Forget dual tuner, try ALL-CHANNEL recording
by Richard Lawler 
posted Jan 3rd 2006 at 12:48PM
Thats what Japanese researchers for Sharp and Sony are saying we can expect......in 2010. The good news is that once broadcasters
switch to DTV, building devices capable of recording whats being broadcast on every channel, all of the time will become
much less complicated, the bad news is that even with new compression technologies like MPEG-4, you'll still need a
2-3TB HDD to store all the high definition content being broadcast, and there isn't an affordable 3 TB storage method
yet, but they expect there will be in the next few years.Another challenge is building a suitable GUI for such a product, navigating through 7,000 recorded programs could be a bit difficult. Additionally, if IPTV and video on demand services really take off, there might not be a need for all-channel recorders by the time they become available, or broadcasters might move to block them to protect their advertising revenue. Despite all the potential challenges, it is an interesting concept, I just can't wait until 7,000 high definition programs are broadcast every week.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
freestufftimes.com @ Jan 3rd 2006 2:05PM
What about holographic discs? I don't know much about it, but it sounds like a possible way for huge amounts of storage. I definitely like the sound of having all shows available at the touch of a button, but instead of downloading all of them, wouldn't it be easier to just stream them? Seems like it would save a lot of bandwidth.
Eric Carroll @ Jan 3rd 2006 2:09PM
Hmm, would building a GUI really be all that difficult? I mean, sure when I first came from CDs to my 5GB iPod, I thought, right, I'll LOOSE songs on this massive 1000 song player, but really, all Apple did was categorize thing both smartly and in several different ways, I never had a problem finding what I was looking for. I mean my 60GB iPod can hold what, 15,000 songs, and how many hundreds of thousands of photos and we never have problems finds just that song we are looking for right?
Just thought I'd say building the GUI won't be all the difficult, it would just be up to them to allow us to only FLAG the shows we want to see. So if it is recording 7,000 shows a day and I only care about The Lions game and Lost or something, hopefully I'll be able to let it TELL me when shows I am interested in get recorded/updated and so on...
Ben @ Jan 3rd 2006 3:15PM
While the thought of having unlimited capacity is enticing, I have to wonder what the point of this would be. If you're recording everything, aren't you simply moving content from your cable provider's hard drive to yours? There's no way to even watch this much material. Though I would love to have much more storage capacity, what I would like better would be quality HD on demand content.
Ben Drawbaugh @ Jan 3rd 2006 3:45PM
It just makes more sense for the provider to store everything and stream it when you want it and be able to burn it off when wanted for archival purposes. If it were a movie or series maybe they would just mail you the DVD when you wanted to keep it.
Apple or Tivo could manage this much data easily. I agree with Eric on the usablity of the iPod and its thosands of songs. Maybe they will take a stab at in 2006. Unfortunatly the real challenge is the licensing not the technology. I hope Apple can do for Video what they have done for Music.