How much is enough?

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I'm one of those rare freaks too. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif


In my option, 30 hours is plenty for a single individual. If people are sharing a single unit, I would want more.


Keep in mind it's not about "watching it all". It's about choice. I don't watch half of the shows I record, but I do watch the ones I want to. Many end up being repeats, and it's nice to be able to just switch to something else.


The main advantages of more space are:

[*] You can record at a high quality (many people don't like the low-quality setting).

[*] You can recore more movies.


Movies generally eat up a decent size chunk on of the hard drive. A few movies can easily make space a little tight.

[*] You can archive select shows. This would mainly be done with movies, I would immagine.


I currently have Star Wars on my 30-hour TiVo set to save it until I delete it. I don't really have any need to delete it, so it's there if I want to watch it. With 91 hours, you can archive a lot of movies and still have 30-hours of working space. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif


There are other things, depending on taste. For example, I like to collect a lot of shows so I can watch multiple episodes of a particular series. Watching a few episodes of a single show is more appealing to me than watching a bunch of non-related shows. However, to do that, you need enough space to store a few weeks of shows. I can currently do this with my 30-hour unit, but I can't really do it with my 14-hour unit. If I only had one unit, I probably wouldn't be able to do it at all (assuming no drive upgrades).



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"It's like living in the future."â„¢


[This message has been edited by an infinite number of monkeys (edited 10-24-2000).]

I mostly agree with toots - 20 hours in High quality is usually good enough for time shifting tv.


But....


With more space available -


Those exercise/training/family/Disney VHS tapes lying around can be stored on the TiVo with Save Until I Delete and they are easily accesible (with instant replay) instead of having to dig for tapes.


(As far as Disney tapes - it's legal. TiVo records the Macrovision so you can't make copies of the Disney tapes to cassettes.)


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ybrew,

Colonel, USS TiVo

Moderator Extraordinaire

& Replay Owner

I have a 91-hour TiVo and am satisfied with it capacitywise at this point. It works out to about 26 hours at best quality; upping the quality level is the main reason I wanted more space. Basic quality is close to unwatchable on my front-projection system.


A side benefit is that if I go on vacation for a few weeks, I can drop the quality level to medium and not miss anything even during peak non-rerun season (it's 60-odd hours at medium quality). No more begging a friend to come change tapes every few days.


They haven't said for sure, but speculation is that the 2.0 TiVo software release will support variable bitrate recording, which could increase effective capacity even further. I can only assume that Replay is looking at doing the same thing in a future software release; as I understand it Replay and TiVo use the same MPEG encoding hardware so the possibility ought to exist. Depending on the sort of programming you watch, that could give you a substantial capacity boost on existing hardware.


How VBR would interact with Replay's time-based space allocation UI is an interesting question -- if a two-hour guaranteed channel only ends up eating an hour's worth of disk space, would the Replay try to record additional episodes of the show in question, or would it simply make the space available to whatever non-guaranteed programs happened to come along? (I.e., are you reserving disk space or elapsed time?) Probably that's already been discussed somewhere on this board.

I can never have enough hard drive space (I'm looking forward to the first Terabyte HD's....). However you won't ever see me hacking my TiVo's, because I get nervous enough trying to upgrade my Mac and you supposed to be able to do that, so I doubt I'll ever open either of my TiVo's let allowen upgrade them.


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Dan Wueste

- Colonel, TiVo Army + JAG Corp

- Moderator, AVS Forum - TiVo Coffee House

TiVo, Time has No Meaning there.

"Enough" today is "too little" tomorrow. As we learn how better to use PTRs and as they improve their software, I can see a need for a LOT more than 100 hours of storage.


First, let's assume that the cataloging of recorded shows improves dramatically. The current Replay and TiVo mechanisms are not good enough for real large libraries.


Next, let's assume that we can personalize a single machine so that two or more people can set their own preferences and keep their own catalogs of recorded shows.


Now imagine the impact of a forthcoming feature like TiVo's "copy multiple shows to VCR" feature. Over a few weeks, I could record every episode of Attenborough's nature series or Cronkite's history of man and then send it to tape archive. I have kids in college who can't get cable or satellite and really haven't the time to watch much TV, so I send various worthwhile stuff on tape for them to watch as time and inclination allow.


I use my 91 hours now as high resolution and I save certain travel shows longer so I can share them with my "travel club." Frankly, we haven't scratched the surface of the benefits of more disk space. I suspect the PTR revolution will lead to even more dramatic price/performance improvements in hard disks than we have seen so far. Sixty Gb (~70 hours) for under $200? That's just the beginning! All we need now are some new features in the software.

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There's no reason to have VBR increase the the capacity of the unit. That would cause a variety of problems in both units. What I would expect from VBR is higher quality of recordings.


Simply put, if cases where it could "save space", it could instead ramp up the quality to fill the space it's expected to fill.


Most of the "quality loss" occurs during brief periods of fast motion. Any "space" that's saved previously can be used during such times to eliminate most "quality loss".


If done correctly, you could still have each recording take the exact same space, but the quality would greatly improve.


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"It's like living in the future."â„¢


[This message has been edited by an infinite number of monkeys (edited 10-24-2000).]