Digital TVs and digital video recorders are changing the way we experience television. Find out about the newest (and the coolest) digital television technologies on this episode.
Guests
Jill Mullaney
Jill Mullaney
Jill Mullaney works as an information technology professional at the University of Minnesota where she provides computer training to students and faculty and staff members. She has owned a TiVo DVR for four years, and she's been involved in two separate beta testing projects for the company.
Laura Gurak
Laura Gurak
Laura Gurak is a regular commentator on the social impacts of digital technologies. A nationally recognized scholar in technical communication and Internet research, Dr. Gurak is a professor in and head of the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Minnesota. Her specialties include the rhetoric of technology, intellectual property, and Internet studies.
For Your Files
Jill Mullaney, a technology specialist at the U, said DVR, the digital video recorder, is the 21st century version of the VCR:
"So instead of recording something on some big cassette tape, we record it using a machine and there's actually a hard drive like you have on your computer, and the DVR is constantly recording. When you're recording something on a VCR tape, it's linear, so you have shows recorded in a specific order and then you have to rewind, to a specific spot. With a DVR you can watch in any order you want, because it's like a computer where you can open any file you want; it doesn't matter in what order you saved those files. And it's the same with a DVR: you can watch them in any order you want."
To get even more capability out of DVR systems, Jill explained that some service providers allow you to connect your DVR to your computer:
"With the TiVo, you can connect to your computer and you can take shows that you've recorded on your DVR, transfer them to your computer, and burn them onto a DVD player. You can even take music or photos that you have on your computer and play them through the DVR on your TV."
Laura Gurak, professor of rhetoric at the University, said DVRs have enabled viewers to watch television in a whole new way:
"[You can watch at] different times, which I think is being called "time shifting" (if you look around on the Internet). [People also are] buzzing through the commercials—which is sort of like when you tape something to your VCR—but this is a lot more accurate; it's a lot easier to do; it's not linear. [You find] out a 30-minute television show is really much, much shorter, when you take out the commercials. And [using a DVR] really makes viewers far more active. Once you start doing it, you really can never watch television the same way."
Convergence
This is a trend related to technological devices. Some devices that originally had distinct purposes take on each other's functions and eventually become one device. For example, office communications used to take place on separate machines: one for typing a letter and another for faxing it to someone else. Today both of these functions can be managed by a desktop computer.
Hard Drive
A hard drive stores digital data on magnetic disks.
Time Shifting
Time shifting is done when someone records a television program to view at a different time than when it was broadcast. This can be done with VCRs or digital video recorders.