{{Unreferenced, date=November 2007
The Nextcom R5000-HD is a popular
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
satellite TV
Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commo ...
and cable TV sources. A modification is required to the
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
, giving it a
USB 2.0
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
personal video recorder
A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to d ...
(PVR) software runs on any Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10 system and can record just about any content (that is subscribed or
free-to-air
Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...
D-VHS
D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in 1998, it uses the same p ...
specification
A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard.
There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...
are created.
The R5000-HD differentiates itself from other DVR devices in that the captured
MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...
data is an exact bit-for-bit replica of what is broadcast and encoded by the content provider. Other DVRs may encode the
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
or
composite
Composite or compositing may refer to:
Materials
* Composite material, a material that is made from several different substances
** Metal matrix composite, composed of metal and other parts
** Cermet, a composite of ceramic and metallic materials
...
signals from set-top box output jacks back into MPEG-2 digital data for PC storage, or can only digitally capture (without re-encoding) signals via over-the-airtuners. This significantly limits the amount content that can be recorded in a high-quality format. Decoding into the analog domain and then re-encoding back to digital (
compression
Compression may refer to:
Physical science
*Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces
*Compression member, a structural element such as a column
*Compressibility, susceptibility to compression
* Gas compression
*Compression ratio, of a ...
) is a lossy process resulting in visual and aural artifacts. Furthermore, satellite providers have access to very expensive state-of-the-art MPEG encoders that can provide unsurpassed quality at very low
bitrate
In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time.
The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction ...
. It is advantageous to keep programs in this original form since it not only preserves quality but saves on storage space.
Companion PVR software allows users to program events using
interactive TV
Interactive television is a form of media convergence, adding data services to traditional television technology. It has included on-demand delivery of content, online shopping, and viewer polls. Interactive TV is an example of how new information ...
electronic program guide
Electronic programming guides (EPGs) and interactive programming guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information for ...
s (EPGs) such as Zap2it and TitanTV. An especially useful feature is TitanTV remote scheduling which allows users to program events from anywhere they can get Internet access. The R5000-HD PVR software automatically retrieves these events from a central server. The R5000-HD also supports third-party PVRs like
SageTV
SageTV Media Center, now open source, was a proprietary, commercial DVR (Digital Video Recording) and HTPC (Home theater PC) software for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It requires that the host computer have a hardware-based TV tuner card. The S ...
.
DVR systems such as the R5000-HD are alternatives to stand-alone devices such as
TiVo
TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...
and are increasingly popular with the growing number of
home theater PC
A home theater PC (HTPC) or media center computer is a technological convergence, convergent device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that focuses on video, photo, audio playback, and ...
users. Although such solutions require more technical expertise to set up and use, they offer the ultimate in flexibility as to how media content is stored and distributed within a
household
A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is i ...