Copying programmes from PVR to PC

[ian turner]

You can expect any length of life you like from a harddrive but that won't stop it dying a month after you install it.
Five years might be an average but averages only apply to large numbers not individual cases.
A hard drive is not suitable for long term storage without backup.
Yup something wrong might be the "deathstar" drives from IBM that packed up after 3 years and which some folks will still mention while suggesting seagate drives because they are unaware of the 1tb barracudas that started dying after 6 months due to incorrect default values in the firmware and were then bricked by the firmware update that seagate released.

Hard drives are like cats, you never know when they might decide to run across the road and get run over. PSUs are also good for taking them out gratuitously.

The value of the warranty on a drive rather depends on where they expect you to send it to as it might involve somewhat high postage charges (I didn't bother claiming on the warranty of an Antec PSU as the cost of sending it to the Netherlands was probably a fair chunk of the cost of a new and better PSU from someone else)
A 160gb PVR has an estimate of 80 hours of tv capacity which for some folks might be about a years worth of US tv series so not really that much. Don't forget those folks who think a 20gb download limit is restrictive on their viewing of downloaded US tv series

 

[Danny]

Note the first post said would it be easier to use a mac. There was no indication that one was owned.

You can't keep programmes on a PVR as

1 You'll run out of space in the same way as on a computer (unless you buy extra external storage and upgrade that everytime storage capacities increase significantly which you can't do on a bog standard PVR).
2. The harddrive will die. On computers you have to keep multiple backups if you wish to keep something permanently
3. If they sold PVRs claiming you could make permanent copies then they would get hit for copyright infringement. The company selling a device you could rip your cd collection to for easy playback was hit by the asa as in this country you're not legally allowed to copy from copyrighted media you own for your own use.


In the long term shift away from the PVR to a computer linked solution as the PVR is only for short term recording stuff to watch later.

What's only become apparent to me since I got a PVR is that it is much more vulnerable than my old school VCR ever was to failure. The worse that could happen with a VCR was that you could lose 3-4 hours worth of programmes if a tape failed for some reason (which hardly ever happened). With a PVR you could lose 100 hours + of programmes if the hard disk or electronics in the device fails.

Mostly I am not wanting long term storage, just the ability to watch programmes a few weeks after they aired.

But I take your point that a PC solution is the way to go in the long term.

 

[delport]

You can expect any length of life you like from a harddrive but that won't stop it dying a month after you install it.
Five years might be an average but averages only apply to large numbers not individual cases.
A hard drive is not suitable for long term storage without backup.
Yup something wrong might be the "deathstar" drives from IBM that packed up after 3 years and which some folks will still mention while suggesting seagate drives because they are unaware of the 1tb barracudas that started dying after 6 months due to incorrect default values in the firmware and were then bricked by the firmware update that seagate released.

Hard drives are like cats, you never know when they might decide to run across the road and get run over. PSUs are also good for taking them out gratuitously.

The value of the warranty on a drive rather depends on where they expect you to send it to as it might involve somewhat high postage charges (I didn't bother claiming on the warranty of an Antec PSU as the cost of sending it to the Netherlands was probably a fair chunk of the cost of a new and better PSU from someone else)
A 160gb PVR has an estimate of 80 hours of tv capacity which for some folks might be about a years worth of US tv series so not really that much. Don't forget those folks who think a 20gb download limit is restrictive on their viewing of downloaded US tv series

So you are essentially saying be very cautious, although hard drives will generally last for everyone else at 3 to 5 years and beyond, look at it in a negative way before you begin.

Infact don't buy anything at all as everything will fail.

One of your comments
"Five years might be an average but averages only apply to large numbers not individual cases"

how come this poster has to look at things from individual cases, and not the majority of cases? Is he or she extremely unlucky or something, and you've predicted the hard drive will pack in for them already?They can't be one of the ordinary members of the public, where a hard drive runs fault free for years?

I have a feeling you are either an extremely cautious person , or you have been having extremely bad luck with computer hardware.

I've bought thousands of pounds worth of computer hardware in the last 10 years, the failure rate on the items i have bought has been miniscule.

Your hardware is more than likely to run for years than it is to fail, if business ran as you describe they may as well not start trading.

And your ibm example is a poor one, it was also a long time ago,you managed to find one serious incident out of a whole decade of computer hardware issues?
How many reliable hard drives have been made in those ten years, many billions?

 

[Dan B]

I also have spent "many thousands" on computer equipment, of my own money, my employers money, and at times my clients' money, and while I might budget to expect drives to need replacing at around the 3-5 year mark, I would certainly not assume that the data in them was safe until that time. Most hard drives are reliable in just the same way as most car drivers are competent: if you care about the data on them, you still need contingency plans in case you experience one of the few that are not.

 

[ian turner]

I've bought thousands of pounds worth of computer hardware in the last 10 years,
the failure rate on the items i have bought has been miniscule.<br sab="734">

That is a rather limited sample unless you have been purchasing on behalf on an IT department.
I don't but I've been a programmer for 25 years, built my own computers for the past 15 and done IT
support for some of the small companies I've worked for.

And your ibm example is a poor one, it was also a long time ago,you managed to
find one serious incident out of a whole decade of computer hardware issues?<br sab="738">

Ahem Seagate barracudas too. Those are just the big ones.If you look at most of the major selling harddrives there will be a number of low star reviews from customers who have had drives die in a month. If you keep important data on a hard drive without a backup then you deserve to lose it.

When folks ask for a recommendation on which brand of drive to buy I always comment that all makes are prone to failures and that opinions on forums are mostly from folks who have bought a relatively small number of harddrives which aren't a large enough sample to base an opinion on so they should just check out the deals.

I have a feeling you are either an extremely cautious person , or you have been
having extremely bad luck with computer hardware.<br sab="732">

Try posting a query about setting up backups for your computer and wait for the folks to pop up who recommend that you store backup drives off site, keep them in the car, keep copies on online backup sites in case your house burns down. In the 20 years I've lived on my street the only house fire was a wendy house fire in the back garden. I usually suggest they start with an external drive, don't get tempted to use it for overflow and expect the experts to come along in a few minutes to recommend an industrial grade solution.


<br sab="735">

 

[2Loose]

IBM\Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital and Fujitsu have all had HDD related horror stories in the last 10 years. All of them only surfaced months or years after they were first used (It must be Samsungs' turn tbh! ).

It is all about taking a measured risk. If the stuff on a drive is irreplaceable, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. If it will be an inconvenience then 95% of people will risk it and also get away with it 99+% of the time. It is no biggy really, nothing is 100%.

 

[ian turner]

You can get away with it if you buy a new PC because the old ones too slow or you fancy one that's shiny. But there's always the group who wait until it's broken. Just check the number of "my computer just died and I need the contents" posts on forums (or a recent classic where the posters gf ignored suggestions she back her thesis up then ran the usb stick over with her car )
Recent years have seen an increase in storage hungry applications such as mp3s and photographs so you can now lose your entire music collection and all your photographs of your kids formative years in one go . But backing up is a concept alien to most users as is "if you fill the main drive up it will stop booting".

 

[marinyork]

I also have spent "many thousands" on computer equipment, of my own money, my employers money, and at times my clients' money, and while I might budget to expect drives to need replacing at around the 3-5 year mark, I would certainly not assume that the data in them was safe until that time. Most hard drives are reliable in just the same way as most car drivers are competent: if you care about the data on them, you still need contingency plans in case you experience one of the few that are not.

I agree with both points of view. That PCs are very reliable, but that for many people PVRs are not as reliable in a whole host of ways that they would like. Too many years of internet threads along the lines of 'my sky box missed a recording, damn it I'm so annoyed I'm going to go and have to buy the box set at £40' . At least now it's a lot better with catch up services being much more widespread.

 

[Ghost Donkey]

I tried this with our Thomson PVR a while ago. Getting the HDD out was fiddly initially but it's very doable. Dragging and dropping the files to a computer HDD is a lot better than recording the video again realtime. Too many video encoding sessions aon't good and data transfer from HDD to HDD is much quicker than realtime. Drag and drop should work regardless of OS but having something which recognises the file formats would be helpful. I went for ubuntu but was blessed with a damaged USB to IDE cable. Got that changed but not tried it again due to the usual time problems and not wanting to leave a half done job with the PVR in peices :-)

 

[fossyant]

Really happy with my Topfield - Marin will tell you they are OK, but they are easily linked up to a PC/Laptop, and you can download the films if you need to. We've had a HD failure under warranty (lost everything - PS didn't miss it though) - the OEM drives ran quite hot, with no active cooling - the new SATA drives are really cool running.

500 gb is enough crap Freeview to watch though - lots of kids films on it.