Hard drives tuned for foray into prime-time TV
eet.com
By Terry Costlow and Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(12/21/98, 10:48 a.m. EDT)
IRVINE, Calif. — Consumer-electronics and disk-drive makers are teaming
up to push modified versions of the venerable hard-disk drive as a medium
for consumer video-recording systems, leapfrogging the VCR and perhaps
outshining the nascent recordable DVD. Two startups plan to launch
disk-drive-based systems next year as platforms for enhanced-TV services,
and consumer giant Sony Corp. last week linked with drive maker Western
Digital Corp. to pursue similar opportunities.
Some analysts — and even some drive makers — doubt whether hard drives
can meet the cost, capacity and resolution requirements the new consumer
systems will demand if they are to let consumers pause, rewind, slow down
and replay live television broadcasts while simultaneously recording other
broadcasts. But proponents of the idea spy an opportunity to extend their
franchise beyond the increasingly cost-sensitive PC market into the
consumer space.
Silicon Valley startups Tivo (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Replay Networks (Palo
Alto, Calif.) are separately designing home-entertainment platforms that
would receive the companies' own planned TV services, including advanced
programming guides and “personalized channels.” Both will promote their
platforms in Las Vegas next month at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Sony, for its part, isn't saying much about products yet, other than to have
broached the topic of home servers. Instead, its announcement with WD
focuses on the codevelopment of a hard drive for that application, with
verification of the drive by March and commercialization in 2000.
Tivo, which has allied with drive maker Quantum Corp., today (Dec. 21) will
unveil details of underlying technologies for its distributed TV-viewing
management platform. With a Tivo receiver and headend connected via
modem in a closed loop, the Tivo service learns users' viewing preferences
and patterns as the users push “thumbs up/thumbs down” keys on the remote
control. The feature trains the Tivo service to make intelligent recording
choices, “ordering” the Tivo receiver to grab preferred shows and
automatically store them on the disk drive.
The setup thus would enable video-on-demand without requiring cable- or
satellite-service providers to do costly infrastructure upgrades. It also would
spare consumers the ordeal of learning VCR time-shifting protocols.
“In essence, we are moving the million-dollar video servers required at a
headend into individual homes at less than $500 per receiver,” said Mike
Ramsay, Tivo chief executive.
The Tivo receiver runs the Linux operating system on an IBM 403GCX
PowerPC. The Quantum drive used in the system can store up to 20 hours of
TV programming. Other components of the system include real-time
MPEG-2 codec chips; 8 Mbytes of memory; a tuner; a modem; and RF,
composite analog and S-video interfaces.
The Tivo receiver also incorporates an ASIC designed to do “patent-pending
media switch,” said James Barton, chief technology officer and vice
president of R&D at the company. The ASIC has nine DMA engines that
run continuously to manage simultaneous flows of video and data. The clock
rate is a TV-friendly 27 MHz.
Replay's plans
Replay Network similarly plans to launch its service and ship its receiver
early next year. Replay has not disclosed technical details of its platform, but
the basic components appear similar to those used by Tivo.
Indeed, Jim Plant, Replay marketing director, said the two startups may differ
more in business models than in technology. “Unlike Tivo, we will not charge
a monthly service fee to viewers,” said Plant. The Replay modem will
incorporate a receiver to download the latest program guide, but the system
will not collect data on viewers' preferences.
The companies involved in the budding market acknowledge that they have
their work cut out for them. “Until companies like Tivo can provide 10 to 20
hours of storage at reasonable prices, this isn't a very compelling product,”
said Jeff Klugman, director of marketing at Quantum's Consumer Electronics
Storage Business Unit. “But when you can do that and know that in a year or
two you'll have twice the capacity at about the same cost, it suddenly
becomes a viable technology.”
Klugman added that while “Tivo hasn't finalized its plans yet,” the startup is
“leaning toward an entry-level product with six to eight hours [of recording
time] using a 12-Gbyte Bigfoot [5.25-inch] drive and a second version, with
39 Gbytes, using two drives that would store around 20 hours of data.” The
current plan calls for encoding video streams at 4 Mbits/second, requiring 2
Gbytes per hour of recording.
As drive capacities have soared to 220 Gbytes and beyond, so has speed.
That gives hard drives capabilities that are lacking in VCRs and optical disk
drives, including rewritable CD/DVD versions. “Recording during playback is
challenging, but the internal data rates and speed of the interface let you
watch one channel while you're recording two or three others at the same
time,” said Russell Stern, senior vice president of strategic business planning
at Sony drive partner Western Digital (Irvine). “Sony sees that as a key
capability that differentiates this from a VCR. It will also have a minimum of
MPEG-2 resolution and can do HDTV, which really surpasses what you get
with a $79 VCR.”
None of the drive makers involved would provide specifics on how they plan
to tweak their hard drives for the new systems. But most said the changes,
while relatively minor, are many.
“There are a lot of hardware things, such as lowering acoustics so
consumers don't hear the disk drive churning away,” WD's Stern said.
“There must also be changes to the servo and the servo patterns and
caching, and there are interface implications and command-set implications.”
Drive makers are struggling to determine which applications hold enough
potential to warrant costly alterations to drive products. Consumer
applications are notoriously price-sensitive, and that will determine the types
of drives used. Not all manufacturers think high capacity is a necessity for
many consumer applications.
“We've all got to get the cost structures in line with what consumers will pay.
Consumer prices are typically $199, not the $1,199 that PCs have been,” said
Brian Dexheimer, senior vice president for desktop product-line management
at Seagate Technology Inc. (Longmont, Colo.). “We won't be successful
selling something that is 50 percent of the system cost, and most consumers
won't blink an eye until something is under $400.
“We have been selling drives to Web TV for years, and their high-end
system costs $299. Nobody is talking to us about 18-Gbyte drives, because
they simply can't afford them.”
Another key technology enabler for the new services is real-time MPEG-2
encoding. Christie Cadwell, director of consumer-recordable products at
C-Cube Microsystems (Milpitas, Calif.), noted that digital video enables
previously unimaginable features. An instantaneous time-shifting function is
“the killer feature” that will capture people's interest in 1999 to 2000, “but in
2004 and 2005, being able to pause, rewind or see snippets of live TV
broadcast will become an expected feature for every new TV,” Cadwell
predicted.
Both Tivo and Replay promise their systems' encoding solutions will enable
“better than VHS” quality video.
Matsushita and JVC, in “smart-TV” prototype demonstrations at the last
Japan Electronics Show, also explored hard-drive-based TV-recording
systems but have yet to release products.
Tivo and Replay, who have nothing to lose and no existing interests to protect
in the consumer-electronics business, may have a shot at creating a
consumer-product category closely tied with a nascent service, according to
Michael Gold, senior research engineer of the Media Futures Program at SRI
Consulting (Menlo Park, Calif.).
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