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Posted by Bill's News on 09/27/25 11:57
Bob wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:59:45 -0700, "Bill's News"
<snip
>> Rather than
>> Ethernet, which is not bad per se, I prefer USB2 NTFS formatted
>> hard
>> drives to be supported. Hot-swapping these units places all of
>> your
>> recordings onto the PC with absolutely no overhead on either the PC
>> or the recorder. I recently picked up a 600 gB LaCie USB2 for
>> something like US$260. One drawback of this unit though is that it
>> doesn't idle with disuse as some others do.
>
> Ethernet is so much better in a setting where there are multiple
> computers. Imagine the classic family of 4 with 4 different sets of
> tastes in entertainment. Fill the hard drive with all sorts of
> content
> and let each person view it on their own computer in their own room.
>
<snip>
Aside from the erosion of the nuclear (or new-klew-yar?) family, the
problem with the Ethernet connection to a stand-alone recorder is that
you will not likely have 4 family members each viewing a recording of
their own choice from the player on 4 different PCs while the player
is also recording 2 or more channels and possibly playing a DVD for a
local TV viewer having no PC. This is why I feel that a NIC for the
stand-alone is underkill. The family with multiple PCs is already
networked; the transfer of the entire content of the USB drive to
their network takes but seconds to accomplish. A fresh, empty, USB
drive is plugged into the recorder in its place. The size of this
hard drive then becomes whimsical on the part of the user. In this
case, the stand-alone player's internal hard-drive would be quite
generous at 80 gB or so, merely enough to hold the OS, the guide, the
users' program selections, and a generous timeshift buffer - and it
would not need to be scalable by source video definition.
This of course will never happen while there is an MPAA ;-0) And I
doubt that TiVo's quite hackable USB transfer will ever fly with the
series 3, if they're expecting cable companies to provide cable-cards.
The copyright holders of HiDef and DVD source materials have every
right to expect that hole to be plugged - while still allowing support
of lower resolution (upto 480p) transfers in the spirit of long past
court decisions.
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