Wow, this is one cool device. It allows you to basically turn your video ipod into a DVR. You can plug this box into your TV, either with S-video or Coax and then setup the onscreen timer to record prespecified shows to your iPod hard drive. The TV does not even need to be on. They will play on your iPod video too without a lenghty conversion process. Plus the price is only $200!! They also have two other devices. One is an iLoad which will load a CD of music directly into the iPod without iTunes. Another is a small device which allows you to take the SIM card from you cell phone, insert it into iLoad-C and then download music from the cell phone carrier directly into your iPod nano.Question is, will these help or hurt Apple's market? I think it will help because it could push more iPod video sales which is where Apple makes more money. iTunes may become less relavent though. The cell phone version I believe will be hindered by the high download costs from cell phone carriers. Apples plans for download video from iTunes may also take a hit. Although the Dish Network also has three models of portable video DVR's which are priced reasonably from about $299-$700 depending on the screen size and capacity. These download off of your home DVR so there are no per show charges.
4 comments:
While cool, I am not sure that people will find it that useful to turn a portable device into a main type of household video recorder - even at the great price.
-Le
The benefit is not to be your full home DVR but to give you the ability to take programming on the road in a small device like the iPod. You could take whole movies. The device also allows you to load them to any external hard drive. Then you can copy them to an iPod if you like or watch them on you home TV. With a regular DVR you cannot get the info off of the internal hard drive and who knows what format they are using.
I'd be curious if there is a degradation of quality? It surprises me it's so easy to copy shows like that.
I think it will help the iPod universe because it will encourage the use of video iPods, but who knows how much.
I don't know why there would be a degradation of quality. The technology is there to make exact duplicates (if digital) and very good duplicates of analog signals. I have a DVR in my DISH NETWORK box and I do not notice a difference. The signal coming in is digital in MPEG2 format so I believe it just stores this to the hard drive. Now this device does only have analog inputs so there would be some loss in quality but not any more than a good VCR recording. Remember those antique devices? One time I tried to make a VCR copy of a DVD by piping the output instead of into the TV to the VCR. I found that there is an intentional band of noise put in the signal to make it unusable. I later found that this was intentional by having chips in the VCR's which prevent copies. This was required by law, unless you have an old type VCR which came out before DVDs.
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