Ah, the problems of modern technology … Digital Video Recorders like TiVO are good for the time-shifting of TV broadcasts – for later viewing, but the question arises: What to record? Today’s limited capacity and single-tuner DVRs require choices to be made … some programs get recorded, but most cannot. Wouldn’t it be nice simply to turn on the DVR and just record everything?
A step in the right direction is provided by some new multi-channel recorders from Sony and Sharp. The Sony Vaio X Video Station (pictured), aka the VGX-XV80S, for example can record 8 analog TV channels simultaneously for almost 3 weeks on it’s 2TB disk drives. (Well, actually it’s a maximum of 17.8 days of recording at a bandwidth of 1.25 Mbps, which is not exactly high quality).
If you’re willing to wait a while, help is on the way in the form of all-channel recording. A recent article in Nikkei Electronics describes a bright future for time shifters, consisting of the movement to digital TV, HDTV, rising storage capacities, falling prices, and adoption of the H.264 video compression standard. Truth be told, we may never get to true all-channel recording, especially with the bandwidth requirements of the estimated 1,000 channels of HDTV expected to be available by 2010, but we’ll be closer.
All-Channel Recording Ready for Digital TV – Nikkei Electronics Asia, Jan 2006 issue
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Thank goodness for this technology. I’ve recorded so many simultaenous programs in the past.