Talk:Digital video recorder/Archive 1

a question
i have an old dvr that i want to pull videos from, but i dont have the software. where can i get opensource or free mac software for a cannon ZR 200? I've tried all over the place, and official website has software that doesnt work anymore, so i'm flummoxed OB-rad 02:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

DVD Recorders are DVRs?
I disagree with this entry that DVD Recorders should be considered DVRs. No manufacturer of DVD Recorders ever advertises or names their machines as DVRs. What does one call a hard drive DVR system that also has a built-in DVD recorder? A DVR DVR?

To me, DVRs strictly means recording video to hard disk. DVD Recorders needs it own entry.

Furthermore, the industry seems to have dropped the whole PVR name. All set-top-boxes and PC-based systems are called DVRs by their own manufacturers. The only products even remotely considered PVR would be a handheld device that performs DVR functions (like an Archos). "Personal" denotes handheld — like PDA.
 * The term PVR is still usually nearly solely in the UK and Ireland - I have never, ever seen "DVR" used in marketing here. And DVD-RAM recorders are usually sold as being PVRs (my JVC DVD-RAM/VHS unit, for instance, was sold as a PVR; as was my 160GB HDD PVR) --Kiand 13:45, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Additionally, Humax, who are Korean, use the term "PVR" in the model numbers of their PVRs still. --Kiand 13:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The term PVR was standard in the US from 1999 to about 2003, when one by one all the manufacturers switched over to DVR. Turns out DVR tested better for marketing, although in surveys it confuses people partly because they think it means the same as a DVD-recorder. PVR is common in Europe, although the devices themselves are mostly available only in the US, Canada, and the UK as of this writing.--Thinkwrite 21:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

"Digital recording?"
>''The first DVR was tested on July 8, 1965, when CBS explored the possibilities of instant freeze-frame and rewind for sporting event broadcasts. Ampex released the first commercial hard disk video recorder in 1967. The HS-100 recorded analog video onto a digital hard disk and could store a maximum of only 30 seconds.''

That machine was not digital at all, Ampex just replaced analog magnetic-tape media with hard disk, with signals still in analog form.

--82.197.22.64 11:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

DVR are PVR?
I disagree with this, an PVR is a DVR that contains a program guide. And instead of setting recordings using date/time you can just pick the programs from the guide that you what to record. The difference is that if the program guide is updated with new program times then the times used by the PVR changes to match the new program guide info.--TimSSG 01:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Commercial on DVR's
For those who have DVR, once you have a program recorded do you what any commercial? If your answer is no, do you sometimes stop forwarding to watch any? Why, what make you stop? One more question: can you see at least the brand when you are forwarding? Opiniao 18:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

First DVR tied to a video service
Dish Network was made less prominent in the Hard drive DVR section. Not sure why it lead off with Dish- possibly motivated by earlier misconceptions initiated by propaganda surrounding the Dish vs. Tivo lawsuit last year. The previous wording and prominence suggested that Dish was offering a full DVR prior to Replay or Tivo. They didn't have this capability until late in 1999. Replay and Tivo were selling in quantity in March. I documented this fact by reference to a SatelliteGuys BBS- a BBS recognized as authoritative on such obscure details. The post was made by a founding member, so is a high quality source. However, if someone has a reference to a print publication reference, the fact would be better supported.

I considered deleting the trivia but didn't. The facts concerning Dish's entry are meaningful because they were the first to tie a dvr to a video service. Mak (talk) 17:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Kaffeine??
I don't think it's correct to have kaffeine here. It's a media player, not a PVR. What do you think? Diego--212.239.17.140 (talk) 12:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Someone must have added it because it allows the recording of streams. I don't believe that qualifies it as a PVR/DVR, so I've removed it from the list.  Thank you.&mdash; Mrand  Talk • C 13:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

dvr is working but i am unable to access through net
actually we are having a laters DVR of 2008 model it is working but i am unable to access through net. we have a static ip seperately for our DVR.

I have accessed it through that is i can see my camera views from any in this world using my ip. but it not working now what could be the solution for the solution for the problem that i am facing now —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.64.93.179 (talk) 11:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Recording TV over the internet
The article doesn't seem to mention recording of tv stations broadcast over the internet (IPTV). It would be good to clarify the relationship with Video on demand and NPVR. pgr94 (talk) 13:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Copyvio history paragraph
I removed the first history paragraph, which was a straight copy from Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics; probably we should paraphrase it and cite that book instead. Dicklyon (talk) 19:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

"Concerns with DVR" section doesn't seem to make sense
Why only 59%? True, it's the majority, but that as many as 41% watch the adverts amazes me. It makes me wonder if 82% of this 59% were lying. Or maybe we should just accept that 69% of all statistics are made up on the spot....

And what has it to do with DVRs? People have been fast-forwarding through adverts ever since VCRs have been around. Somebody who never fast-forwarded through the adverts with a VCR isn't going to suddenly start doing it on getting a DVR. So claiming it as a DVR concern is nonsense.

It's true that there's a related DVR-specific concern, that of a minute-skip control, but that's another matter. -- Smjg (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What is the concern anyway? Almost all the people who have DVR's set up are paying for the TV connection. This is not free TV-- it's cable or satellite. They should have the right to not be bothered with commercials. The question that should be asked is how advertising made its way into subscription TV in the first place. --Ekac (talk) 20:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)ekac (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "Almost all the people who have DVR's set up are paying for the TV connection." Source please.  And even if it's the case now, ISTM it isn't likely to be for much longer. -- Smjg (talk) 20:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sky+ as a verb?
Indeed, their box, which links the hard recorder and their own EPG and is already in over a million UK >homes, has become so successful that the verb 'to Sky Plus' (meaning to have recorded it on to PVR) has >entered contemporary English phraseology in the same way as 'to hoover' did decades earlier.

>:I've never heard "Sky Plus" used as a verb in my life, either in conversation, in print, online, on TV, >or on Radio. Has anyone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.224.1.14 (talk) 14:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * No - not 'Sky Plus' - but have seen and used "TiVo'd" - "Yeah, I TiVo'd that last night'- meaning I used >my TiVo DVR to record a show - or "I plan to TiVo that show tonight" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.60.130.152 (talk) 02:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

>::I just came here to say the same thing. I'm going to remove it because it really sounds like everyone >in the UK has heard of that used as a verb. The reality is I hadn't seen or heard the words "sky plus" >anywhere for a year or two, until I decided to look up TiVo in the wiki. - Goatboy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.31.3.50 (talk) 14:00, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that I've never heard anyone use the phrase "to Sky Plus" used, but by the same token, I've not heard any variation on "Tivo'ed" or "to Tivo" either (I doubt very much that many in the UK even know what Tivo is, given the dismal job Tivo & Thomson did of marketing it).


 * I think I have to disagree with DVR and PVR being considered to be the same thing.


 * I'd class a DVR as something that allows you to record onto a hard disc by selecting programmes from an EPG and has the trick play functions such as pausing and re-winding live TV.


 * A PVR I'd say was something that encompasses the functions of a DVR but also personalised itself to the user, in the way that Tivo does by recording programmes featuring actors, directors you have told it you like, or that are suggested by the Tivo based on programmes you have watched in the past.


 * On that basis I'd say that Sky+ is a DVR, since the only dhey!!!!!!!!istinguishing feature it has over products like the Freeview DVR's is the series link feature, which is really only a smarter timer (although not that smart) for a single season of a series. It's nowhere near as sophisticated as Tivo which is surely the definition of a true PVR — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cerebros (talk • contribs) 15:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Note that TIVO trademarked Personal Video Recorder, although not PVR. And they suggested that others use the more generic Digital Video Recorder.  So many other companies that were building PVR's have usually simply been calling them DVR's.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.190.136.108 (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the History listing ANALOG video recorders
"The HS-100 recorded composite analog video onto a 14" diameter hard disk." That's interesting, but what does it have to do with digital recorders?  When we read the Compact Disc article, we don't read a discussion about analog records providing the "underpinning" of the CD.  Records and CDs are not the same thing; one is analog and the other digital.  Similarly, analog recorders from the 60s have no relevance to digital DVRs.   Theaveng (talk) 18:47, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I beg to differ. Although there is no detailed discussion of vinyl on there (as it's obviously a much more common thing than analogue PVRs, it has it's own article...), there are scattered mentions of CD being descended from Laserdiscs and the replacement for LPs, some of the differences between them (running time, condensing double albums to single discs etc), so on and so forth. P'raps you want to double check your sources next time. There IS relevance in that it shows the idea of a disk-based, personal video recording system is not simply the product of the late 90s but has a longer family tree instead. And what of sheer historical interest surrounding such an unexpect curio? 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The first disk-based recorder was in the 1930s
This article claims the first disk recorder dates to CBS in 1965, but that's not true. The BBC experimented with disc based recording in the 1930s, capturing 25-line transmissions onto plastic platters. - Theaveng 11:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You mean gramophone acetates, I assume? I remember seeing a webpage somewhere dedicated to finding and recovering the video tracks from such things, with mixed but definite success... However I don't quite believe the overall *concept* of the thing was that close; the result would have been something closer to Laserdisc or VHS (purely linear/non-instant-skippable - or only skippable with difficulty and innaccuracy, single-purpose per disc, and of course not eraseable/re-recordable) vs Selectavision/DVD or hard drives/(CD|DVD)RW, flash etc 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

CCTV

 * It has also become the main way for CCTV companies to record their surveillance, as it provides far longer recording times than the old VCRs.

I suspect another key advantage is the ability to 'record over' existing recordings with no difference in quality unlike with analog VCRs where the tapes obviously degrade over time Nil Einne 06:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

DVR systems do prevent the quality problems associated with old tapes that have been reused too many times, but do not necessarily provide better video quality. Digital compression can introduce artifacts, and can make enhancement impossible... there just isn't as much data to enhance as what is stored on an analog VHS tape. Wyoskier 01:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Depends how hard you compress it. It's at least got a fighting chance of being better than a nasty old composite camera allied to a VHS recorder with worn-out heads operating in quarter-screen mode and effectively EP speed (further dropped by 2 to get 24 hours on one E240 cassette, and any more than 4 cameras necessitating framerate drops below that 12-15fps maximum as the images are interleaved onto the tape... oh, and of course, you'll need a specialist VCR to play the tapes back if your own breaks down), where the image recovered to put on Crimewatch or to use as the source of a photofit was so blurred as to be nearly useless. Merely because it's analogue, doesn't mean it's necessarily got inifinite resolution, otherwise we'd never have bothered switching to DVD; a reduced-pitch 5-inch laserdisc would have been just fine. Plus there's the noise issue. Besides, as hard disk sizes and available transmitting/processing/recording bandwidth both increase ever upwards (and reduce in price), the equivalent of very many cassettes can be stored losslessly or even completely uncompressed without difficulty. Surveillance operatives are unlikely to use, or appreciate, typical DVB-T/iPlayer/Youtube/VCD quality, or even DVD. Some recent systems I've seen allow recording of 24 Hi-Def quality streams simultaneously, and all you have to decide on is the framerate (60/sec down to 6 or so, aka the typical rate of an 8-camera VHS system) and optionally the compression... because that determines how many _days_ of recording you get into your desktop-PC-sized box before it starts automatically overwriting. Hmm!
 * (Maths: 24 hours of broadcast-quality 720x576x25fps (x16bit, in YUV mode) progressive-scan video takes 1792Gb (base 10) to store, plus a minor amount (15Gb) for the soundtrack if it were CD quality stereo, easily fitting into the space provided by a commodity ~£120 2Tb hard disk. Minimal compression (ie maximum DVD rate) brings this down to 122Gb per camera (15x reduction) with excellent reproduction quality, allowing more than 16 camera-days on that one disk; or four cameras for a week and a day with a three-disk RAID-5 type setup at a continual 5.5mb/sec recording rate (or 2.75 per disk; trivial for a 21st century model or even a camera memory card). Thirty two cameras could be supported by the same system at 12fps (or 15 for 480-line NTSC), with a slight reduction in resolution (eg to 540x384, still effectively better than typical FULL screen VHS) and a doubling of effective compression to that of typical DVD standard (which may still look better if an MPG4 codec or techniques such as VBR are employed). Alternatively the lower framerate and improved compression could be used to support an increase in resolution above SD broadcast standard (EG to 960x720p) with a similar number of cameras). A similar analogue system would require, to match the 4-camera, 3x2Tb setup on image quality and running time, nearly 200 tapes with someone on hand to change them every 4 hours (or once an hour in a staggered changeover), space to store them, great discipline in the filing/sequential reuse/replacement of failed cassettes (the RAID units needing one disc to be hot-swapped, and a few hours of harder work for all three whilst the existing data is re-mirrored) and a much more difficult extraction and analysis process if their footage was required as part of a criminal investigation. 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Future credit
This article refers to something called "future credit", but does not make it clear what that is, nor is there any link to get more information on the subject. It mentions something about "skipped recordings", but I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Segin (talk) 01:47, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, I have no idea what the sentence that refers to gaining "additional future credit from service providers" is even supposed to mean, and I'm reasonably well up on AV tech. I expect casual browsers to be _completely_ baffled. Can whoever wrote that section rework it into plain english, if it's not just random babble made up by an edit troll? 193.63.174.10 (talk) 12:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Since this has been questioned since April and nothing has been done to explain what it means, I have deleted the entire section. 20.133.0.13 (talk) 15:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

VESA
The section on VESA is unclear. My first question was "what is VESA"? So I went to the VESA page. There are a number of standards there and it is not obvious which standard or standards are applicable to the VESA compatible DVR. 76.233.145.185 (talk) 10:19, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

USB Digital video player
What about USB digital video players?. They can play video (DivX, Xvid, AVI, MPG, ISO, VOB), audio (MP3, WMA, OGG) and pictures (JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG).--Diamondland (talk) 11:30, 8 November 2010 (UTC)