If you’re going to give up valuable lounge space to a gadget then you want it to deliver, and SysMaster’s Tornado M10 Digital Media Center looks like it offers a fair range of features for a box only six inches long. The spec list is a veritable pic’n'mix of acronyms: IPTV, VoIP, IM, PVR… and then you add in things like voicemail, a webcam for video conferencing, email and media streaming.
It’s something of a moist relief that manufacturers are helping broadcasters to save me from myself. Every day of my miserable life I’m but a step away from accidentally pirating something recorded on my PVR, and unintentionally damaging the trusting, loyal relationship I have with the people who supply me with endless reality TV and formulaic comedy docu-drama. Thank the lucky stars for Thomson and their NexGuard fingerprinting and encryption technology, which can embed a unique code that includes the serial number of your set-top box into anything you record from it. That way, should you inadvertently produce several thousand copies of, say, Desperate Housewives for your own, personal use, you can be tracked down and roughly flogged.
Peer to Peer networks are very popular these days, though most of them have very shady and not-quite-legal intentions. One legal P2P network that will be debuting soon comes to us from NDS that creates PVRs for DirecTV. A PVR with it’s own P2P network, I like the sound of that.
The first thing you have to look at is their new “Distributed DVR” which essentially lets you share the content stored on the PVR with any of the PC’s on your home network. Now that by itself is enough to make me want one. But here’s the kicker, they’re going to introduce ShareTV, a P2P network that allows subscribers to view and download content from any other ShareTV user. And from there you can transfer it to your PC. Theoretically, this would enable users access to content from channels to which they do not currently subscribe. (I’ll pause to let you get your minds out of the gutter) I’m not sure how this will make the MPAA feel, but if they can get all of the legal issues, I think this will revolutionize the PVR market.
The first P2P PVR from NDS plus innovative “Distributed DVR” [via PVRwire]
With its little side-flaps extended I can’t help but see this pre-built MythTV PVR as some sort of Transformer, but sadly though its capabilities are broad I don’t think they extend to being a robot in disguise. Still, you could have some pretty good times even without self-adhesive decals to position; $499 gets you an Intel Celeron 2.66GHz, 256MB of RAM, a GeForce 6200 graphics card, 80GB hard drive and 18x DVD burner, specs easily capable of running the Ubuntu OS together with one of the most well-respected PVR environments, MythTV.
Basically this is an unpack-and-plug-in solution to your media streaming/live TV pausing/scheduled recording needs. Yes, you could build your own Linux box and install MythTV, but this saves you all the effort, is cheaper than a Windows Media Centre and gives you access to a vast range of fan-programmed add-ons. Upgrade options include up to a terabyte of hard-drive space, multiple TV tuner cards and WiFi, with various models hitting price points up to $1099.
This would be a great way to cost-effectively get into PVR ownership – you could start with the basics and then add to it yourself as you can afford more. Definitely jumps to the top of my “must try” media centre list!
The ActionDVR is definitely a device meant for those leading healthy lives away from the computer. This portable video recorder system comes with a small camera and microphone that attaches to your hat while a 1.5-pound recorder can sit in your pocket or bag. You can record up to 8 hours of high quality MPEG-4 video. If you’re wondering who would possibly want to carry such a thing around, think about hunters, fishermen, outdoorsmen, police, and military. But with all the spy gadgetry available these days, you would think they could have made this somewhat less conspicuous. Priced at $1095.
ActionDVR: PVR for Your Day-to-Day [Via: CrunchGear]
So you thought LG’s Shine cellphone was the best thing to come from the Korean company, did you? You trashy gutterpunk, you’re obviously on wretched drugs – there’s this too:
The KB6100 has a T-DMB digital TV tuner packed inside its dinky chassis (3mm thinner than the RAZR, at 10.95mm), like a lot of Asian cellphones do, but it stands apart by also offering PVR functionality! That’s right, your dull commute, business meetings and bland one-night-stands can be brightened by watching some hardcore hentai manga from earlier on.
If you’re in the market for a silent Media Center PC (and who isn’t?), then you could do worse than take a look at Cool Tech PC’s rather attractive Psile model. Looking a little like a squat obelisk from 2001:A PVR Odyssey, this time shifting monkey-magnet features between half a gig and two gigs of RAM, a fanless motherboard with an Intel Core Duo processor running at up to 2.16Ghz and up to 500gb of storage space.
Right, here’s another tick in the “You want Windows Media Centre” column for the PVR-searchers amongst us; Casey Chestnut, swell programmer, has made a fantastic MSN Messenger bot that lets you programme your MCE-running computer to record via a conversation online. Considering there are more and more cellphones with a mobile version of Messenger, it pretty much means that wherever you are it’ll be possible to update your timer list.
When I was younger, being a naive but tech-loving soul, I desperately wanted a doorbell. At DIY stores I would excitedly press the test buttons and decide which ring I liked the most; I would judge whereabouts on the door frame the button would best be sited. But my mother, wearing her practical hat, refused – “it’s just another thing to go wrong”, she told me, and we had to make do with a boring old mechanical knocker.
Why this dreary stomp down memory lane, I hear you ask – well, Humax have given my mother something new to worry about. The LP32-TDR1 is a 32 inch widescreen TV with a build in 160gb twin-tuner PVR, cutting out the need for a seperate box and generally making things a whole lot more streamlined. Capable of storing up to 100 hours of video, as well as pausing and rewinding live television, it’s likely based on the guts of Humax’s highly popular PVR9200T standalone PVR, which is never a bad thing.
Yeah, THIS should go over real well. Like a lead balloon. ABC is apparently trying to convince personal video recorder makers to start leaving out the automatic commericial skipping features that helped make the devices to popular. ABC President of Advertising Sales Mike Shaw apparently feels that the demand for this feature isn’t too great, which not only proves that he not knows what he’s talking about, but raises some serious questions about how one so stupid could become the head of advertising at a major studio network. Don’t expect TiVo or any of the other guys to actually comply with this request, as it would kill the sales of their main cash machines. And ABC, you might want to rethink who’s running your advertising division.
[via Gizmodo]
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