14 DAY TRIAL // Digital video recorders are the answer to the prayers of anyone who works full hours, or odd hours, but doesn't want to miss a show or film on TV. Just set up an automated recording function, or ask family/friends to do it for you, and you're covered.
There is one problem that can put a damper on peoples' mood though: the capacity of every DVR is limited to whatever the installed HDDs can hold.
TiVo, a while ago, released the Roamio Pro, which had an HDD of 4 TB. Now, it's topping that offer, although that's putting it lightly.
You see, the company's new storage device has support for six different HDDs. No wonder it's called the Mega. And with each HDD offering 4 TB, that makes for 24 TB in total.
The HDDs are arrayed in RAID 5 mode, which works when at least three HDDs are present and ensures that if one drive fails, no data is lost. Of course, that's assuming you're not unlucky enough for data errors sneaking into the other drives and ruining the whole array, making you lose everything.
The TiVo Mega rack-mountable DVR has built-in transcoding, multi-room capability, and live internet streaming (with support for tablets/phones). More importantly, it can store up to 26,000 hours of regular resolution video from six TV channels at once.
Even when you crank up the quality to HD resolution, you still get 4,000 hours. Basically, the DVR is likely to have capacity left over even after the last episode of your favorite show airs.
Not that $5,000 (€3,860) will appeal to many consumers. Producers and broadcasters might find an interest in it though, since it allows one to track and store lots of content for later editing.