Maxtor's New Crippled External Hard Drive for DVRs

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Maxtor's New Crippled External Hard Drive for DVRs

Ernest over at Corante has a great story on a new Maxtor DVR product: "Crippled External Hard Drive for DVRs." Turns out that Maxtor is producing a new external USB/firewire backup drive for DVR set-top boxes, but it won't be sold to customers but instead only to cable and satellite companies. Since you won't actually own the device, you won't have any rights to get at the data inside the drives, apart from your set-top box.

Sounds totally brain-dead and protectionist to me. Honest people that pay their cable bill are going to want a way to load the shows onto their laptops for travel or their PC for playback in other rooms and when they find out they can't, I'm sure there will be a PR disaster on the hands of any cable or satellite company that chooses to adopt these devices.

by Matt Haughey April 27, 2004 in News

Comments

I concur.

The one thing that makes me regret getting tivo vs replaytv is the built in connectivity (and available community tools) to connect to my home network and pull material off... withought some new fangled "home media extortion" kit. =)

*shrug* so, although i'd be happy to get another PVR that came from the cable company at a reasonable price... but if it's going to be a totally "closed" system, that's reason enough to balk.

rampy

Posted by: rampy at Apr 27, 2004 3:06:29 PM

I have DirecTivo, the larger one (I believe it's 70 hours) and LOVE it. Couldn't go back to watching television without it.

That being said, if you are watching enough television to where you need an external hard drive to add hundreds of gigs of additional storage....

It's time to turn the television off and go do something more productive because your obviously watching far too much television.

I use my Tivo to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. If I maxed it out constantly, all i'd be doing is sitting in front of the television watching everything i've recorded.

I can understand for the additional storage necessary for HDTV, but I get the feeling they are going to take things to a storage level that is rediculous.

"New 365 Day Tivo! Never leave your house! Watch tv forever!"

Posted by: Carl at Apr 29, 2004 6:21:52 AM

Carl:

You're missing the point. It's not about watching 100+ hours of TV... it's about CHOICE. I enjoy the fact that I can have 20 movies to choose from on a given evening, pre-recorded and ready to go.
I enjoy having an entire season of Curb Your Enthusiasm or 24 or whatever, archived on my TiVo so I can watch whatever episode I want, when I want. I enjoy going on a two week trip, knowing that nothing I've recorded will get deleted... there's plenty of elbow room.

With a larger TiVo, I don't look at is as a "cache of recent shows I must watch," but rather an extension to my VHS/DVD library.

That said, I wouldn't be happy with a measly 70 hours.

Posted by: Josh at Apr 30, 2004 12:56:18 AM

I'll echo Josh's comments about storage space being about choice and not about watching more tv.

Shows have about 22 episodes per year, and there are 52 weeks in a year. It sure is nice to stretch out viewings or binge on your favorite shows on your own schedule. Ever since ~1986, when my family became a multi-vcr family, I've been avoiding the feast-or-famine scheduling of the networks.

If you need more space on a VCR, you just buy more tapes. I think the same concept should be made available to DVR users. It's stupid that it's tied to one unit. The external hard drive should be as compatible and as portable as VCR tapes.

Posted by: frank at May 4, 2004 3:50:36 PM

is there any way to hook up an external drive to a gen. 2 tivo?

Posted by: brian at Jun 7, 2004 4:55:42 PM

If hard-drive maker Maxtor and networking company Linksys have their way, your external hard drive is about to become very external.

Posted by: Steve at Jul 9, 2004 2:16:36 PM

I have a Direct TV plus. Kids have filled it up with HD movies, they insist that they can't loose any of them. I can spend the next year burning them to DVD's, but I am hoping that there is a hard drive out there w/software that I can do a complete dump and then later burn them to the DVD. If anyone can help me I'd appreciate it.
Stephen

Posted by: Stephen at Feb 23, 2007 9:16:48 AM

a 70 hour DVR hold less than 7 hours of HD programming. Time shifting allows me to watch only what I want on television -- and saves me 20 minutes worth of commercials in an hour show.

Without a DVR, I would be a complete couch potato!

Posted by: Molly at Nov 11, 2007 1:21:50 PM

a 70 hour DVR hold less than 7 hours of HD programming. Time shifting allows me to watch only what I want on television -- and saves me 20 minutes worth of commercials in an hour show.

Without a DVR, I would be a complete couch potato!

Posted by: Molly at Nov 11, 2007 1:22:04 PM

a 70 hour DVR hold less than 7 hours of HD programming. Time shifting allows me to watch only what I want on television -- and saves me 20 minutes worth of commercials in an hour show.

Without a DVR, I would be a complete couch potato!

Posted by: Molly at Nov 11, 2007 1:22:09 PM

Maxtor's New Crippled External Hard Drive for DVRs

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