If you have been wondering what those one terabyte hard drives we are going to see next year are for, the answer is undoubtedly high definition television.

AMD has announced the ATI TV Wonder digital cable tuner, which allows you to watch and record premium HD digital cable content, such as HD ESPN and HD HBO, on your PC.

Yes, yes, there is not a lot of HD stuff around at the moment but it will come. And every hour you record will take eight gigs on your hard disk so the new 1,000 gig hard disk — as in one terabyte — suddenly does not look that large.

The ATI TV Wonder digital cable tuner turns a PC into a personal video recorder (PVR) with Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center menus and interfaces. It will be available from the end of next month and you can see it being standard kit on desktop PCs which will also be sold as home entertainment centers. On the hard disk — one terabyte will do as a start — you can save every HD television program as it is broadcast.

Will it all work seamlessly?

Not at first. It never does. But within a year or so keeping HD video on a hard disk and accessing as and when it is needed will be so easy and commonplace we will wonder what the fuss was about.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 3:09 am under Internet, Vista.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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