Originally Posted by cjgall You end up paying 500-800 euro's extra for a hard disk that costs around 70-120 euro's, crazy when you consider that the added Hard Drive requires no hardware changes, only software changes. |
I think I am guilty of turning this discussion away from DTT and towards PVR, so maybe it is now in the wrong forum. But I will continue anyway with apologies.
Anyway I was looking at the Philips Semiconductors DVD writer reference design based on the PNX7100 MPEG codec (on the Philips Emiconductors website). As far as I can see, this chip isn't capable of controlling a disk drive on its own. If you want to combine a DVD writer with disk drive, you need an extra chip the PNX1700 multimedia processor which can interface to a PCI bus. I guess that adding another large VLSI chip and supporting components plus the disk drive will add several hundred euros to the price of the finished box by the time it gets to the shops.
Still if I was a designer of DVD chips, I would be looking at putting a hard disk interface function on the MPEG codec chip. That way the cost penalty for the combined DVD writer/hard disk drive would only be a little more than the price of DVD writer plus a hard disk.