I archive some programs for repeated viewing.

I archive to free up space on my HDD.

I archive for friends who missed an episode – usually because their PVR hit a glitch. Unfortunately, no PVR ever gives total reliability. My old Humax 9200 eventually just locked up, never to re-awaken. In contrast, my old VHS recorders never missed a program. Such was the reliability of their, albeit simpler, software (it just chewed a tape occaisionally!).

I archive for viewing elswhere – Would that be ‘geoshifting’? – and this is the thing I would most like my PVR to be able to do. Transfer recordings to another storage device (i.e. HDD) at the push of a button, so I can take them with me to watch somewhere else.

Presumably, program makers create content for peple to view.

If they (the broadcasters) reduce and remove the ability for archiving for the small percentage of people who appear to be interested in this facility, then they are actually going to reduce their audience. Or, am I missing something here?

Ocassionally I take something off the Toppy for the wife as she uses it for lessons she teaches at school. There is a lot of stuff for her subject that is shown on TV but can’t be bought commerically.

I’ve got a Sony HDTV with streaming in it and yes its useful to catch up on a series that maybe you missed the first episode of on the Toppy, and the LoveFilm film trailers are good, but until Broadband is ubiquitous and at a very good speed, then its still a novelty. I’ve got 6mbit BB and LoveFilm stutters when playing the HD content although thats probably more down to the content delivery network than my connection. BBC iPlayer is fine though and they are getting better at keeping the prime time shows for longer periods, but with a PVR, I can keep it for as long as I like and watch it when I want.

That all said, I didn’t get the point of a PVR until I got my first TIVO. Now it would be a pain to live without one. No doubt the same will be said in a few years time for streaming content.

Every large step up in PVR storage size seems to makes people feel that they’ll never use that much space, but realistically I think many will expand to fill the space, especially with HD. This makes the need to archive and free up space more pressing on HD-PVRs, and the lack of this ability is another factor holding me back from moving up from my 5810.

As for alternatives: streaming from content providers might replace my needs, but would only be acceptable if content were available long term in high enough quality.

Even neater than that would be for the PVR to be able to utilise tuners elsewhere in the house, and integrate the remote tuners TV guide into it’s own TV guide – this would make it trivial to add, say, DVB-T3, Freesat and Virgin Media recording capabilities to a DVB-T2 box with the interactive services appearing on “interactive” menu, ditto “on demand” content.

The biggest loss in my opinion would be for those of us which like watching programmes never released on DVD in the same form again (e.g Formula 1 Grand Prix) and also when you have a familiar member appear, in a positive light, on a TV programme (e.g. some of my younger brothers football stuff featured on Granada Reports back in the 1990s).

It’s not a feature I use all the time, but the time I do find it useful is if we’re going on holiday where there’s no standard TV to speak of. It’s nice to be able to take lots of the kids’ favourite TV with us.. throw-away stuff we’ve never dream of getting on DVD.

So for us it’s about taking some programs we want to watch with us to places where we can’t access standard broadcasts or for in the car as we travel somewhere.

It’d be nice if there was a more consumer-friendly way of squirting the programs to devices, like over to an iPad, but I’m a geek so I’m happy to do this myself for the 1 or 2 times a year we need to do it.