Hard-Disk-Based Recorders May Hit 23 Million In 10 Years

SRI Consulting (Menlo Park, California) projects a worldwide installed base of 23 million hard-disk-based video recorders by 2009. In a study released in early November, the consulting firm predicted that video player and recorder platforms would continue to rely on optical disc and tape technology over that time period, but would begin to incorporate hard disks in the box, enabling features such as graphical interfaces and the ability to watch a program form the beginning while that program is still recording.Even as SRI noted that the hard-disk-based video recorders are destined to become more cost-effective in coming years, ReplayTV (Mountain View, California) announced that it had doubled the storage capacity of its best-selling set-top hard-disk video recorder to 20 hours without raising the price. The new ReplayTV 2020 unit is priced at $699, and is being sold through online retailers. At this point, the chief disadvantage of ReplayTV and its ilk are that consumers who want to archive programs permanently are still required to offload them to an external storage device ñ generally a VHS recorder.Source: DVD Report