Obvious gap

gnat on 2002-01-07T19:11:12

The more DVDs I watch, the more peeved I become at the controls. It seems like every digital video device has its own controls--different numbers of speeds of forward and back, etc. In particular, I want my DVD player to have the TiVo's ability to go back a few seconds--many times we say to each other "what did he say?" "what was on the card?" "are they real?" and the "replay the last few seconds" button is invaluable.

I guess the general question is "why doesn't my TiVo play DVDs?" We're out of space in the entertainment cabinet--between the stereo, TiVo, cable box and VCR, many inches are occupied. It makes sense for TiVos to start subsuming DVD players and VCRs.

Yours in fantasy land,

--Nat

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Depends on your DVD Player...

ziggy on 2002-01-07T19:20:46

In particular, I want my DVD player to have the TiVo's ability to go back a few seconds--many times we say to each other "what did he say?"

This sounds like a lack of standardization issue, not a lack of feature issue. Our DVD player (the Sony mumble model) has the "instant replay" button on the remote that replays the last ~10 seconds of the movie. In fact, we use it constantly to ask "what did he just say?" :-)

The most invaluable use of the instant replay button was with Charleton Heston's cameo in the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes. :-)

Looks like this is a start

gnat on 2002-01-07T19:36:02

this was released at CES today. Up to 4 TVs sent digital data from cable/satellite, or from DVD/CD.

--Nat

Re:Looks like this is a start

pudge on 2002-01-07T20:00:02

Whoa, and it does FireWire for expandability ...

Mplayer

Matts on 2002-01-07T19:41:34

I use mplayer on Linux to play DivX's (yes, I'm a dirty rotten pirate, but let me tell you a studio isn't going to get my money if it pisses around releasing the Video 4 months before the DVD (Bridget Jones' Diary) or if they pull a DVD off the market for 9 months (Usual Suspects), so there!).

mplayer has the "skip 10 seconds forward/backward" option, just using the left/right cursor keys. And space-bar is pause. This makes it ideal for watching if you've got a large enough monitor to plug it into, and if you've got a remote control keyboard (which I don't but I'm considering), would be bliss.

DirecTiVoD

pudge on 2002-01-07T19:58:49

My RCA DVD player has a back button, which does something I wish the TiVo would do: it turns on closed captioning for the duration of the backed-up time! That is really cool. No more guessing at what was said, it's right there on the screen. :)

But yes, I have often thought it might be cool to "upload" all my DVDs to the TiVo. I just need a lot of storage space, right? Oh yeah, and a TiVo that can output DTS ...