CES Coverage: CONCEPT DVR Drives from Seagate

[jcrandall]

Seagate has been making excellent DVR drives for a while now (quieter, lower power consumption, designed to run 24 hours / day).

To date, though, the only option was an internal drive used by manufactures or end users in a home theater PC. To use it with our DirecTV or Dish DVRs, we had to put them in a aftermarket case.

Seagate is finalizing development of a drive in their case, which will be sold especially for DirecTV & Dish DVR storage expansion.

They are also planning to market these drives through the service provider directly, not through retail. Sizes planned are 500gb, 750gb, and 1TB.

The drive case will have a lighted logo on the front, which can be dimmed or turned off using a switch on the back. The interface will be eSATA or USB2 depending on the service provider.
It has a variable speed fan on the bottom that blows air out the top thorugh tiny holes. They had one powered on display running on a vip722 DVR, and it was very quiet, even with my ear right against it.

I know many D* users are using Free Agent Pro drives as an external drive for the HR20s. I have two of them myself.

I'm excited about this product launch posibility. I just hope if the manufactures are not high on selling them, that Seagate decides to offer it on retail after all.

The rep said they would plan to continue offering bigger drives as the one-drive capacity continues to grow.

For anyone needing a drive now, the Free Agent Pro drives are now available in 1TB capacity as well, and offers USB2 or eSATA options as well.

No word on pricing, expected to be available in Q2.

[John Kotches]

One issue with the single spindle is that if it dies, so does your online storage

I'd like to see something like the ReadyNAS duo get a USB interface.

Cheers,

[charper1]

I am ready for these DVR and CE guys to get on-board with SATA

[Foxbat]

No offense, but I felt like I was reading a thread from the 2007 CES coverage instead of 2008's. "To date...the only option was an internal drive used by manufactures [sic]...To use it with our DirecTV or Dish DVRs, we had to put them in a aftermarket case." Huh??? What about the Seagate FreeAgent drive I have connected to my 622??? I know many have "rolled their own", but it's not like we had to.

This is exactly what us Dish DVR owners were afraid of, Dish-branded external storage. I can $ee Di$h'$ price$ now... $200 for a 500 GB, about double the street price of other enclosures. But I could be wrong...

[jcrandall]

Sorry, I meant to say if you wanted the DVR designed hard drive you had to use an internal with an aftermarket enclosure. The manufactures have never sold these in an external solution before. That is why I was excited about the product.

The Free Agent Pro drives work ok for DVRs, I have two of them.
The design is not very good (vertical and akward) the light is not easy to turn off (need to use a software config tool) and there is no fan (they get hot running 24/7).

I was excited about Seagate offering this new solution as an improvement to the Free Agent solution, and it uses their better drives designed for DVRs.

I don't understand all the differences, but these are the drives they will feature in the new product:

Seagate Technology - DB35 Series™ Hard Drive Family

They should be an improvement over a traditional desktop hard drive.

[Foxbat]

masterdeals: Okay, I see what you're saying, these are the drives designed specifically for DVR duty and the FreeAgent drives are designed for PC duties. I just hope the price premium for these specialized HDDs isn't too high.

Sorry about the 'tude... Thanks for reporting on this!