Video Asylum

are you forgetting Tivo?

207.110.38.42

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Thread: Display Email ] [ Video Asylum ] [ FAQ ]

(A)

In Reply to: Home recording trends - VCR's dying posted by John C. - Aussie on August 14, 2002 at 23:22:20:

This is more likely to be the reason for the demise of tape-recording on a VCR... no body seems to care to keep recordings for a long-long-time... the keep them to watch when it is more convenient and then don't watch again! VHS tapes don't hold up well to long time use and re-use.
Sam

Follow Ups:

No, this is what did not catch on with the JVC recorder - John C. - Aussie 15:26:17 08/15/02 (4)
Their model HM-HDS1EU , illustrated at
http://www.jvc-australia.com/frame_hddvid.asp
had such a hard drive system inside but has been withdrawn from sale, reportedly due to lack of interest. I would suspect the high price (divide by 2 to get USD) did not help + many people are incapable of programming a normal VHS so organising a hard drive would be far too daunting.
Now the US market is significantly larger so there might be a large enough base to support TiVo enthusiasts, just as laserdiscs thrived in a limited way in the US but not here much at all. However DVD has taken off here because it is relatively cheap and easy to use (although some of the menus drive me nuts).
I'm not sure about how useful or appealing I would find a TiVo system anyway after having quite a lot of bad experience with hard discs dying in computers. Sure they are now cheap, but how good is their longer term reliability? If your hard drive crashes with 10 movies on board you have lost the lot!
Yes, tape is a messy medium just like cassetes but it is portable between players and friends. And I disagree about tapes not lasting. We have 20 year old ones that are high quality - but they were good ones at the start. Their is a lot of cheap rubbish around if you are not too concerned about what it might do to recorder heads.
All that aside I share concern about moves to prevent copying.
Interesting times
John

Peace at AA
- Re: No, this is what did not catch on with the JVC recorder - SamM 07:55:24 08/16/02 (3)
  i have been building my own home PCs for years now and the reliability of hard-drives have dramatically improved over the years. I have not had a hard-drive crash for a long-long-time since i have learned what are the reliable ones of the moment.
  Here in the US, Tivo has had great success and is still growing.
  http://www.tivo.com/images/02_q4_results_final.pdf and i believe it is mostly due to perhaps and Americans wanting to not miss their favorite programs and keep them just long enough to watch them when they get a chance...
  So, at leats in the US (i'm assuming you are in Australia?) it seems that hard-drive recorders are gaining much popularity.
  Sam
  - So which hard drives have you found the most reliable? - John C. - Aussie 14:41:23 08/16/02 (2)
    I've had 3 Quantum SCSI hard drives fail on me and one SCSI Seagate. Fortunately I had CD backups but those crashes caused considerable trouble and expense.
    Maybe I'm unlucky but I've also had motherboard failures in the last 12 months. The first caused me to ditch the desktop and get another. So help me if the new motherboard did not have a heart failure after only a few weeks and had to be replaced :-( under warranty.
    So perhaps you can understand my scepticism about reliability!
    These days I use this HP notebook more than the desktop and the notebooks have the reputation of poorer reliability than desktops so I guess I'm a devil for punishment.
    John
    
    Peace at AA
    - Re: So which hard drives have you found the most reliable? - SamM 10:45:20 08/18/02 (1)
      i hate to say it, but check your power supply and/or conditioner... if you don't have a surge/conditioner on your system i would definetly get one... the reliability of my system went way up when i switched to an Enermax power supply coupled with a monster HTS2000 for my PC.... i have not had problems with RAM/MB(Asus/Abit), hard drives (Cheetah 15K RPM), or anything else for a few years... i mostly attribute that to the clean power i give it.. I cycle often and still don't have any issues with no power-on. I had a bad CPU about 4 years ago and a bad stick of RAM about that long ago and that was the last time i had problems... my system gets upgraded when i can double the CPU speed (about once a year, but most of the system satys intact, or gets a new MB if the old one does not support the CPU).
      Sam
      - Thanks Sam, I do ... - John C. - Aussie 16:34:45 08/18/02 (0)
        
        In Reply to: Re: So which hard drives have you found the most reliable? posted by SamM on August 18, 2002 at 10:45:20:
        
        ... have a UPS in place and pretty stable supply here anyway. But I'll follow your suggestion and check it out. Guess I'm just unlucky.
        John
        
        Peace at AA

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Parts Connexion

You can not post to an archived thread.