TiVo-like devices to get booster shot - News - ZDNet: Maxtor is working on Digital Video Recorder (DVRs) which can record or broadcast at least six media streams at a time. This would mean these DVRs would be capable of simultaneously recording up to five live channels while playing one previously recorded one. Current DVR technology only allows up to three media streams at one time.

DVRs in development not only will be able to serve up video in multiple rooms at the same time, but also handle data from a home video security system, said Jasbir Sidhu, director of engineering for consumer electronics products at Maxtor. The coming DVRs may hit the market sometime in the next 18 months, he said.

The fascinating part is they still only going to utilyze one hard drive.

Despite a doubling in the number of media streams DVRs can handle in the future, a single hard drive is still sufficient for the task, Maxtor’s Sidhu said. That’s because the hard drive can transfer data at a rate of up to 60 megabytes per second (mbps), while TV signals–even high-definition TV streams–require much less bandwidth. Standard television consumes up to 10mbps and HDTV needs up to about 20mbps, according to Sidhu.

TV Geeks are rejoicing everywhere over this news!

Did this post make you go hmm?

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