SnapStream's monster DVR records 50 channels at once, even when nothin's on
Get ready for an acute case of DVR inadequacy courtesy of SnapStream, which has pieced together what it's calling the world's largest DVR, and we're inclined to believe them. Run a coax in the back and, with a fully configured unit, you can record a whopping 50 channels simultaneously onto over 100TB of storage. The trick is it's actually five separate rack-mounted SnapStream DVRs that all join together to share storage, work across tuners, and to fight the evil King Zarkon from the planet Doom -- or at least to record all the Voltron reruns ever aired, ever. No word on the cost of a fully-configured rack, but given the size of that thing (check out the door in the background for comparison) we're thinking it might not fit in our entertainment center anyway.




























do want.
@dmbphan041
Add a few 6-screen LCD monitors with a different channel showing on each and your one step closer to the ultimate command center...
@dmbphan041 They look like hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600's to me.
@dmbphan041
Why? The electricity bill would kill you.
@dmbphan041
theres not enough time to watch all those recorded shows
i just see it as walmarts security dream
they will watch every square inch of your bodily movements!
so THIS is how Skynet will study the human race and come to the ultimate decision the world is better off without us.... interesting.
Yeah, but is uses analog tuners :/
Just get a Ceton 4-tuner card with like 20TB and you're good to go. HDD space is way cheap now anyways.
Who the Hell needs to record 5 things at once, let alone 50? Talk about overkill.
@mr88
Piracy? Your fav daily tv shows released daily compliments of The Scene.
@Almo
Finally someone appreciating the scene! Thank you
@The Advanced Kind
LOL this is a scene groups wet dream.
Imagine recording 50 shows at once and then simultaenously seeding them on torrent trackers.
@mr88 Mostly shows like The Daily Show and athe Colbert report
@DoctarPeppar
scene and torrents dont mix.
@DoctarPeppar
Scene groups do not use, and are not involved in, Bittorrent protocols.
@mr88 The Daily Show.
This is not for normal users.
This rig only does unencrypted content. That means it's not running in a home.
Once cable companies start allowing recording to be stored on their servers this sorta thing is useless.
Well you could pay for just one month of cable and save up enough content to last you all year, and at that rate it might eventually pay itself off... in a hundred years or so.
I'll take 3!
@RenegadeRunner
It'd sure complement your 20-screen Runco WindowWall.
Why you ask because I damn well can thats why !
Serious Note: This thing is madness !
@Diesel1313
"Madness"???
No....
@coolicer
This, is, THE SCENEEEE!!!!
@Diesel1313
It's a college football scout's dream machine! :D
Typical user of this is a talk radio station who records everything under the sun so they can play clips the next day on the wild and wacky morning show.
right... so i have a system that records 50 channels... then what? would be then spending the rest of my life chucking out all the repeated episodes and crap thats on during the day hehe.
its a beast and cool idea if it can be used for good or evil
me wants.
wish i was millionaire or billionaire!!!
Wish I was, like, a thousandaire.
I'd love to have one just to do a time laps recording of bunch of channels. So you can go back in time, oh let's say one hour on any channel..
Will it blend?
This is geared toward enterprise (obviously), like TV stations, TV shows, News org, etc.
They have a cool feature that takes the CC from the TV shows and collects it together in a centralized searchable database. For example, if you were a politician, you could do a search for your name and find it anytime it has come up on anything that has been recorded. Being able to record 50 things at once would also you to record all the news stations, 24 hours a day. You can then pull the clips that you want.
That's the thought of course, but it comes with a price. They already have companies like MLB and The Daily Show.
Unfortunately they have changed the focus of the company to only the enterprise market and completely abandoned their consumer product - BeyondTV.
@bradrel
I was a BTV user for years but since their abandonment of the home user, I have defected to WMC. I think it's really sad because I love the BTV product. If you go over to their forum it sounds like crickets right now... Maybe they'll change but I'm not counting on it.
Here's who uses this sort of thing:
http://tvsearcher.snapstream.com/2009/12/the-daily-show-and-colbert-report-go-with-snapstream/
Beats the bank of TiVo's they used to have.
--S2M
People seem to think this is for the common home user, wherein they are probably very wrong. This is more likely to sell to media corporations, or groups like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (who apparently use TiVOs) so they can record all of the news for the day and use it later as clips.
Someone remind me -- didn't the Brits build a like 100-tuner (maybe less, can't recall) "all channels, all shows, all the time" DVR a couple of years ago? I distinctly remember it, but I can't find the Engadget or EHD article (perhaps I read about it elsewhere, but I doubt it).
Will it dispense a pack of nabs, too?
i NEED that!
Cool but no CableCARD. Worthless to me unless I can get all the channels in my cable lineup.
Can it play Crysis?
Cheapest Sky HD package in the UK is £15/month for a free box and installation. Get that 50 times and you can have this setup for £750/month. 1 year would be £9000, then you can break your contract with Sky and go for free.
Or just source 50 DVR boxes off ebay and stack them up...
This would SO fit in my basement which lies directly beneath my entertainment center in our Great Room! I *so* want one of these!
I am thinking this is the kind of thing cablevision would be using for their network dvr.
In Soviet Russia, television record you!
They should retrofit it with QAM channels. In SD sometimes a QAM can carry as many as 12 channels on one frequency. If they pull the full 38mbps qam and save that, so each separate stream is available, you could pull 60 SD channels with just 5 QAM tuners.
I could see this being used for service providers. Like a massive content ingestion device to support a "Start Over" type of service, or to help facilitate RS-DVR service. You select a program you want to record, and once it's done, a pointer is added in the database under your account to link the recorded content from this device.
A service provider may even be able to locate something like this before the encryption process, or not even use QAM, but multiple GigE inputs, since at the service provider level, everything is 10gE or GigE IP multicast video.
"SnapStream's 'monster' DVR..."
Engadget, better be prepared for getting sued by Monster.
.
@WinRulez Both by Monster Cables and Monster.com even possibly Monster Jam and Fenway Park which has the Green Monster
Let's go, Voltron Force!
Is this the system they are putting together for The Daily Show?
You didn't mention the important stuff - which how it manages all that content and lets you find clips easily.
Does Snapstream have any interest in moving to Ceton cards for CableCard authentication?
Wow, are there even 50 channels of porn on cable?
It's cool, but I'm pretty sure people on the MythTV mailing list have rigs with roughly the same amount of tuners, although I'm not sure anybody has 100TB of backend storage yet.
*ahem*