InterVideo WinDVR

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InterVideo WinDVR is a commercial digital video recorder (DVR) software package for Windows operating systems. It allows PCs to work as a TV set and a DVR at the same time, using a hardware-based TV turner card. It has an integrated electronic program guide (EPG) that is updated via the Internet. Its direct competition came from CyberLink PowerVCR. [1]

A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to disk recording, portable media players and TV gateways with recording capability, and digital camcorders. Personal computers are often connected to video capture devices and used as DVRs; in such cases the application software used to record video is an integral part of the DVR. Many DVRs are classified as consumer electronic devices; such devices may alternatively be referred to as personal video recorders (PVRs), particularly in Canada.

Microsoft Windows is a group of several graphical operating system families, all of which are developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Windows families include Windows NT and Windows Embedded; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone.

Personal computer Computer intended for use by an individual person

A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large costly minicomputer and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers.

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In 2003 InterVideo posted a replacement product named WinDVD Recorder 4.5, offering discounts to the users by upgrading from WinDVR 3 or WinDVD Player 4. [2] However, WinDVD Recorder is not compatible with Windows 98SE/ME (only 2000/XP is supported), this is the reason why WinDVR continued being sold, although without any further updates.

In 2006, InterVideo, the creator of WinDVD Recorder, was acquired by Corel Corporation. [3] WinDVD Recorder has been discontinued, [4] and no direct replacement has been announced. The last WinDVD Recorder version was 5.2.

Features

The application can convert video from VHS tapes to DVD or video CD, and can capture screen shots from a program and save them as a bitmap image to a hard disk or other storage medium.

DVD Optical disc

DVD is a digital optical disc storage format invented and developed in 1995. The medium can store any kind of digital data and is widely used for software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions.

The EPG works with Decisionmark's TitanTV in the United States, Fast TV in Europe, and Sony IEPG in Japan.

It supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, NTSC and PAL VCD, SVCD, and DVD formats.

MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) possible.

MPEG-2 standard for the generic coding of moving pictures

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission bandwidth. While MPEG-2 is not as efficient as newer standards such as H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC, backwards compatibility with existing hardware and software means it is still widely used, for example in over-the-air digital television broadcasting and in the DVD-Video standard.

NTSC analog television system

NTSC, named after the National Television System Committee, is the analog television color system that was used in North America from 1954 and until digital conversion, was used in most of the Americas ; Myanmar; South Korea; Taiwan; Philippines; Japan; and some Pacific island nations and territories.

The program displays video thumbnails of 16 channels at once so you can scan what's on at a glance.

Thumbnail reduced-size versions of pictures or videos

Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-organizing programs normally use thumbnails, as do most modern operating systems or desktop environments, such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, KDE (Linux) and GNOME (Linux). On web pages, they also avoid the need to download larger files unnecessarily.

The time-shifting feature allows pausing of live TV, and creation of instant replay, or fast-forward through commercials with InterVideo Home Theater.

The software also includes support for Teletext, a television information service in Europe.

WinDVD Recorder also includes the same functions of the product WinDVD Player on which it is based: battery life extender, hyper-threading technology, Movie Encyclopedia, aspect ratio correction, time-stretching, DivX support, playlist creation, preset display settings, and PAL TruSpeed. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

TiVo is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by TiVo Corporation and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList" searches which allow the user to find and record shows that match their interests by title, actor, director, category, or keyword. TiVo also provides a range of features when the TiVo DVR is connected to a home network, including film and television show downloads, advanced search, personal photo viewing, music offerings, and online scheduling.

VHS Consumer-level analog video tape recording and cassette form factor standard

VHS is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes. Developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) in the early 1970s, it was released in Japan on September 9, 1976 and in the United States on August 23, 1977.

S-VHS VHS improvement

S-VHS (スーパー・ヴィエイチエス), the common initialism for Super VHS, is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level video recording. Victor Company of Japan introduced S-VHS in Japan in April 1987 with their JVC-branded HR-S7000 VCR, and in certain overseas markets soon afterward.

DVD player device playing DVD discs

A DVD player is a device that plays DVD discs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to watch the DVD content, which could be a movie, a recorded TV show, or other content.

WinDVD

WinDVD is a commercial video player and music player software for Microsoft Windows. It enables the viewing of DVD-Video movies on the user's PC. DVD-Video backups stored on hard disk can also be played. The player can also be used to play videos and audio/music files in other formats encoded with different codecs, for instance DivX, Xvid, Windows Media Video video and MP3 and AAC audio. Newer versions also support full Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD playback with menus, with CPRM DRM support.

Hauppauge Computer Works company

Hauppauge Computer Works is a US manufacturer and marketer of electronic video hardware for personal computers. Although it is most widely known for its WinTV line of TV tuner cards for PCs, Hauppauge also produces personal video recorders, digital video editors, digital media players, hybrid video recorders and digital television products for both Windows and Mac. The company is named after the hamlet of Hauppauge, New York, in which it is based.

A DVD recorder is an optical disc recorder that uses optical disc recording technologies to digitally record analog or digital signals onto blank writable DVD media. Such devices are available as either installable drives for computers or as standalone components for use in television studios or home theater systems.

D-VHS digital video recording format

D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in 1998, It uses the same physical cassette format and recording mechanism as S-VHS, and is capable of recording and displaying both standard-definition and high-definition content. The content data format is in MPEG transport stream, the same data format used for most digital television applications. The format was introduced in 1998.

Electronic program guide

Electronic program guides (EPGs) and interactive program guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information for current and upcoming broadcast programming. Some guides also feature backward scrolling to promote their catch up content. They are commonly known as guides or TV guides.

SageTV

SageTV Media Center, now open source, was a proprietary, commercial DVR and HTPC software for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It requires that the host computer have a hardware-based TV tuner card. The SageTV software has an integrated Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) that is updated via the Internet. The program provides a television interface for DVR, music, and photos on Windows and Linux. SageTV Media Center typically records in standard MPEG2, making it possible to transfer recordings to laptops or other devices. It also has a built-in conversion feature to transcode files into other formats compatible with iPod, PSP, cell phones and other portable devices.

ShowShifter, now obsolete, was a proprietary, commercial digital video recorder (DVR) and home theater PC (HTPC) software for Windows.

The Nextcom R5000-HD is a popular Windows-based system for digitally capturing HD (high-definition) and SD (standard-definition) TV content from satellite TV and cable TV sources. A modification is required to the set-top box, giving it a USB 2.0 output that is connected to a PC. The digital video recorder (DVR) and companion personal video recorder (PVR) software runs on any Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10 system and can record just about any content to hard disk or D-VHS tape. Programming can be encoded in MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 type AVC/H.264 formats. MPEG transport streams compliant with the ISO 13818-1 specification are created.

TiVo digital video recorders encompass a number of digital video recorder (DVR) models that TiVo Corporation designed. Features may vary, but a common feature is that all of the units listed here require TiVo service and use its operating system.

This is a comparison of digital video recorder (DVR), also known as personal video recorder (PVR), software packages. Note: this is may be considered a comparison of DVB software, not all listed packages have recording capabilities.

GB-PVR

GB-PVR was a PVR application, running on Microsoft Windows, whose main function was scheduling TV recordings and playing back live TV. GB-PVR is no longer under active development and has been superseded by NextPVR, also known as nPVR.

Monsoon Multimedia was a company that manufactured, developed and sold video streaming and place-shifting devices that allowed consumers to view and control live television on PCs connected to a local (home) network or remotely from a broadband-connected PC or mobile phone.

Videocassette recorder

A videocassette recorder, VCR, or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recording. Use of a VCR to record a television program to play back at a more convenient time is commonly referred to as timeshifting. VCRs can also play back prerecorded tapes. In the 1980s and 1990s, prerecorded videotapes were widely available for purchase and rental, and blank tapes were sold to make recordings.

AVCREC is a format for recording and playback of high definition video in BDAV format using conventional DVD recordable discs as recording media. Presently AVCREC is tightly integrated with ISDB broadcast standard and is not marketed outside Japan.

TV gateway

A TV gateway is a television headend to a network UPnP router that receives live digital video broadcast (DVB) MPEG transport streams (channels) from terrestrial aerials, satellite dishes, or cable feeds and converts them into IP streams for distribution over an IP network.

References

  1. ↑ PC Video Recording Article by Douglas Dixon (2001)
  2. ↑ Discounts by upgrading from WinDVR
  3. ↑ Corel Corporation Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire InterVideo
  4. ↑ Corel page regarding WinDVD Recorder
  5. ↑ WinDVD Recorder Old webpage backup in The WayBack Machine
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