The Battle For Set Top Recording Dominance

Is This The Future of Time Shifting?

After my months of experience with DVD recording, I'm in the market for a better solution. Between the rewritables going bad after a handful of uses, and the write once DVD discs not able to be filled to capacity, it has become clear that set top DVD recording is not quite ready for prime time use by the masses, and likely will never be. Rather, when we look back at home television recording history, I believe it will be a transition technology.

A transition to what? The comments at the end of my Ilo piece would lead us to believe that a dedicated computer is the answer. There is considerable momentum in developing computer based TV recording. Whether it's Microsoft's Media Center OS, Intel's Viiv, AMD's ("me too") Live!, or ATI's All-In-Wonder graphics cards, it's clear that the heavyweights are trying to get a place in our living room near our TV. Combined with the popularity of small form factor PC's, the time might be ripe for this to take off. For recording a TV stream, writing to a hard drive is definitely more forgiving than directly to a disc.

While living room PC's (also called home theater PC's) may be a great solution, I don't think they will be widely adopted. Why? Well, for one there is the cost. Folks are used to paying between $100 to $200 for a device to record TV whether for a VCR, a combo deck, or now a DVD recorder. The other issue is complexity. A Windows computer is not often push button simple, and we need to realize that we're catering to the least common denominator here. The last issue is space. The recording box should fit in the space that a VCR would occupy. While this is possible, most of the mainstream computer makers put their media centric PC's in a standard sized desktop. This relegates these PC's to more boutique builders, and the DIY crowd. For these reasons, in the current iteration, I don't see the PC's replacing the VCR en masse.

At first I was tempted to go back to the VCR. However, bad memories of dirty and worn out tapes remind me that it was not perfect. Combine that with searching for content on a tape, and 5 minute rewinds, and we have deal breakers here. Not to mention the pile of tapes and the space they consume.

Sometimes, when we're not sure what we want, it can be instructive to do a little thought experiment. I came up with the characteristics of an ideal TV recorder:
- It needs to be affordable, say less than around $200.
- No monthly fee. This is why I wouldn't use Tivo. Between the cable, cell phone, and internet bills, I already write enough checks a month.
- The content should be available random access. If we want to watch "Prison Break" from three weeks ago, we should be able to find it easily without fast forwarding through half a season, or hunting for it.
- The time should set itself. No flashing 12:00's here. Not even after a power interruption.
- The content needs to be portable. After it is recorded, there needs to be a way to take this week's episode for viewing elsewhere, whether at a friend's house, or in the basement.
- It needs a simple interface. Whether downloaded from the internet, or carried with the TV signal, an up to date programming guide would let anyone program a recording session, and virtually eliminate user errors. (I'm not holding my breath for this one anytime soon)!

Unfortunately, nothing on the market currently can fulfill my "wish list" completely. However, I recently happened upon a box that comes close.

The bankrupt maker of instant developing film, Polaroid, introduced a set top box, the DRM-2001G: DVD Recorder with 80GB Hard Drive. I'm confident that some third tier Asian electronics manufacturer (LSI?) is really making this device. Of course, the reliability is dubious until proven otherwise. However, there are some serious merits to this new television recorder.

Polaroid's TV recorder has both a hard drive, and a DVD burner in one very set top looking box (ie: noncomputer). This allows the content to be recorded to the hard drive directly, with an 80 gig capacity. If you want to save a program, or take it with you, then put it on a disc. If the disc, for whatever reason, is bad then simply try again, you didn't lose the show.

Polaroid's unit is slightly over my target price, but is close at an affordable $220 at Walmart. With hard drive prices plummeting, (I paid under $100 for a 250 GB drive recently), I could easily see the unit hitting a price of $200 with double the hard drive space (or more!) in a year. Then again, it's been sold out all week, so I think they've got a hit on their hands.

Hopefully, some other manufacturers are working on similar units to the Polaroid. Some competition would definitely accelerate increasing the hard drive's capacity. I sincerely hope that a hard drive/DVD recorder becomes the VCR replacement that we're looking for. In the meantime, with the TV season ending next week, I'm in no hurry to buy anything for the next few months.

--Jonas

See more from Polaroid here.