External HDD For Your PVR, Courtesy Maxtor

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1573769,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532' target='_blank'>http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1573769,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532</a><br /><br /></div>"Maxtor Corp. said Tuesday that it will ship an external hard drive specifically designed to connect to personal video recorders. Although the Maxtor QuickView Expander hard drive will eventually ship in retail, the drive will initially be preformatted for use with satellite and cable set-top boxes, a Maxtor spokeswoman said. The company has not set pricing on the drive, which will hold 160-Gbytes, or enough for 160 hours of standard-definition recording time, Maxtor said. The new QuickView Expander drive will ship this summer to set-top OEMs. The drive will connect to the set-top either via an external SATA connection or via USB-2, Maxtor spokeswoman Karen Clyne said. An IEEE 1394 connection is being investigated, she said. Although storage vendors have yet to widely offer external SATA drives, the cabling standard supporting external SATA was recently approved."<br /><br />This is excellent news for all of us that own PVRs as we won't have to attempt to mod our current setup in order to get the extra space. And I think this will be especially welcome news for potential HD PVR customers where hard drive space is really one of the limiting factors. It will be available some time this summer though I really wish there was compatibility with different set-top boxes information available. No pricing information either though I suspect it will still get lots o' customers. :)

[James Fee]

Which DVRs are supported? I know DirecTV DVR (DirecTiVo) won't allow you to connect external drives and I'm sure the Standard TiVo is the same.

[Suhit Gupta]

Which DVRs are supported? I know DirecTV DVR (DirecTiVo) won't allow you to connect external drives and I'm sure the Standard TiVo is the same.
That was my question. I know with some certainty that Time Warner DVR also has its USB port disabled :(. So is there any DVR that would support this? Anyone out there that can take SATA, USB2 or Firewire in their set top box? Hmm, maybe it won't be getting a lot of customers. :?

Suhit

[Jason Dunn]

I'd like to think that they did some research into the % of PVR owners that could use this before they released it, but perhaps not... :roll:

[James Fee]

I'd like to think that they did some research into the % of PVR owners that could use this before they released it, but perhaps not... :roll:
Heck, my old TiVo has a sweet serial port on the back!

[Ed Hansberry]

The company has not set pricing on the drive, which will hold 160-Gbytes, or enough for 160 hours of standard-definition recording time, Maxtor said.Huh? Do PVRs really get one hour per GB? MS's MCE is set for 3 GB per hour, though you could turn that down and sacrifice quality.

[JTWise]

Ed:

1GB/hour is what I get with my Generation 1 Replay set to Lowest Quality. If I bump it up to highest, your 3GB/hour sounds about right.

[Filip Norrgard]

I do not think that the Nokia Mediamaster 260 (http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,54808,00.html) is supported. It's only got a regular serial port and Bluetooth for communication with the world. :?

[Jason Dunn]

Huh? Do PVRs really get one hour per GB? MS's MCE is set for 3 GB per hour, though you could turn that down and sacrifice quality.

WMV9 is a vastly superior codec to MPEG2 when it comes to lower bit rates. Heck, it's better at higher bit rates too. ;-)

[Ed Hansberry]

Huh? Do PVRs really get one hour per GB? MS's MCE is set for 3 GB per hour, though you could turn that down and sacrifice quality.

WMV9 is a vastly superior codec to MPEG2 when it comes to lower bit rates. Heck, it's better at higher bit rates too. ;-)
MCE doesn't use WMV9. It encodes in MPEG2 (actually, the cards do) then they put an MS-DVR wrapper on it. I don't know when/if there will be native WMV9 encoding on PVR features in MCE.

[Jason Dunn]

MCE doesn't use WMV9. It encodes in MPEG2 (actually, the cards do) then they put an MS-DVR wrapper on it. I don't know when/if there will be native WMV9 encoding on PVR features in MCE.

Aha, right. I thought that they were using Windows Media Encoder to do real-time encoding, but on second thought that doesn't make sense since the hardware will be MPEG2 accelerated. They must just be using lower bit rate MPEG.

I wonder when we'll see hardware-accelerated WMV encoding? You'd really see some space saving then!

[Ed Hansberry]

Aha, right. I thought that they were using Windows Media Encoder to do real-time encoding, but on second thought that doesn't make sense since the hardware will be MPEG2 accelerated. They must just be using lower bit rate MPEG.

I wonder when we'll see hardware-accelerated WMV encoding? You'd really see some space saving then!
In my casual reading of .mediacenter, that is definitely the plan. It'll be up to the tv capture card makers to implement this in their cards.

[James Fee]

MCE doesn't use WMV9. It encodes in MPEG2 (actually, the cards do) then they put an MS-DVR wrapper on it. I don't know when/if there will be native WMV9 encoding on PVR features in MCE.
TiVo's do the same thing. In fact, a DirecTV TiVo (DirecTiVo) just writes the MPEG-2 stream right from the sat, so there is no conversion. The recordings look as good as they do when you view them on your TV. The only issue is that you can't record some shows at a lower quality. They are all standard quality (on the DirecTiVo).