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Residential DVR's/PVR's |
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DVR's used for recording television (also known as PVR's, or 'Personal Video Recorders'), are all constructed in a similar manner. The biggest DVR brands currently are Tivo and ReplayTV, with many manufacturers, such as Panasonic and Toshiba, making there own DVR hardware. While all DVR brands possess different options and features, they all work in basically the same way.
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You can think of a DVR as a small personal computer. Inside is a cpu (like an Intel Pentium for example), an operating system (like Windows or Linux), and a hard drive. The size of the hard drive will determine the amount of video that you will be able to store on the DVR, and is one of the main variable factors in the cost of the DVR. The one thing that a DVR has, that a computer does not, is a piece of hardware to compress the video signal. This hardware may be built into the DVR system board (which is a specialized computer motherboard), or it may also be a separate from the system board, as is the case in many commercial DVR's. The DVR could be made to record the video data without any video compression, but that would mean that the hard drive would fill up much more quickly. In fact, with most DVR's you can set the level of compression, just as you can select LP, SP, and EP with a VCR. Just like a VCR, the level that you chose will determine how much recording time you can fit on your DVR's hard drive and the quality of the stored video. If you are recording the nightly news, you may be fine with a lower quality setting, but a higher quality setting might be better for a movie or sporting event.
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So what makes a DVR so great? Think of a DVR as a VCR that is constantly recording, so that if you are interrupted by a phone call, a screaming child, or whatever, you can rewind your program back to the spot you were at before you were interrupted, up to an hour or so depending upon the DVR. The second main feature of a DVR is to allow you to record you favorite shows for later viewing. Unlike a VCR there are no tapes to change out, and best of all, programs can be viewed from any point and in any order, without having to rewind or fast forward. One limitation of a DVR is that it does not have a form of removable media, like a VCR tape, so that recording can be stored seperatly for an unlimited amount of time. This may change in the future though, with the possible convergence of DVR's with DVD players and possibly even personal entertainment systems like the XBOX and Playstation. DVR's are already being combined with DVD players, click here for a list of retailers, and with Microsoft owning both the XBOX and UltimateTV, we may soon see an integration of these types of units. Simiarly, Sony makes a great deal of DVR hardware, and could provide some type of integration with the Playstation. AOL owns 11% of Tivo, and it may be betting on the market wanting to have more Internet access through the television. The future of home entertainment is up in the air right now, but you can bet that DVR's will be part of it. It may only be a matter of time before we will be able to own one device that will play DVD's, video games, record television, let us access the internet, and perhaps contain a DVD burner for copying off our favorite shows and internet files. |
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