DishPlayer. It uses Seagate's PVR design.................
mercurycenter.com
Posted at 3:28 p.m. PST Saturday, December 11, 1999
Personal video recorders take a dramatic leap forward
BY MIKE LANGBERG
Mercury News Computing Editor
FASTER, better, cheaper.
It's a formula that hasn't been working too well for NASA lately, with Mars probes refusing to phone home. But the computer and consumer electronics industries, I'm pleased to report, are staying the course.
The latest dramatic evidence comes in a category that's hardly 6 months old: personal video recorders, or PVRs, which use hard drives instead of videotape to store television programs.
EchoStar Communications Corp., which operates the Dish Network direct satellite service, and Microsoft Corp., which owns the WebTV online service, are about to unleash a jaw-dropping product called the DishPlayer 500, priced at $299.
For that modest sum, you get a single box that functions as a Dish Network receiver, a WebTV terminal and a PVR. A massive 17-gigabyte hard drive holds about 10 hours of programs, flawlessly reproducing the high-quality picture and sound delivered by digital satellite systems.
The first PVRs -- from two Silicon Valley start-up companies called Replay Networks Inc. and TiVo Inc. -- came out last spring for $500 or more. The recording time was far less than the DishPlayer 500, unless you were willing to spend more than $1,000, and the boxes didn't get satellite TV or take you to the World Wide Web.
The DishPlayer 500, in short, makes PVRs practical and affordable.
And the news only gets better: DirecTV, the arch-rival of Dish Network, has a deal with TiVo and Philips Electronics to develop a product similar to the DishPlayer 500, although without Internet access. A TiVo representative told me details are still secret, but disclosed that the box is due next spring at a price roughly equivalent to the DishPlayer 500, with even more recording capacity.
EchoStar and Microsoft started down this road in June with the DishPlayer 300. The $199 box only had an 8-gigabyte hard disk, limiting storage to about five hours. And the DishPlayer 300, also known as the EchoStar Model 7100, didn't have full PVR software -- you could only ``pause' a live program for 30 minutes, not record full shows.
Owners of the DishPlayer 300, however, can now get a software upgrade and a new remote control to give them the same PVR functions as the new DishPlayer 500, also known as the EchoStar Model 7200.
Microsoft and EchoStar, by the way, have been busy stamping out software bugs, which delayed shipment of the DishPlayer 500 from its original due date in mid-November. So it may not be widely available for several weeks. If want to know what stores near you are selling the box, contact EchoStar ((800) 333-3474; www.dishnetwork.com). If you want to know more about the Internet portion, contact WebTV ((800) 469-3288; www.webtv.com).
And if you want a fuller explanation of PVRs, you can read my columns from earlier this year on Replay ((877) 737-5298; www.replaytv.com), TiVo ((877) 367-8486; www.tivo.com) and the DishPlayer 300 on the Web (www.siliconvalley.com/techtest).
I realize there are a few readers out there who, inexplicably, aren't eager to re-read my old columns. So here's a brief re-cap of why PVRs are important:
Today's hard disks are fast enough to do two things at once -- in this case, record one program while you're watching another previously stored program. This also allows a technological miracle called ``live pause.' You can be watching a live program when the phone rings, hit the ``pause' button on a PVR remote, and resume watching from that point when the call ends. You can even fast-forward through commercials until you catch up to real time.
And hard disks are ``interactive,' in the sense they can assemble programming on the fly by instantly accessing chunks of stored video. CNN, for example, could put a collection of stories onto a PVR throughout the day, updating them as events unfold, and you could watch an up-to-the-minute newscast whenever you turn on the TV. You might watch a few minutes of headlines, then get an on-screen menu asking which stories you'd like to explore in depth -- I might want to get more on business and entertainment, you might pick sports and weather.
The DishPlayer 500 already has a very primitive effort at such interactive programming, called the ``Instant News Channel.' But it only presents a few screens of text, making it more a preview of coming attractions than a programming breakthrough.
PVRs are also wonderfully convenient. No more messing with setting the clock on your videocassette recorder, then trying to remember to stick in a blank tape and go through complicated timing menus when you want to record a show.
With a PVR, you just highlight an upcoming show on an on-screen program grid, then push a ``record' button on the remote. You can even tell the PVR to automatically record every daily showing of a soap opera or every weekly showing of a network sitcom.
The DishPlayer 500, like its predecessor, offers the best-looking on-screen program guide I've seen. It's easy to read, offers full program descriptions and shows the program your currently watching in a small window at the upper left side of the screen.
Of course, the cost of acquiring a DishPlayer 500 goes beyond the initial purchase at $299.
Dish Network service starts at $19.99 per month and goes up from there, depending on how many channels you want. Thanks to a new federal law that took effect Nov. 28, Dish Network and DirecTV can now offer local broadcast stations, making it possible to get rid of your roof antenna or cable. Dish Network is providing local stations in the largest markets, including the Bay Area, for an additional $5 a month; DirecTV is charging $6.
WebTV service, for e-mail and Web surfing, is an extra $24.95 a month. But WebTV isn't mandatory; you don't have to subscribe to get any of the other DishPlayer 500 features. If you do sign up for WebTV, you'll also want the optional wireless keyboard for an $50.
And then you'll pay $9.99 a month for PVR service, or $4.99 a month if you also subscribe to WebTV.
There's also the cost of installation, assuming you're not already a Dish Network subscriber. Most stores will send a professional installer to your house for about $100 to put a small dish on your roof and run a coaxial cable through a wall to your receiver.
For those of you who care about such things: The hard drive inside the DishPlayer 500 comes from Seagate Technology Inc. of Scotts Valley; Replay and TiVo both use hard drives from Quantum Corp. of Milpitas. And if you're wondering why the DishPlayer 500 is so inexpensive: EchoStar and Microsoft are both subsidizing production, although they won't say by how much, to lure subscribers for Dish Network and WebTV.
I got a DishPlayer 500 on loan, installed by EchoStar, and found it easy to operate -- you don't really need to read the enclosed instruction manual.
The playback of recorded material was mostly perfect. I did notice occasional glitches -- sometimes the screen would go black for a fraction of a second, and sometimes the audio would briefly get out of sync with the video. But Replay and TiVo had similar problems when they launched their PVRs, and fixed them within a few weeks by remotely upgrading the software. I expect EchoStar and Microsoft will do the same.
I only found one significant limitation: the DishPlayer 500 only records what comes through the satellite dish; there's no way to capture video from a cable connection, roof antenna or camcorder.
But I loved the simplicity of point-and-click recording of shows, even shows I was in the middle of watching, while my big-screen TV and surround-sound speaker system came to life with the sharp pictures and digital audio delivered by satellite.
If you're shopping for a direct satellite system right now, you shouldn't buy anything other than the DishPlayer 500. If you're interested in direct satellite, but can wait four to six months, you'll be able to weigh the DishPlayer 500 against the upcoming Tivo/Philips/DirecTV box. Either way, you'll come out a winner.
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Contact Mike Langberg at mike@langberg.com or (408) 920-5084. |
