Interview with SONICblue's CEO 135
An anonymous reader writes "itvt.com has an interview with the current CEO of SONICblue Greg Ballard where he fields questions on subjects including: the future of the DVR, the current litigation with Hollywood and how he sees ReplayTV PVR stacking up against Tivo this upcoming holiday season."
Screw inovation, what I want is good price (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I know, this is the only way to get at. At 600$ canadian (ok, so it's about 25$ US) it's quite pricey and I hate to encourage a monopoly.
Hopefully this stuff will have lower prices soon...
Good news to hear (Score:2, Interesting)
Interfacing with portable devices? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Ballard: It's unclear if it will be for the 4500 or for future devices. It's all still up for debate."
Can anyone say the Archos Jukebox Multimedia? I'd like to see Replay interface with this little gadget.
http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/prw_5003
There's one thing I want a DVR to do (Score:5, Interesting)
Sky+ does this, but I'd rather have a device that isn't quite so tightly tied to the broadcast organisation since I'd rather have someone a little more neutral making decisions about what it will and will not record. TiVO will allow me to watch a previously recorded show while recording, which is nice, but not what I want.
Whatever, man. (Score:4, Interesting)
Information for future upgrades to newer formats is not available at this time. Please continue to check our website for further information.
Please note that almost all current Rio players support the WMA format, this codec that will provide digital quality sound at 64k encoding rates. The newest WMA codec WMA9 is by far the best audio compression codec in the world and is supported in all of our players that offer WMA support.
In the words of the Filthy Critic: "Hey, whore! How's the whoring?"
Emmett
Their biggest problem (Score:5, Interesting)
My girlfriend and I each bought a Rio500 about 2 years ago. Both stopped working and were returned to the online store. She got a refund, but I had it replaced. I had to send it in twice within a year to have it repaired. Their customer service was no help - each time they made it a huge hassle to send it in. The second time they had it for 4 or 5 months before they returned it. I was browsing online forums during this time to try to find out what was wrong and found many people with the same problems/complaints.
Someone pointed me to this BBB link [bbbsilicon.org] which basically says
Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau.Specifically, our records show a pattern of non-response to consumer complaints brought to its attention by the Bureau.
The BBB has two ratings: satisfactory and unsatisfactory, and it very difficult to receive the latter.
Get it on Wal-Mart shelves (Score:5, Interesting)
ReplayTV 4500 (Score:5, Interesting)
jim
3 Interesting Comments (Score:3, Interesting)
2) "we'll use whatever DRM system [Hollywood] ultimately certify"
3) Heavily marketing the Commercial Skip this winter
TV... (Score:5, Interesting)
Go mods go, flaimbait, offtopic, troll.
Subscription (slightly OT)? (Score:2, Interesting)
TiVo Price Drop (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There's one thing I want a DVR to do (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is tuners. You need one tuner per feed, with no execptions. With the current technology of tuners right now it isn't really resonable to put more then two in a set top box as far as cost, and space go.
What will make DVR technology better in my mind is signal tuners that can tune to multiple (10?, more?) stations at once, and DVRs with enough processing power to actually record that much data.
For now I settle with two tuners, one so I can watch a show and the other so I can record too...
Re:Whatever, man. (Score:2, Interesting)
Where hardware permits & all that sort of thing...
Hugo
Re:Replay vs. TiVo? (Score:3, Interesting)
PVR features I'd love (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Replay vs. TiVo? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is the point (Score:2, Interesting)
Nowadays, I think that films on TV are a waste of airtime, because you can just buy the films you want on the format of your choice, (for me, that would be Laserdisc, not DVD, but that's a different point).
Broadcast television should be reserved for things like news, sport, (which I don't have much interest in, but others do), documentaries, anime, etc, etc. Films, which you don't want to have commercials in, should be on sale as soon as they have finished in the cinema.
I am watching less and less TV these days, and I can't even remember the last time I recorded something, (over a month ago), and I don't mean record to keep, I mean I haven't timeshifted anything either - if I've had to go out, I've just thought, well, it's only a TV programme, who cares if I miss one episode? If I record it, unless I watch it within about 24 hours, somebody will have probably told me what is going to happen, and then it will be spoiled anyway.
Before home VCRs, when the only way to buy a film was to buy the 10-minute, silent, Super-8 version, there was a point to films on TV. Now that practically everybody has a VCR, what is the point? Eventually, solid state video recorderes will be cheaper than the VHS machines of today - just a box with an MPEG-4 decoder, and a USB-2 socket, that you plug a ROM chip in to - how much would that cost? Practically nothing. It could probably be made for $10, and sold for $20.
So, my idea is to stop showing films on TV, and use that bandwidth for more useful things - news, sport, local TV, local TV from other regions, etc, etc. It would help broadcasters, too, because they wouldn't have so many copyright issues to deal with - if they are producing their own content, they can do what they like with it.
Watch films in the cinema, where the quality is good - no matter how much you spend on home entertainment equipment, you will never be able to watch a film off-air at the same quality you can watch it in the cinema. Even HDTV is not close to 35mm film, (others may disagree on that point).
With no films being broadcast, it neatly solves the problem of home recording!
Scientific Atlanta may beat both TiVo and ReplayTV (Score:3, Interesting)
TiVo and Replay are both trying with mixed results to enter the cable set top box market. The cable companies don't want to give another company revenue if they can keep it for themselves.
" Scientific Atlanta [scientificatlanta.com] which makes the digital set top boxes for Time Warner cable and others has recently started shipping the Explorer 8000 [scientificatlanta.com] which has PVR capabilities.
Among other things, it allows you to record two programs while watching a third from the hard disk.
The cable companies will much rather keep the $10-15 per month extra that they could charge for this box, rather than share it with Replay or TiVo. And the customer will not have to shell out $400-$500 upfront to get it. Look for the SciAtl box to gain significant marketshare as PVRs gain more household penetration.