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Hard disk-based DVRs
The two early consumer DVRs, ReplayTV and TiVo, were launched at the 1999
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Although ReplayTV won the "Best of Show"
award in the video category, it was TiVo that went on to much greater commercial
success. The devices have steadily developed complementary abilities, such as
recording onto DVDs, commercial skip, sharing of recordings over the Internet,
and programming and remote control facilities using PDAs, networked PCs, or Web
browsers.
This makes the "time shifting" feature (traditionally done by a VCR) much more
convenient, and also allows for "trick modes" such as pausing live TV, instant
replay of interesting scenes, chasing playback where a recording can be viewed
before it has been completed and skipping advertising. Most DVRs use the MPEG
format for encoding analog video signals.
The two consumer DVR brands in the United States are the TiVo and DNNA's
ReplayTV. In the UK TiVo has a small presence; Thomson, Topfield, Fusion, Pace
and Humax also supply digital terrestrial (DTT) DVRs. BSkyB markets a popular
combined EPG and DVR as Sky+. South African based Africa Satellite TV beamer
Multichoice recently launched their PVR which is available on their Dstv
platform.
Many satellite and cable companies are incorporating DVR functions into their
set-top box, such as with DirecTiVo, DishPlayer/DishDVR, Scientific Atlanta
Explorer 8xxx from Time Warner, Motorola 6xxx from Comcast, Moxi Media Center by
Digeo (available through Charter, Adelphia, Sunflower, Bend Broadband, and soon
Comcast and other cable companies), or Sky+. Also LG Group offers a television
with DVR functions built in.
In the case of a satellite or cable set-top box there is no encoding necessary
in the DVR, as the satellite signal is already a digitally encoded MPEG stream.
The DVR simply stores the digital stream directly to disk. Having the
broadcaster involved with (subsidizing) the design of the DVR—and directly
recording encrypted digital streams—can lead to features such as the ability to
use interactive TV on recorded shows, pre-loading of programs. It can, however,
also force the manufacturer to implement non-skippable advertisements and
automatically-expiring recordings.
In the United States, the FCC has ruled that starting on July 1, 2007, consumers
will be able to purchase a set-top box from a third-party company, rather than
being forced to purchase or rent the set-top box from their cable company.
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