The digital recording and playback of television programmes, along with all its accompanying features and extras, began in earnest in the United States about six years ago with the TiVo and ReplayTV systems, box-top units now estimated to be in more than 10-million American homes. Industry forecasters say half of all US viewers will have one of these by 2010. In England, SkyPlus has taken off; other countries, other versions. Users all speak of their television viewing being relieved of virtually all of its technical tedium.
Over the past few years, the costs of electronic goodies like video cassette recorders and DVD players have plummetted. They give away the latter ones with cellphone contracts. I remember when getting a VCR or DVD required quite a deep dig into the pocket. The technology is now a lot more affordable.
My personal mileage lets me remember all the way back to when reel-to-reel tape recorders were electronically stylish. When cute little cassette tapes arrived, they were a welcome relief from the hassle of having to thread and store tapes. The next great step was the compact disc, like VCRs initially quite an investment for ordinary wage-earning grunts. Today, few people bother with cassettes.
The first colour television I ever saw was at the BBC in the mid-60s, on a screen installed in the Shepherd’s Bush television centre workshops. I gaped in wonder at a pale wash of colour in an episode of the popular Western soapie, The Virginian. It was leading-edge stuff. Nowadays colour TV of an extraordinarily high quality is as commonplace as an electric kettle.
And now the very latest in television reception and playback is with us at last, the all South African-designed personal video recorder (PVR) which offers all and a chunk more than the TiVos, and which will, like the VCR did, steadily make its own way on to the basic electronics menu of any home which uses television as a primary source of entertainment and information.
It’s the PVR’s abundance of options and features which will, ultimately, re-align the entire nature of television viewing. The units do all they promise. Viewers can pause programmes, zoom off to the loo or take a phone-call, then resume watching without losing a second. While ‘paused”, the machine dutifully records the rest of the show. It’s like putting down a book and picking it up again. All the rest of the pages are still there.
The tedium of endless spooling and searching through video tapes has been replaced with a vast hard drive which allows instant access. Better still, with digital recording there is no generational loss of quality, it’s a good as a DVD. That bugbear of so many, the often impenetrable programming of a VCR to record future programmes, has been replaced with the touch of a button.
To manage the pause and replay functions, the machine automatically records up to two previous hours of the channel to which is selected. It’s always got these two hours of wake, its so-called ‘buffer”, on hand, to be explored or used. The buffer allows viewers to start watching a programme up to two hours after it actually began. When the commercials come up, they flick through these at a very high pace, gradually catching up with the live broadcast. There’s all manner of extra fun and games. Viewers have their own ‘instant replay”, they can ‘bookmark” exciting moments, store them. The hard drive can accommodate 80 hours of material.
In effect, the TiVos, SkyPlus and PVRs allow viewers to organise their televisual entertainment to suit themselves. Within obvious limits, they become their own programmers. Designed by UEI Technology in Durban, the South African PVR is a world first in that it allows those with satellite television to watch two separate channels on two separate television sets, while simultaneously recording a third.
Technophobes, though, will be disappointed with this new box. The thing looks more enigmatic than the variations. But a friend of mine, who once took a whole week to learn how to lock or unlock his car with a remote control, has admitted that after about half an hour of fiddling around he was running his unit with competence.
Digital television recording has given television industry executives everywhere among their most sleepless board meetings: the utter facility and flexibility of these new machines threatens because digital television recording is moving a large amount of the control away from the broadcasters and advertisers. The new technology poses the first real threat to commercial television’s basic diet item, the 30-second commercial, now coming to the end of its fiercely protected life. The PVR and what basic patterns it reshapes for the future, is welcome indeed.
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