D

[davidg]

I can beat that! I can *see* the NTL green box out of my front window and they won't run the cable 20 feet.

I still get the NTL promotional crap through the letterbox every couple of weeks.

I've actually got cable going past my house but it is apparently analogue, so no high-speed digital cable access for me. I still get all the advertising rubbish as well telling me how marvellous it is :mad: