Forget TiVo, Record Everything -- And They Mean Everything

from the I'm-never-going-to-watch-all-this dept

Boing Boing points to an as-yet-unreleased British DVR called Promise that can record and store an entire month's worth of programming from all the UK broadcast TV networks. Users don't have to set anything to record, the system, made from PC components ("primarily a LOT of high-capacity hard-drives"), simply tapes everything, and users go back through the program data using one of a variety of interfaces and choose what they want to watch. It sounds, well, promising, but while it might be feasible for 5 broadcast channels, it's hard to see it scaling to accept hundreds of cable or satellite channels. It does, however, give a glimpse of a possible future of TV broadcasting, where a provider keeps a giant library of programs like this, and users call up recordings on demand rather than watch things according to network schedules.

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