 |
Tuesday
4th March, 2008
|
Photography:
Mark Lyndersay
How
long has it been since you recorded to a videocassette recorder?
The quality was lousy and figuring out how to set the device
to record at a particular time was more complicated than
figuring out how to set the time.
Most of us settled for hitting record and hoping for the
best as we went out for the day, committing hours of video
to extended play tapes, hoping as the door closed that there
was enough tape to capture our favorite show.
And don’t get me started about dirty tape heads, which
needed to be cleaned with irritating frequency and tapes
that got eaten by the recorder and had to be sent to a technician.
But the idea of a VCR was a useful one. Recording something
you aren’t around to see and setting it aside for a
more convenient time makes it possible to get on with work
or chores without the nagging annoyance that lingers when
you’re sure that you’re missing something special.
Both pay television content providers apparently feel the
same way and are marketing recording boxes as part of their
premium services.
DirecTV was first to offer the service with DirecTV Plus,
which it bills as its premium, VIP service. I’ve had
a chance to play with this box and while all the options
take a bit of effort to get used to, it works as advertised,
bringing the capabilities of ReplayTV and Tivo to local
viewers.
These magic boxes transistors, software and hard disks to
create a device that looks like a DVD or VHS player that’s
capable of automatically skipping through the channels on
a television, recording segments of programming that you
can set weeks in advance.
Multitaskers can watch one channel while recording another.
These devices became well-known for a previously unheard
of feature, replaying live television, a happy by-product
of a design which is always recording the signal you’re
watching to a buffer on the drive.
Now Flow has launched their own Flow PVR, a personal video
recorder for their service. Both boxes are part of promotions
geared to drive additional purchases on the companies’
respective services.
The Flow PVR adds the option of high definition video recording
on the five channels available on their service with a slight
increase in fees for the HD service.
What if you want to do some recording today without having
to pay a special price for a recording box?
Several years ago I discovered the magic of digital video
recorders that take advantage of the horsepower of a computer,
the smarts of well-written software and the hard drive you
already own to add recording to the neat stuff you can do
with a computer.
I started with an IX Micro video card in a Macintosh tower,
moved on to a Miglia card in a G4 tower when Mac OSX came
along and now use a tiny video recorder from Neuros Technology
that sits between the cable box and my television.
The Neuros Recorder 2 (it’s the size of a stylish bar
of soap) is typical of such devices built to run with a
computer or independently. It records at half television
resolution (320 x 240 pixels) for more than three hours
to a 2GB memory card, but you can reduce image size and
quality to make more use of your available storage or increase
it to capture better quality video.
Unlike corporate DVRs, the files created by these devices
are standard video files and very portable. I’ve burned
them to DVD and transferred them to PDAs, laptops, a smartphone
and a video capable iPod.
It isn’t quite as convenient as recording and playing
back while sitting on the couch, but you get video you can
watch wherever you want.
Most of these devices can be programmed across time, but
not across channels, and their video quality is tied to
the quality of the television signal they record.
That’s one of the most surprising thing and ultimately
disappointing things about recording television video to
a file.
Most broadcast video signals are intended for the rather
crude resolution of a television screen and end up looking
pretty awful when you see it on a high resolution computer
screen.
|
