I reside in Northern California now, but I moved there for college in 1981 and then subsequently found employment in Silicon Valley; however, I grew up in Los Angeles where I rooted for Los Angeles-based sports teams. I am a life-long fan of the true L.A. teams—the purple and gold basketball team, the baseball team that plays in Chavez Ravine, the original Los Angeles football team, and the hockey team that is royalty. If there are other L.A.-based teams, I wouldn’t know.
The 2020 sports season was surreal. Games were cancelled or postponed, and when teams did play, competition occured in a “bubble” environment with no fans due to the pandemic. But through it all, my Los Angeles baseball and basketball teams came through and lifted the 2020 championship trophies. Things are slowly returning to normal, and it’s nice to see that teams are allowing a limited number of fans into the arenas and stadiums. Games were somewhat sterile without the rabid home team fans creating havoc for the visiting team, thus home team advantage.
There is definitely a rivalry between Northern and Southern California, and the chants of “Beat L.A.” are all too common in Northern California. They make watching my L.A. teams in a sports bar a little irritating. And with the restrictions on indoor dining and bars in 2020, I didn’t get a chance to watch any games in public. Instead, like many other sports enthusiasts, I subscribed to premium sports channel packages from my cable company. The best part was that I could follow all of my L.A. teams in the comfort of my home and without the very determined “Beat L.A.” fans yelling in my ear.
Given that my family life schedule doesn’t always correspond to game time, I have to record most games and watch them at a later time. Through technology, recording sporting events is as simple as a couple of clicks. Gone are the days of “video-taping”: having to find a blank tape, setting up the timer, pre-selecting the correct channel, and hoping that the game doesn’t go into overtime because the tape will run out. Looking back at it now, “video-taping” really was an archaic process.
Presently, most cable or satellite TV companies offer one of two recording choices. One option is a cable box with built in DVR (Digital Video Recording), and the other is off-site recording. Both options use HDDs for storage because HDDs offer the best performing low-cost storage solution. In the case of a cable box with built in DVR, the HDD capacity is typically a 1TB, 2TB, or 3TB HDD and can record more than 150 hours of HD content. The off-site recording limit is set by the cable company, since the programs are usually recorded on high-capacity Nearline HDD storage racks. According to TRENDFOCUS’ data, over 17 million HDDs (plus an unknown number of Nearline HDDs) shipped in 2020 for DVR application¹.
DT01-V Series
Toshiba has been active in the HDD space for many years. And Toshiba’s product portfolio includes HDDs specifically designed for DVR applications. Toshiba’s DT01-V series is perfectly suited for video applications such as DVR, STB (Set Top Box), and NVR (Network Video Recorder). This low profile 3.5” HDD offers capacities ranging from 500GB to 3TB and spins at 5,940rpm for lower power consumption and quieter acoustics. For the cable companies’ high-density recording racks, Toshiba’s MG series of Nearline HDDs achieve the cable companies’ key use requirement—high-capacity. The MG-09 HDD is an 18TB Nearline HDD utilizing Toshiba’s FC-MAMR (Flux Control Microwave-assisted Magnetic Recording) technology in an industry-leading 9-disk helium sealed design with lower operational power profile.
Some things change—such as moving from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley—but for true sports fans, some things don’t or won’t change, such as cheering on your “home” team. My family and I are deeply rooted in Silicon Valley now, but I still have a lot of “L.A.” in me. My passion for Los Angeles sports teams is one that will never waver, and I will continue to watch my pre-recorded games on my DVR and will continue to root, root for the home (L.A.) team.
1 Source: HDD shipment data search, TRENDFOCUS, Inc. (https://trendfocus.com) (Subscription required)
Toshiba defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 230 = 1,073,741,824 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, such as Microsoft Operating System and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.