fan noise Harddisk recorders?

[Lucien]

In latest sound and vision I saw this quote in DVR-810H review:

"First, as in every hard-disk recorder, the DVR-810H's hard drive is always on, and in q quiet room you can hear it whirring away".

Is this a general problem with HDD recorders? Although probably non-HDD recorders may also have a fan that makes noise. Anyone bad experiences with this?

[paulw]

Interesting question.. I would have thought that the HD would spin down after awhile as they do on PCs when the power option is set..

[nezza_42]

If theHDD recorder has a "time slip" fuction then the drive will be continually running to record/relay live the picture.

This is how Tivo works, I'm assuming that other HDD recorders work same/similar.

[TeeeRex]

I've got the Panny E85 and both the HDD and Fan are wisper quite. The HDD does indeed sleep after a peroid of inactivity but you cannot audably tell that it has as it's so quite even when powered up. The fan is on all the time the unit is on but again extremly quite but in a dead silient room you can tell the unit is on. I would say this is no worse then a DVD player spinning a DVD Rom.

I think the only way you are going to get complete 'silence' is with some sort of solid state storage and therefore no mechanical or moving parts - which for the capacities we need for Video is still some way off ...