The Amazing DVR

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.

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.

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.