The HDD of the DVD is more savage than the HDD of the TIVO
Lots and lots of you out there use TiVos and you think they rock. RIght on. If that’s your speed that’s great.
But my own approach is somewhat different and, for me, much more rewarding.
Before I get to that approach, though, I think I’ve mentioned on this lame little blog that I have this completely awesome recording exchange thing with a good friend of mine in Oxford (that is, that town with the university located midway between London and Cardiff), Danny. We’ve been perfecting it since 1999, the grim dark times of … [shiver] … tape.
(I won’t go into the cost and inconvenience involved in mailing packages of VHS cassettes back and forth across the Atlantic, but suffice to say we didn’t request as much programming of each other then.)
Then came the light. The light of recordable DVDs. We began to request more shows from each other. Digital frisbees were hurled from Los Angeles to Oxford with happy abandon. Good times were had by all. Postal costs were reduced practically to nonexistence.
Which leads me to my version of TiVo: HDD/DVD recorders. I have a Panasonic DMR-E85 with a hard disk that can record up to 54 hours of content (at SP mode). That content can reside on the hard drive as long as I wish it to, during which I can edit it, give it a name, choose a thumbnail still, and other rudimentary editing tasks. Then, when the fancy or whim strikes me, I can blow it over to a DVD-R, which can burn up an entire 2 hours worth of SP content to an 8x disc in a bit over ten minutes. Or I can choose to add shows to discs one at a time; I needn’t do it all at once. Then when the disc is full, I finalize it (which takes just under two minutes), and it flowers into a fully-compliant video DVD which will play in every DVD player I’ve tried.
You see, it’s that last ability where my system leaves TiVo behind, and why I don’t understand TiVo’s popularity over HDD/DVD Recorders: portability. With TiVo, you can watch to your heart’s content — but only on the television to which the TiVo is attached. You cannot archive the programming, send it to others, free up the hard drive, share the love.
Or send it to your friend across the Atlantic.
And thanks to the modern miracle that is HDTV, my friend has the pleasure of receiving widescreen programming recorded off downconverted HDTV with picture quality far greater than would be had from standard definition signals (the greatly reduced digital artifacts alone make a huge difference).
While the UK is only just now about to launch into HDTV themselves, they’ve had 16×9 widescreen for about five years now, which means that 98% of the content I receive from Danny is anamorphic widescreen, making the experience much more cinematic and dramatic than conventional 4×3 pictures.
This is going to sound corny, but what is so rewarding about my exchange with Danny is that I know the stuff I send him is going to blow him away, and he’s getting to see these things months in advance of his peers. A couple weekends ago, for example, he finally blew out his hoarded backlog of Season 2 Lost episodes in one twelve-hour geekout, bringing him up to about the early April broadcasts. Conversely, Season 2 of Lost only just recently debuted on Channel 4 (in other words, episodes broadcast in the States way back in October last), meaning that Danny can strut about, smugly proclaiming that he’s long since seen episodes others will have to wait weeks or even months to see. That rocks.
Okay. You can bittorrent them, or get them off the usenet. But there is nothing like the sheer pleasure of receiving this enticing parcel in the mail, with a mysterious customs label affixed to it, and then ripping it open to discover a heap of recorded joy within. Believe me. And the whole meaning of our exchange is that I do all the work to put together his shows, and he does all the work to put together mine, and it’s complete reciprocation.
Anyway, in a very roundabout way, my point is this: if any of you don’t yet have a TiVo and are considering buying one, do at least consider the possibility of an HDD/DVD Recorder instead, such as my Panasonic. I’ve never regretted not being part of the TiVo crowd, because I think my HDD/DVD Recorder takes it one step better.
Time to go burn some discs for my friend.
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