EchoStar Europe announced has debuted what it considers to be the slimmest digital video recorder (DVR) in the world. The state-of-the-art case houses all the technology you’d expect from a high-end DVR including solid state recording and conditional access, and while measuring just 9mm in height, it is a fraction of the size of other DVRs found in the market today.

“We challenged our engineering team to use all their technical know-how to deliver a groundbreaking product that has the potential to be the star of IBC and demonstrate our technical leadership”, commented Rick Smith, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at EchoStar Europe. “Mercury is our concept car that is cosmetically innovative and fully functional, offering all the features that a pay TV operator requires”.

EchoStar engineers worked at length, scanning the micro electronics industry for the latest low profile components including video connectors, card reader and a solid state memory chip to support the DVR function. The current platform is configured for satellite reception; however, cable and IPTV are also supported as well as optional Wi-Fi – either on board or via a USB dongle – to provide Internet connectivity for delivering high-speed, two-way services such as Video-on-Demand.

“Designing a truly micro, yet fully featured digital video recorder provided an exciting engineering challenge”, commented Vice President of Engineering and Operations at EchoStar Europe Bob Wadey. “We had to radically change the way we do things in order to achieve the ultra slimline design. For example, we had to replace a standard Ethernet port with optional Wi-Fi as the connector breached our 9mm height target”.

Categories: Articles, In Home, PVR, STB