My old man is a bit of a tard with TV's and stuff

I called over this morning and he was complaining he can't record on his video anymore.

Now bear in mind I am in Cardiff so theres no more analogue.

His TV has freview built in.

But iirc theres no way of getting that freeview signal into the video without a freeview box too feed it. Am I right ???

If thats the case I think it's time for a PVR for him.

Are the HD ones around yet ???

Yes you are right!

There are some floating around yes. I saw Maplin had some. Around £250 atm!

Humax has a single tuner type, but until it receives it’s software update, it can not record as it doesn’t have a HDD. After the update it can record to an external drive via USB. There are a couple of others somewhere out there, but personally I would wait a couple of months till the twin tuner models from Humax and Toshiba version hit the shelves.

Edited 15 April, 201016 yr by Lady Elanore

As Amanda says, there's going to be quite a few new models out shortly.

Check here for some details and further links.

This may help you decide...

Freeview HD boxes

Edited 15 April, 201016 yr by Raglits

Thought Panasonic were going to do one? but i might have dreamt that

can you not run an output from the TV to video? and record that way?

I found I was able to connect my xbox 360 to my video via SCART and record it's feed to video (not that i found a reason WHY i'd want to do that!!)

or alternatively you could connect a cheapo freeview box to the video and then record whatever to that

£15 for a freeviewbox that you can record to video might be better than a £90 Humax PVR

On the Freeview HD subject - I'm guessing my current Humax PVR won't be able to accept the HD signal so i'd have to buy a new PVR to make use of said HD channels?

Yes you are right!

There are some floating around yes. I saw Maplin had some. Around £250 atm!

Maplins = daylight robbery lol

Humax has a single tuner type, but until it receives it’s software update, it can not record as it doesn’t have a HDD. After the update it can record to an external drive via USB. There are a couple of others somewhere out there, but personally I would wait a couple of months till the twin tuner models from Humax and Toshiba version hit the shelves.

Cool sounds good

As Amanda says, there's going to be quite a few new models out shortly.

Check here for some details and further links.

This may help you decide...

Freeview HD boxes

Cheers for that

Thought Panasonic were going to do one? but i might have dreamt that

can you not run an output from the TV to video? and record that way?

I found I was able to connect my xbox 360 to my video via SCART and record it's feed to video (not that i found a reason WHY i'd want to do that!!)

or alternatively you could connect a cheapo freeview box to the video and then record whatever to that

£15 for a freeviewbox that you can record to video might be better than a £90 Humax PVR

On the Freeview HD subject - I'm guessing my current Humax PVR won't be able to accept the HD signal so i'd have to buy a new PVR to make use of said HD channels?

He probably could but it would cause me no end of phone calls and trying too explain how too do it lol

Sounds like its a waiting game then, he has a portable with video and a STB which he can use for now so he'll survive.

Thought Panasonic were going to do one? but i might have dreamt that

Panasonic are doing an HD freeview box, but in typical Panasonic fashion it's not going to be standalone PVR, it also has DVD recording in the box (might even be Bluray player too) and as a result it'll sell at about £600...

It'll be a good device though

I have to say that twin tuner versions are going to remain expensive, because to record two things at once is going to require a very fast hard disk or a lot of compression and so a lot of CPU or a dedicated chip.

When they can do good compression in a cheap chip before sending it to the disk, then I think they will come down in price.

I have to say that twin tuner versions are going to remain expensive, because to record two things at once is going to require a very fast hard disk or a lot of compression and so a lot of CPU or a dedicated chip.

When they can do good compression in a cheap chip before sending it to the disk, then I think they will come down in price.

How much do the current SKY twin tuner PVRs cost? I guess a PVR HD box will be similarish, if not a bit cheaper owing to eventual greater demand and more manufacturers wanting a slice.

Actually when I think about it, Freesat PVRs aren’t too expensive are they? So after 6-9 months it would suggest that the HD Freeview PVRs will be similarly priced?

Actually when I think about it, Freesat PVRs aren’t too expensive are they? So after 6-9 months it would suggest that the HD Freeview PVRs will be similarly priced?

The problem is that a single hard disc can do about 60MB/s on a good day from the faster tracks on the disk surface.

So if you think about that, then that will not be enough for 2 * 1080p streams. Uncompressed a single stream is about 190MB/s, so if you half that with compression that's still more than the disc can do.

Say the compression is really good and you're talking 19MB/s, then sure you can do two streams in theory.

Problem is that 60MB is sequential reads. Writes are slower than reads in most cases, so that means you're down to just being able to do it if you say 2/3rds speed.

However your data isn't sequential any more as you have two streams, so it's now random access.

I suspect they are going to either have to use much faster drives, SSD with a relatively poor write life or a clever RAID or buffering system.

All of these are not used in current systems as the data rates are much lower and are also not especially cheap.

I mean sure they might only be $10 for a chip to do RAID and $50 for the disk, but adding $60 to the bill of materials is going to add a lot more to the retail cost of the box.

Edited 15 April, 201016 yr by cheezemonkhai

The problem is that a single hard disc can do about 60MB/s on a good day from the faster tracks on the disk surface.

So if you think about that, then that will not be enough for 2 * 1080p streams. Uncompressed a single stream is about 190MB/s, so if you half that with compression that's still more than the disc can do.

Say the compression is really good and you're talking 19MB/s, then sure you can do two streams in theory.

Problem is that 60MB is sequential reads. Writes are slower than reads in most cases, so that means you're down to just being able to do it if you say 2/3rds speed.

However your data isn't sequential any more as you have two streams, so it's now random access.

I suspect they are going to either have to use much faster drives, SSD with a relatively poor write life or a clever RAID or buffering system.

All of these are not used in current systems as the data rates are much lower and are also not especially cheap.

I mean sure they might only be $10 for a chip to do RAID and $50 for the disk, but adding $60 to the bill of materials is going to add a lot more to the retail cost of the box.

I haven’t actually looked at the comparative data rates of SKY HD, Freesat HD and Freeview HD, but would assume they are broadly similar. 500gb Freesat PVRs seem to be about £250-300 for a decent brand, which seems reasonable to me (although not as cheap as a regular Freeview PVR obviously). I don’t have Freeview, but I think it only uses 720p and 1080i for its HD content.

I have just bought a Panasonic Freesat HD Blu Ray recorder and that works a treat

Not tried the Blu Ray recorder yet though.....

I have to say that twin tuner versions are going to remain expensive, because to record two things at once is going to require a very fast hard disk or a lot of compression and so a lot of CPU or a dedicated chip.

When they can do good compression in a cheap chip before sending it to the disk, then I think they will come down in price.

Modern HDDs are very fast, the Sky+HD PVR has a 300GB HDD in it as standard and it can more than cope with recording 2 HD streams at the same time whilst you watch another channel. The Humax Freesat HD PVR can cope with more depending on which transponder you are watching. My Sky HD box has been upgraded with a standard desktop 1TB HDD and it still works as it should.

Recording to the HDD will be done without compression, ie. the raw data broadcast is recorded straight to the HDD, just like current sky boxes, freeview PVRs, and Freesat HD PVRs do currently.

Modern HDDs are very fast, the Sky+HD PVR has a 300GB HDD in it as standard and it can more than cope with recording 2 HD streams at the same time whilst you watch another channel. The Humax Freesat HD PVR can cope with more depending on which transponder you are watching. My Sky HD box has been upgraded with a standard desktop 1TB HDD and it still works as it should.

Recording to the HDD will be done without compression, ie. the raw data broadcast is recorded straight to the HDD, just like current sky boxes, freeview PVRs, and Freesat HD PVRs do currently.

Hi Mannyo, no disrespect, but my line of work means I have a good grip on disk performance levels.

The streams are already compressed before broadcast so I wasn't suggesting recompression.

If the stream is at a high data rate ,then Inside of the tuners that can record more than one channel will have to be something clever to enable high data rates.

If the streams are heavily compressed for broadcast and at a low data rate then you may well be able to dump a couple of streams to disk, but the compression will affect quality of the broadcast.

Now I'm not saying the sky+ HD boxes can't do it, just that there must be something in them to allow the data not to stall and drop frames, even if it's just a big cache.

Mannyo has hit the nail on the head! The entire transport stream / mux is dumped to disk as it's received - it's only the pretty menus that we as end users see that makes us believe that we have "recorded a programme". When we record 2 programmes at once, in reality we're probably recording parts of up to 16 programmes (say 8 TV channels in SD per TS). Come playback time, the individual programme that we see in the menu is pulled out of the dumped stream & processed...

While that may well be true, there remains the issue that if you try and pull down and record two programs from a different mux you are going to have throughput issues if the data rate is sufficient for high quality.

Again, I'm not saying it's not possible as it is, just that I don't believe you will see £50-£100 twin tuner hard disk recorders in the immediate future and that prices will stay relatively high.

Edited 16 April, 201016 yr by cheezemonkhai

The problem is that a single hard disc can do about 60MB/s on a good day from the faster tracks on the disk surface.

So if you think about that, then that will not be enough for 2 * 1080p streams. Uncompressed a single stream is about 190MB/s, so if you half that with compression that's still more than the disc can do.

Say the compression is really good and you're talking 19MB/s, then sure you can do two streams in theory.

Problem is that 60MB is sequential reads. Writes are slower than reads in most cases, so that means you're down to just being able to do it if you say 2/3rds speed.

However your data isn't sequential any more as you have two streams, so it's now random access.

The BBC has now reduced its data rate to a touch below 10MBps - admittdly it's lover than ITV HD - but well within HDD limits for two streams.

I don't see why two streams cannot be written sequentially to a disk - either the filesystem could be chosen or tuned to allocate sequential blocks to two files in turn, or the software could interlace the two streams into a single container file.

I agree though - a 5.4k SFF drive may struggle with some load scenarios unless it is heavily buffered or cached.

Edited 16 April, 201016 yr by foo

I have just bought a Panasonic Freesat HD Blu Ray recorder and that works a treat

Not tried the Blu Ray recorder yet though.....

How much a re discs these days, last time I looked they were about £13 each :S

The BBC has now reduced its data rate to a touch below 10MBps - admittdly it's lover than ITV HD - but well within HDD limits for two streams.

I don't see why two streams cannot be written sequentially to a disk - either the filesystem could be chosen or tuned to allocate sequential blocks to two files in turn, or the software could interlace the two streams into a single container file.

I agree though - a 5.4k SFF drive may struggle with some load scenarios unless it is heavily buffered or cached.

Having seen that it's 10MB/s for two streams then yes you will be able to write two to a disk at once.

The issue comes if they up the data rates (which they claim they would do when analogue goes off everywhere).

The writing two streams to the disk at the same time is down to the nature of the access pattern to the disk. For example a system that can do 100MB/s sequential reads, will be much lower for random reads and even lower for random writes.

If your FS interlaced two streams then it would make for a lot of work pulling them back and that would mean a more expensive (albeit not massively so) CPU and a bit of RAM to buffer frames in.

Then if you end up with the programmes getting out of synch for any reason on the drive, or a data miswrite or any of many other things then drive would be seeking all over the place to put the data in the correct place and would slow down.

FWIW a 5.4k SFF, will be quicker than a 5.4k desktop drive in terms of seeks etc, so it's all a bit of a mixed bag.

The easiest way to make sure it all works would be to record the streams to a RAM buffer, and then when the buffer is half full, write it out to disk, then write the other programme out. Gives plenty of time to write it before the next chunk is ready to be written.

As I said at the start, all technically possibly, with no real issues, with the exception that there is a cost associated with this. If this is $5 on the bill of materials, you can bet that's $20 or $30 added to the final retail price.

How much a re discs these days, last time I looked they were about £13 each :S

Hi Dave,

about 16 for £10......

Hi Dave,

about 16 for £10......

Thats do-able, jezz how long ago did i look lol