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The Uber DVR
PromiseTV promises to record EVERYTHING
by Karl Bode Tuesday 26-Jul-2005 tags: Video · hardware
Boing Boing takes a look at the looming PromiseTV box, a prototype DVR being shown off at London's OpenTech conference. The unit, through a ridiculous number of hard-drives, claims to be able to record every show available on television over a one month span. Sounds nice, but will that much storage come cheap? Will it compete with other DVRs or cable on-demand plans?

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hitman247

join:2004-05-17
Toronto

i want to meet the loser that buys this

enough said

53059959
Temp banned from BBR more then anyone

join:2002-10-02
PwnZone

Re: i want to meet the loser that buys this

how? it has to be able to recieve every channel symultanneously. as far as I know, theres no satellite/cable/broadcast service that you can do this with?
noogoo

join:2005-06-27

so you can be the loser's pal?

is it possible to record the entire analog signal coming through your cable line?

they could also say it can record all shows for a month, but say the storage is on their servers and to access the recorded shows you have to download them over the internet. a glorified extension cable.

iptv like someone else around here said would be pretty fair. storing shows for a week with an option to buy. there would ought to be no fast forward though, and rewind maybe.
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war_by_proxy

join:2004-06-15
Houston, TX

Price

Considering the price of hard drives today, even at 5% of the price each, it would still be ridiculously expensive, I would think. Either that, or you'd pay too much each month.

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
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Mount Airy, MD

You Can Prove the Caine-Hackman Theory!

<bad joke>
Finally! I now have a way to see if the Caine-Hackman Theory is really true!
</bad joke>
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innoman
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Premium
join:2002-05-07
Dallas, TX
kudos:1

Re: You Can Prove the Caine-Hackman Theory!

How many tuners does it have?
DMS1

join:2005-04-06
Carrollton, TX

Re: You Can Prove the Caine-Hackman Theory!

said by innoman:

How many tuners does it have?
I don't think it works that way. I would assume that it just digitizes and stores the entire video band (about 600MHz of it) and separates it out on replay.

While this is probably a pointless idea for a whole month, it would be very nice to do this for just the last couple of hours so that if you find a program you want to watch that is part of the way through then you can just jump back to the start. However, even this would still require about 9 terabytes of disk space.

Camelot One
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-21
Austin, TX
kudos:1

Whats the point?

I always like to see advances in technology, not that I'm sure you could call this an "advance", but whats the point?

I have a 250 hour Tivo box with dual sat and dual OTA tuners, and I've yet to find enough decent stuff broadcast at one time to use more than 2 of the 4 tuners at the same time. "57 channels and nothin on" is definitely the story these days, I can't imagine paying to record all this crap.
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John Galt
Forward, March
Premium
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp
kudos:3

Re: Whats the point?

I agree...

I haven't watched TV in six months. Just think how much money I am going to save!


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A is A

Krytor
Reminiscing The Future
Premium
join:2001-07-07
Indianapolis, IN

UK

quote:
What the Promise does is grab the entire broadcast TV multiplex -- all the channels being broadcast in the UK

What's that? Four or five channels? I'm not upto date on my UK channel lineup.

cdru
Go Colts
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join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:5
Reviews:
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Re: UK

It depends on what you consider "broadcast". If they are talking about just OTA signals, that is relatively few and probably fairly simple to do. If they are are talking about what is available via cable tv or satellite, that's a whole 'nother story.
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Unregistered user

@tsclos01.al.comcast.
There's more than you might think. Take a look at this site.

»www.freeview.co.uk/

Keep in mind that this is strictly OTA digital. Cable and satellite would give you even more channels.

phxmark
What Country Are We Living In?

join:2000-12-27
Glendale, AZ

It could be possible, but...

...it will cost well into the thousands. It would most likely be a complete entertainment system. Using 4 or 5 250 GB SATA drives in a spanning configuration will get you well into over a thousand hours of recording time. Add on MPEG 4 compression and add thousands more.

The Media Retrival system we have in our school district is run on an Apple Xserver with three 250GB drive and has well over a thousand hours of video on it. All the videos on it are MPEG 4 encoded and are played using Quicktime.
--
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ITGuy72
Permanently Disco
Premium
join:2001-11-01
New York

Neat

If they can keep the price down, and I know that's a pretty big if, it seems like a good product to me. Couple that with a PAL slingbox (or "Promise-to-go"? )coming out later this year and I can watch any UK programming from the comfort of my adopted home here in NY.

NOCMan
MacChatter
Premium
join:2004-09-30
Colorado Springs, CO

Hoax

Unless the UK has one channel there is no way this box can deliver on this promise. Even if they figured out a way to record the actual signal being broadcast and demuxing it off the hard drive you are still talking more storage than some datacenters.

There's no way this is possible.

Better would be a company with the hard drive space and a few hundred tivo's to record this stuff for the consumers and the consumer access it over a broadband connection through a set top box.
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DMS1

join:2005-04-06
Carrollton, TX

Re: Hoax

said by NOCMan:

Unless the UK has one channel there is no way this box can deliver on this promise. Even if they figured out a way to record the actual signal being broadcast and demuxing it off the hard drive you are still talking more storage than some datacenters.

There's no way this is possible.

Better would be a company with the hard drive space and a few hundred tivo's to record this stuff for the consumers and the consumer access it over a broadband connection through a set top box.
Indeed.

If you wish to digitize the entire incoming signal (which is not inconceivable from an A-to-D conversion standpoint) then you will need to digitize up to about 600MHz (minimum - maybe more like 800) with at least eight bits resolution. Sampling at 2x the bandwidth (the minimum you need) gives 1200MB per second, or 4320GB per hour!

Overdrive
Are You Where You Want To Be?
Premium
join:2001-05-31
Waterbury, CT

Re: Hoax

This is why it should be at a hosting facility and you pay per episode you watch.

Really, I am supprised that no-one has done this. Think of the marketing. The advertising. You watch only what you want to watch and once the tv companies see what people like they will adapt and show us more of that. Voice your opinion with your money.

If I like a show and I want to see more of it I'll buy the season pass. If I dislike a show I'll never buy it.

I am certain though that there will be issues with QVC and Public Access stations that no-one will really pay for.

Shows like ESPN... you buy the season pass for sportscenter..

Just some thoughts.
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DMS1

join:2005-04-06
Carrollton, TX

Re: Hoax

said by Overdrive:

Really, I am supprised that no-one has done this. Think of the marketing. The advertising. You watch only what you want to watch and once the tv companies see what people like they will adapt and show us more of that. Voice your opinion with your money.
When IPTV becomes the norm (about five years I guess) then there are no technical reasons that everything can't be 'on-demand'. For example, you could watch anything for up to a week after its last broadcast, or if you want to keep it, just transfer it to your server-side DVR. This has big advantages for the providers, not least because they don't need to put expensive and potentially unreliable DVRs in everyone's house. It would also allow TV companies and advertisers to get 100% accurate information on viewing numbers.

teraforall

@207.179.x.x

Other use

Another use for this would be just to use the box as a giant external harddrive

tc1uscg

join:2005-03-09
Saint Clair Shores, MI

Re: Other use

Yeah, not only would I like to meet the loser who buys this. I would like to meet the LOSERS who buy cell phones and pay/subscribe to watch tv on'em. Maybe they are 2 of a kind..

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