The Amazing "DVR" or The Downfall of the "VTR"
By David Loh
www.gps-smart.com
TELEVISION
In the beginning, Television was invented and I
could see moving pictures from all over the world
. Newsreels, movies, documentaries, "Lucy" were
all in glorious black and white. It was
absolutely marvelous!
COMMERCIALS
Commercials started to appear on TV, and it was
still great. I found the commercials highly
entertaining and watched every second of them.
My parents, of course, did not go rushing out to
buy the things being advertised. I do not
remember ever buying anything just because I saw
it being advertised. (My apologies to big name
"advertisers" for wasting your money.)
Eventually, I found myself getting bored when the
same old commercials were shown again, and again,
and again…ad infinitum…
I started doing what we now call "channel surfing"
. At that time, our TV did not have a remote
control so I had to actually get up and walk to
the TV and turn a huge knob to change channel.
Not that I had that many channels to choose from,
anyway. No cable TV!
After a while, I got bored with channel surfing
over the few channels our local TV station was
broadcasting (less than the number of fingers on
a hand). I decided to use the "commercial" time
to go to the loo, get a drink, chit chat with
whoever was sitting next to me (if he had not
already fallen asleep), take a walk around the
house and did anything I could think of except
watch those, by now, absolutely boring,
repetitious commercials.
Then TV acquired color and I could now see that a
rose was actually red instead of all shades of
grey. Everything was wonderful again in spite of
the commercials! The whole world was so colorful!
VIDEO RECORDERS - BETAMAX
Then I (or rather my elder sister) discovered an
amazing, new home appliance called the "video
tape recorder" or VTR. My sister hated
commercials as much as I did. So she went
straight out and bought one of these fantastic
new gadgets.
It was made by "Sony" and had a strange word,
"Betamax" on the front of it. I was truly amazed
when I found I could actually record a movie on
video tape and watch it at a time of my own
choosing.
The thing that really knocked me off my feet was
that I no longer had to watch any commercials
again! Oh, it was most definitely, heavenly bliss
! The moment the same old tired commercial started
on the recorded movie, I would hit the fast
forward button and in a few seconds, voila! I
could continue to watch the movie or "J R"
rambling on and on again. (Yes, I did follow J R
and his shenanigans although now I cannot even
remember the name of that long, long running
"Soap Opera".)
VIDEO RECORDERS - VHS
The next thing I knew, all video recorders were
in a new fangled "format" called "VHS". I did not
even know a "war" was on (the "video format war")
until it was already over. No more Betamax
recorders could be found anymore.
When our Betamax recorder "Kicked The Bucket" (
"gave up the ghost" or "died", in case you are
still wondering) my sister went out and bought
the latest VHS recorder with Stereo sound
capability. And, heavenly bliss was, once again,
restored.
END OF HEAVENLY BLISS
As they say, all good things must come to an end.
I started to get more and more problems with my
video recorder and the video tapes. The tapes got
worn as I recorded and re-recorded on the same
piece of video tape. At that time, VHS tapes were
very expensive, like $10 or more each.
Lines or distortion, known as "picture noise",
appeared on the picture being played back, tapes
snapped, tapes "strangled" the video head by
wrapping themselves round the video head, tapes
got moldy, cassettes got stuck in the player …
.you probably know all about these problems, and
more, if you use video recorders.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE
Do not ever splice a snapped video tape except at
the ends where the short strip of transparent
plastic joins with the actual magnetic tape.
Splice anywhere else on the tape where the video
head can contact the splice and the video head
will "Kick The Bucket".
However, splicing at the joint between the tape
and the strip is ok. Before the joint between the
tape and the transparent plastic can reach the
video head, a light sensor would have shone
through the strip and stop the video recorder,
thus preventing damage to the precious video head
.
This also means that you must not discard the
transparent strip as it serves a very important
function, i.e. to stop the recorder before the
tape reaches the absolute end. If this happens
the motor keeps running till you eject the tape
or the motor burns out.
Video cassettes also had a bad habit of running
out of tape while recording a program, so at
times I watched movies with no ending, and
subsequent preset programs did not get recorded
at all. (Curse! Curse!)
To make sure I had unrecorded tape to record the
next episode of "As the Stomach Turns", I ended
up with a big pile of video tape cassettes. This
was of course when tapes had become much cheaper.
WHERE'S THAT SHOW?
When I wanted to see a particular recorded show, I
had to search, sometimes fruitlessly, for the
show I had recorded among all the tape cassettes
I had.
Tape in, start, search for show, not there, eject,
next tape, and so on and on. I tried to beat this
problem by writing the title of the show on the
tape casing but most of the time I just plain
forget to write the title.
Then, I had to search for the show itself when the
correct cassette had been found. Sometimes, if I
was following a serial, I found myself watching
the serial completely out of sequence (for
example, I saw the "murderer" being convicted
before I even knew whom he had "murdered").
When the Video heads got dirty and the play back
picture became "noisy", I would grab the head
cleaning tape and try to clean the head. When
that did not work, I opened the recorder case,
sprayed the head with "Approved" video head
cleaning spray and kept my fingers crossed that
the head had not "Kicked the Bucket". It became
so bad that I had the casing screws permanently
removed.
VERY, VERY IMPORTANT NOTE
NEVER, ever use any solvent other than "Approved"
(repeat: "Approved") head cleaning spray on the
video head or it will go straight to that great
big "Video Land In The Sky"! Trust me, I know. I
did it once, and my video head was "shot in the
head".
If you still do not know what "Approved" means,
make sure it says on the spray can, "For Cleaning
Video Recorder Heads" (or words to that effect).
If you do not see these words on the spray can,
do not use the spray on your expensive video head
!
I got the above tip straight from my video
recorder "service man", after he had changed the
video head on my video recorder for about a
hundred dollars. By the way, the "service man"
was my fellow aircraft maintenance engineer at
the airlines where I work. He repaired videos in
his spare time, so he was not saying this just to
make a quick buck out of me.
For cleaning video heads, "Approved" (there's that
word again!) head cleaning sprays work much
better than head cleaning tapes, while "wet" head
cleaning tapes are less abrasive on the head than
"dry" head cleaning tapes.
All in all, although the VTR (also known as VCR,
for "video cassette recorder") freed us from
watching those dreadful, boring (yawn!)
commercials, they had a whole set of problems of
their own. Video recorders were expensive, video
heads were expensive, we had to keep stacks of
video tape cassettes, and we needed head cleaners
, sprays…
You can probably add more to the list of "The
Woes of Using The VTR".
PERSONAL COMPUTERS
When the first "PC" (personal computer) came
along, my sister bought the absolute latest model
of the day. It was a wonderful machine, curiously
called an "Apple". It had "No Hard Disk"! The
screen was in green and black and the favorite
game of the day was "Pong".
"Ping", "Thuk", "Pong", "Thuk" all through the day
.
Next, I bought the next latest computer model of
the day, another wonderful machine powered by the
absolute latest Intel chip, an x286, with a speed
of 8 KHz which was "boosted" to 16 KHz when the
"Turbo" button was pressed (wow, that was fast!).
It had a few Kbytes of Ram, a hard disk with a few
Mbytes (or was it Kbytes? I forget) of storage,
and "Doors" was the operating system. I spent
hours playing with my new high tech toy and
trying to get the hang of "Doors".
MR B. G.
Along came Mr. B. G. (B. G. = Bill Gates) and his
"Windows". He must be the most successful windows
salesman in the world, ever.
Suddenly, we no longer had to grapple with squeaky
"Doors". The change was similar to that of Black
and White TV becoming Color TV. The new
"graphical" interface made the PC much, much
simpler for non-geeks to use.
By the way, I do acknowledge the commonly held
belief that the graphical user interface was
first invented by those guys in the garage on
their "fruity" machine. I never bought any other
"fruity" machine except for the first one, so
cannot really comment on this.
By then, I had upgraded to an x386DX powered PC
built by a company called "Datamini". "Windows"
helped made my learning curve on the PC much less
steep.
MY FIRST HOME BUILT PC
I soon found I wanted to know more about the PC.
I started reading up on PC's, what were those
mysterious thingies lurking inside that beige box
and what made them tick. Soon, I found that I was
itching to build my very own PC.
I went to our local PC DIY centre, (at "Sim Lim
Square") and bought all the latest components
(well, not exactly those at the so-called
"bleeding edge"), a CPU ( an Intel "x486"),
"motherboard", case and power supply, RAM chips,
Hard disk, key board…..
I connected everything up, made sure everything
was, in fact, connected up, crossed my fingers
and switched it on. It Worked!
I spent many hours playing games on my pride and
joy DIY computer and a bit of other more boring
stuff, like typing letters and doing school
assignments. The web had not been spun yet, so no
"surfing the Net".
MY SECOND HOME BUILT PC
Then, as Mr. Moore predicted, computing power
went up by leaps and bounds. Before I knew it, my
x486 was "old hat". I had to upgrade again. So, I
went back to Sim Lim Square, bought the "just
below top of the heap" Intel x486 Pentium chip,
and all the other necessary "thingies".
Happily went home with all my goodies, connected
everything together and switched the PC on. I had
enough experience by now to more or less know
what I was doing, so no crossing of fingers this
time.
MY THIRD AND FORTH HOME BUILT PC
Next to be built were desktop sets powered by
Intel P5 Hyperthread CPU. My daughter wanted one
as well, so I built another one for her.
THE WEB IS SPUN
All of a sudden, something called the "World Wide
Web" became popular. In order to see what all the
fuss was about, I signed up for a dial up account
, provided by the telephone company.
The account was called "Magix" although it was
nowhere near being "magic" I assure you. Most of
the time, web pages took ages to complete loading
and downloading was a nightmare. On top of that I
was being charged by the minute once I exceeded
the allowed "free" time.
When dial up access became too expensive and
generally, not a very satisfying experience, I
cancelled the account.
ALONG CAME THE CABLE
Although cable TV had been available in my area
for some time, I had held back on subscribing as
I found the cost a bit prohibitive. However, to
move with the crowd, and when the local free to
air station started showing more and more repeats
and inane shows, I decided it was time to start
subscribing to Cable TV. I subscribed to
Broadband internet access as well since I no
longer had Internet access at that time.
With Broadband, surfing the net, downloading and
everything else I did on the net became fast and
enjoyable. With a router, I could network my 2
desktops and 1 Laptop and all three computers
could access the net through this one broadband
account. (By this time my second daughter had
grown up and she is the one using the laptop, not
I!)
TV ON THE COMPUTER - THE "PVR"
One day while aimlessly surfing the net, I came
across the term "Personal Video Recorder" or "PVR
". By installing a "Video Capture Card" and
suitable software to the PC, it was now possible
to record TV shows straight into the computer
hard disk. The recorded show could be viewed at
any time. In fact, I could do anything I used to
do previously with the Video Tape recorder, and
more.
I had to have this! Off I went to Sim Lim Square
once again, this time to get a video capture card
. I bought a card which allowed me to connect a TV
RF signal cable as well as Composite input cables
which gave better Picture quality. I also made
sure the card had TV signal Composite Outputs so
I could watch recorded shows on TV as well as on
my computer monitor. And, the card even had an
Infra Red (IR) remote control.
But, the whole setup was a bit "clunky" as I had
to run long cables from my TV to the computer
which was, fortunately, not too far away. I
started toying with the idea of building a
dedicated computer just to operate as a PVR.
There are many advantages to using a computer
based PVR. Aside from recording and playing back
movies, you can do everything you normally do on
a computer, like play games, surf the net, type
documents, and send email (e-mail?)
However, a big desktop computer sitting in the
living room, next to the TV, to me, would look a
bit out of place. There are mini desktop
computers available, but these do not appeal to
me due to limited scope for upgrade.
THE DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER - "DVR"
By this time, something called the "DVR" had
appeared. Basically, it is a video recorder but
using Computer technology instead of wildly
spinning video head (just waiting to be grabbed
by the wayward video tape, or clogged by moulds,
or…you get the picture).
A "DVR" has a CPU, motherboard, graphics card, a
hard disk and/or a DVD drive and all the
necessary input/output video and audio connectors
.
Some have USB connections. Unfortunately, the USB
connections on most DVR are not there for you to
network with your LAN (i.e. your home network).
You can only connect devices like thumb drives,
and only for playing back songs or pictures
stored on the thumb drive.
If you need only one compelling reason to buy a
"DVR", it is: You do not need to use "TAPES".
And here are more reasons: No more "noisy"
pictures, changing expensive video heads, missed
endings to movies, and everything else associated
with the VTR.
ADVANTAGES OF USING A DVR
What are the advantages of using a DVR, aside from
the above?
Suppose you come home and the show you have preset
is still being recorded. What do you do if you
were recording with a VTR? You wait for the
recording to end, rewind the tape and watch the
recording from the beginning. Meanwhile, you
could go to the loo, make a drink, walk around
the house, or watch another channel other than
the one being recorded.
Or, watch the show being recorded from that point
to the end and later watch from the beginning of
the show when the recording ends. Unfortunately,
by now you already know "who dun it" so why
bother to watch the beginning?
However, if you were using a DVR, you can start
watching the show from the beginning while it
continues to record to the end of the show. Right
now, no waiting required. This feature is called
"Time Chasing".
Another useful feature is called "Time Shifting".
Suppose you are watching live TV, and something
urgent comes up, like you have to go to the loo.
Without time shifting, you will run to the loo as
quickly as possible, do whatever you need to do,
run back to the TV, and hope you did not miss
anything important, like "who dun it".
With time shifting, you press the "pause" button
on the DVR, casually stroll to the loo, take as
long as you like doing whatever you like there,
then stroll over to the kitchen, make a drink,
stroll back to the sofa, put your legs on the
table (if your better half is not around) and
press the "play" button on the DVR remote control
.
The DVR now feeds the TV from its recorded "cache"
and the show continues from the exact point where
you pressed the pause button earlier. So now you
continue to watch, having missed nothing while
the DVR dutifully continues to record the rest of
the live show. You can also pause again, fast
forward, fast reverse, zoom and every function
that is available as if you were watching a
recorded show.
When you press the stop button, the show goes back
to real time and nothing is actually recorded. No
hard disk space is used except during the actual
recording.
And, the playback picture quality is nothing if
not amazing. You can choose to record in HQ, SP,
LP, EP, SLP and SEP. HQ (DVD quality) uses the
most disk space while SEP (Super Extended Play)
uses the least, at the expense of picture quality
. I find that SP is more than adequate and the
picture quality is superb.
You can copy a 2 hour show recorded on the hard
disk to a DVD in about 20 minutes. This DVD will
be playable in "ordinary" dvd players.
You can play back any show recorded at any time.
True random access, unlike tape where you fast
wind, fast rewind, searching like crazy for the
show you want to see.
You can fast forward and fast reverse during
playback at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 30x and 60x. Imagine
, 5 minutes of commercials zapped in 20 seconds
(at 16x fast forward).
The DVR can also be used to display pictures in
jpeg format. So, use your huge plasma screen to
show slide shows of your favorite holiday photos
whenever you need to tactfully ask your guests to
leave.
It can play MP3 files. It can do lots more.
The two DVR's I bought are identical sets, made by
a local company. They are built with the hobbyist
in mind. You can change the dvd drive and upgrade
the original 120 GByte hard drive to anything up
to 2000 GByte. It is not normally possible to
either of these in "branded" DVR sets as a DIY
project.
As far as I was concerned, being able to throw
away my big pile of video tapes was more than
enough reason to buy a DVR. Now, my wife has a
set to record her "thousand episode" Chinese and
Korean serials, while I have another set to
record "Discovery Channel", "Nat Geo", "Turner
Classic Movies" and a dozen other channels.
No more worries of running out of tape, not being
able to find the correct tape, dead video heads,
etc, etc. | | Author Info: David Loh
I live in Singapore with my wife and 3 daughters, and our dog, Cleo. For the past over 30 years I have been working as an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer in our Local Airlines. |
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