4000 Hour Tivo DVR! Gaaaaaaaa...

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Sep 8, 2014.

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  1. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    So Tivo announced today they're going to make a 24TB Digital Video Recorder capable of recording up to 4000 hours of HD programming, or a whopping 26,000 hours of standard-def (using mild MPEG4 compression). The Tivo Mega (as they're calling it) will be $5000 when it comes out early next year.

    I never thought I'd see the day when a "consumer device" would have 24TB of storage in it! Here's a pic:

    [​IMG]

    And here's more info:

    http://bit.ly/1s7fGA8

    I hope anybody who buys one of these things keeps it in another (well-ventilated) room. 10 hard drives in one box sounds like a jet fighter taking off...
     
  2. rob macd

    rob macd The sunshine bores the daylights out of me

    Location:
    boston ma
    Glad your back:)
     
    chilinvilin and alexpop like this.
  3. Craig

    Craig (unspecified) Staff

    Location:
    North of Seattle
    Only six tuners for that price? I'm out. :cry:
     
    Vidiot and minerwerks like this.
  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    damn! I could buy 5,000-7,500 used DVDs for that!
    but the unit will hold 2,000+ -12,000+ movies, Hmmm...decisions decisions...
     
  5. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    My DVR only holds 20 hours of programming and I can't even find the time to watch all of that!
     
  6. tonyc

    tonyc Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I have 100 hours on mine. I have lots of things saved but still no problem finding things to delete when coming close to capacity.
     
  7. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Dito !
     
  8. guy incognito

    guy incognito Senior Member

    Location:
    Mee-chigan
    26,000 hours of SD. If you filled it up and started watching 24/7, it'd take you three years to get through it all.
     
  9. lv70smusic

    lv70smusic Senior Member

    Location:
    San Francisco, CA
    My TiVo Premiere XL4 has 300 hours of HD/2700 hours of SD recording capacity. I have had it for about a year and a half now (sadly purchased just before they introduced the improved Roamio line) and it's typically between 50 and 60% full. I like to record lots of stuff, some of which I don't end up watching for a long time (or may never end up watching); some of which I watch and decide I want to keep for repeated viewing at a later time; and some of which are simply long programs that air multiple times per week (for example, Despierta America which airs M-F for 3 hours each day. I imagine that if I took more vacations or spent less time catching up on TV watching on weekends, I'd end up filling up my current box. I doubt I'd never need over 13 times as much storage capacity, though, unless I wanted to start archiving certain old TV shows on my DVR versus just buying dvd/blu-ray sets.
     
  10. ky658

    ky658 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ft Myers, Florida
    Unless you were headed to Mars or stranded on a desert island using some sort of solar power, who in their right mind would need to record that much programming??? I am surprised this is a consumer piece.
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    The two DirecTV DVRs we have are about the same size and are generally about half-full (and also half-empty). We try to never let them hit the 90% mark, because hard drives start getting wonky right about there.
     
  12. I think I need something like this, recording programs in HD chews up space like no one's business. I think I have 2 TBs of shows recorded between two FIOS DVRs.
     
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  13. lugnut2099

    lugnut2099 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    They should have timed the release to coincide with FXX's Simpsons marathon.
     
  14. DragonQ

    DragonQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Moon
    Personally I use a 2 TB HDD for my TV recordings and have plenty of stuff on there from over a year ago that I haven't had to delete yet. I do archive stuff to a separate server though if I want to keep it. An hour of HD programming takes up about 3.8 GiB of space at most once the unused streams are stripped (e.g. audio description) and packed in an efficient container (e.g. MKV), assuming you're talking about entertainment rather than sports (which'd have a higher bit rate). In its raw form that's probably about 4 GiB.

    A 2 TB DVRs is often advertised as holding ~350 hours of HDTV. Considering they're designed for short-term timeshifting rather than long-term archiving, I think that's perfectly sufficient. Of course, the fact that there is no easy way to archive programming from a DVR means people use their DVRs like VCRs or DVD-Rs. This actually wouldn't be that difficult (just allow a USB HDD to be plugged in and files to be copied over) but rights holders wouldn't like it: they want you to pay for TV and then pay again for DVDs/BDs later on.
     
  15. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    It's actually pretty easy to get programs off your Tivo. Use the program KMTTG. This program will also strip off the copy-protection shell on the videos, so they will be unprotected standard video format files that can be used anywhere. (You can't transfer shows that are deemed copy protected by the broadcaster).

    I find this particular device to be a prestige item created to generate press, not something that many would buy. Unless the material on the hard drives is saved redundantly and is fault tolerant of a bad hard drive which can easily be replaced, this is just heartbreak ready to happen.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2014
  16. Sounds like overkill for most folks to me.
     
  17. mongo

    mongo Senior Member

    But that would be a waste of time. :p
     
  18. lv70smusic

    lv70smusic Senior Member

    Location:
    San Francisco, CA
    Yes, one can also use TiVo's Desktop software (or at least this used to be possible; I think one now needs to pay for the "plus" version of that software) to transfer shows to one's computer, then Direct Show Dump to strip the TiVo's headers, and then the program of one's choice to convert the TiVo files to a dvd-compatible format (or to another format of one's choosing).
     
  19. DragonQ

    DragonQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Moon
    Fair enough, doing the same with a Sky box in the UK is much more difficult. I don't think it's possible to do without transcoding (e.g. using a DVD recorder or whatever).
     
  20. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    I think that Tivo is going to hell. Their products are losing their appeal for me. What I've always liked about Tivo has been having my satellite or cable service integrated with my antenna. As far as I'm concerned, the new Roamio line sucks. I just sent the cheapest Roamio box back. The description said that it supported cable and antenna. That turned out to not be true. The two sources share a single input. You have to choose one or the other. :realmad: I opened the box and looked at the rear and put it back in the box for return.

    Tivo has also announced a 4-tuner over-the-air only DVR. Now they have announced this monster. Who's gonna buy the "monster", billionaires...? The monster makes absolutely no sense to me. They could sell larger, out-board storage modules instead. If Tivo is gonna cast off universal connections for specialized devices, I'm losing interest.
     
  21. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    I have stuff on my Tivo from 3 years ago I haven't gotten to yet..

    No way for me...
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    We've had the 5-tuner DirecTV DVR for a couple of years now. You'd be surprised how much overlap there is between shows -- I've seen 4-way potential train crashes before with certain shows. I think it was only $200 or so, and it's got 1TB of space, plus you can add another external 4TB drive if you want.
     
  23. True. But I'd rather not dictate the release of the product for other folk (ala 160 gig ipod).
     
  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    What I'd like to see is a DVR with a user-replaceable hard drive: just a hatch on top where you could drop in any-size hard drive you wanted, all the way up to the new 6GB models. Unfortunately, Tivo, DirecTV, and Dish all make this as difficult as possible... though there are companies specializing in modifying DVRs to have more capacity.

    The other issue is that they make it very, very difficult to make permanent copies of any material on your DVR. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the studios, networks, and distributors are putting pressure on the DVR companies to not let people save the material to their computers or make Blu-ray disks of the content... :sigh:
     
  25. pdenny

    pdenny 22-Year SHTV Participation Trophy Recipient

    Location:
    Hawthorne CA
    The mark of a life well-lived. Oy.
     
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