Replay TV/information TV. Next we'll be hearing about Creative-PCs:-).............................................
digitaltelevision.com
Instant Replay
In the months since Part 3 of "The Future of Digital Television" series was written, the concept of home media storage has begun to capture the attention of standards groups and consumer electronics manufacturers worldwide.A number of recent announcements are centered on the role that local hard-disk storage will play in time shifting of broadcast programs. And there is an extra twist that is raising eyebrows among the advertisers who pay for "Free TV." Want to take a biology break or answer a phone call in the middle of the big game? Just hit a record button and the program will start caching to disk; when you return you can pick up where you left off, play it a bit faster to catch up, or skip through "unwanted" content.
The Digital Audio Video Industry Council (DAVIC) is currently developing standards for home media storage, which will be incorporated into the next major update of the DAVIC standards, portions of which have been incorporated into the International DVB standards. DAVIC has embraced these scenarios and others in the concepts of "TV Anywhere" and "TV Anytime". Together, these describe the application of DAVIC's integration of technologies which will make content both easily accessible and easily usable. Some of the areas under consideration for inclusion under these scenarios in DAVIC 1.5 are as follows:
TV Anytime: Local (In-home) Storage
- Developing system specifications for applications based on in-home local storage
- System dynamics (walk-throughs), APIs, content, metadata, authorization
- Content coding and APIs for
Recording List Management API
Storage Management API
Media Playback
Requirements and framework for metadata
Security framework (copy control, copyright protection, and identification and monitoring)
TY Anywhere: Intranet Design
- End-to-end systems view, including home network, access and core architectures
- IP Multicasting capabilities for distribution of audio and video in and between DAVIC Intranets
- Content Coding and APIs for References to Content which are Location Independent
A DAVIC white paper on the TV Anytime, TV Anywhere concept provides an interesting glimpse at the impact rapid improvement in the cost/performance of hard disk will have on the number of hours of video that we can expect a home media server to store. The white paper notes that hard disk drives are improving in cost versus performance at a rate significantly faster than Moore's Law--Gordon Moore postulated that the cost of integrated circuits would decrease by half---or the number of transistors would double for the same cost--every eighteen months. For the past few years hard disk drives have doubled in capacity for the same cost every ten months.
The DAVIC white paper includes a chart projecting the number of hours of standard definition television that can be stored for $100 in 2000, 2005 and 2010, based on 18 month and 10 month rates for the doubling of storage capacity. The numbers are impressive.
Perhaps you need more concrete evidence than the projections from a standards organization; something more tangible like a real product you can buy today? In September, Replay Networks announced Replay TV. Here's what the press announcement had to say about the product.
What if you could watch TV when you wanted? After all, if you want to rent and watch a movie, you can do that when you want. If you want to visit a web site, you can do that whenever you want. In a world becoming increasingly more personalized, you do more and more things on your schedule. Why not TV?
The first attempt to solve this problem was called "video-on-demand". Industry leaders thought it would be simple: All they would need, they thought, were huge video servers in every town in the country. These massive and expensive computers would serve up high-speed video data streams to expensive receivers in house miles away (across phone or cable networks that were not originally designed for high-speed, two way data transfer.) The industry and executives at large companies spent billions to discover the obvious: traditional video-on-demand is too expensive and too complicated. Even though there have been many attempts, there has yet to be a single example of this "server side video-on-demand" concept that has been successfully deployed anywhere in the world.
Replay Networks turns this model upside-down by installing the server (ReplayTV) locally. This local "client side" system offers the features dreamed of by video-on-demand supporters in a much simpler and practical way. Its called Personal Television. It's personal, because it's a device you buy, own, and personalize. There are no expensive high-speed networks required. There is no huge array of servers required. There are no monthly service fees. In fact, there's is no new infrastructure required at all. It works with whatever television signals viewers already have coming into their home.
You own your ReplayTV, and you personalize it. You tell it what kind of shows you like, and ReplayTV automatically creates channels for you and lets you view those shows on-demand. ReplayTV does this by accessing the Replay Network Service. Among other things, this service enables ReplayTV to know what shows are on, what time they are on, and what actors, directors, and descriptions are associated with those shows. ReplayTV then automatically captures those shows, using its local, high-capacity hard disk to digitally store them for viewing at your convenience.
Now, whenever you sit down to watch TV, the shows you like are on now. Like ER, Friends, Babylon 5, or the news? Create a personalized "Replay Channel" and you can watch them when you want. Like Harrison Ford? Create the Harrison Ford channel, with Harrison Ford movies available on-demand. Plus, ReplayTV gives you unprecedented control of your viewing experience by letting you pause, rewind, and fast forward live TV.
ReplayTV home theater models will ship in November 1998 with prices starting at $995, depending on features (storage capacity will range from seven to 30+ hours). Consumer models will ship early in 1999 with prices starting as low as $500.
Several weeks later at Japan's Consumer Electronics Show, two companies showed off prototypes of home media servers, tucked inside of digital television receivers. Electronic Engineering Times reported.
The digital TV will not be another PC-like Internet box but a home multimedia server, judging by the prototypes on display at last week's Japan Electronics Show.
Both JVC and Matsushita showed off TVs here that incorporate hard-disk drives and act as central systems for audio, video and data. JVC's prototype features 1 Gbyte of storage capacity; Matsushita showed a large-screen TV with a whopping 12.5-Gbyte HDD.
The two companies consider the hard drive a reasonable point from which to kick-start the concept of a home server, even though they agree that the platform that ultimately evolves will not be a full-blown server. The HDD, acting as local memory for a smart TV, would enable temporary storage of the information necessary to provide instant access for quick viewing.
Calling its concept Information TV, JVC demonstrated a large-screen family-room set with a built-in encyclopedia, a data-broadcasting receiver, a comprehensive electronic programming guide (EPG), a search engine and a Web browser bundled with dedicated service from an Internet service provider. The system also features a handheld remote controller with a pen-input capability that would let viewers scribble down information for which they want to search and then display the captured information on a TV without using a keyboard, said Tomio Mori, senior staff
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