THE VCR OF THE FUTURE IS HERE (7-2004)

Back in the late 1970s, the hot new electronic device that 
everyone just had to have was the video tape recorder. You 
could use it to time shift your favorite TV programs, so 
you could watch them at a more convenient time. If you were 
recording the program while watching it, you could use the 
handy little wired remote that had nothing but a pause 
switch on it to zap commercials.

The units weren’t cheap. They cost almost $1,000. And that 
was even before you could watch home videos on them, 
because camcorders had not been invented yet.

But like most electronic gadgets, prices began to fall as 
more and more features were added, such as longer recording 
times, higher quality, and wireless remotes. Today, base 
models (which have many more features than the premium 
models of the late ‘70s) cost about $39. 

Today’s must-have video gadget is the PVR, or personal 
video recorder. The big difference in technology is that it 
uses a computer hard drive to store programs digitally 
instead of using bulky video tape cartridges to store 
analog pictures and sound.

The PVR systems, of which Tivo was the pioneer, have 
outclassed the old video tape recorder to such an extent 
that they are routinely used for video surveillance by 
companies of all sizes. And several police departments are 
testing them with great success in their patrol cars.

Police departments in Tyler, TX and Yakima, WA have been 
using the devices in their patrol cars for awhile now. The 
advantages over video tape are many. Video tapes are bulky 
and take lots of space to store. They also are not 
searchable, meaning a clerk has to fast-forward through 
hours of video tape to find the needed event.

Images and sound from the new digital recorders can be 
downloaded to the police department’s main computer in a 
matter of minutes. Scenes can be tagged for evidence and 
can be called up by random access search at any time. 
Scenes not marked as evidence are automatically deleted 
after 90 days.

Picture and audio quality are also far superior to that of 
analog video tape, making it easier to identify suspects on 
the video. And because the police department has to pay for 
fewer man hours to maintain the video archive and to search 
for needed footage, and because it is no longer necessary 
to keep libraries of video tape in extra rooms, the overall 
cost to equip the patrol cars with digital video recorders 
is less than standard video tape devices.

One of the biggest selling points for PVRs, for personal 
users and well as police departments, is that you can start 
recording an event even before you press the record button. 
If a police officer eyes a suspicious character running 
away from a convenience store, for example, he would set 
his unit to record. But the unit would actually catch 
everything that happened from one minute prior to the point 
when the record button was pushed. 

That’s because the PVR’s hard drive is constantly recording 
everything. When you push the record button, it’s a signal 
to the machine to “save this from now on.” Otherwise, after 
an hour or so, it would start looping over what had been 
recorded.

At home, if you walk in and turn on the tube half way 
through your favorite TV show, you can simply press the 
rewind button and go back to the beginning of the show, 
even though you didn’t specifically set it to record. And 
if you decide you want to keep a copy of that episode, you 
can set it to record from the beginning of the show, even 
though the show is half over.

Many cable TV companies and the two major satellite systems 
offer a PVR device to their subscribers. And, although they 
are not nearly as inexpensive as a traditional video 
recorder, they are also a far cry cheaper than the $1,000 
people were shelling out in 1978 for a VCR.