A framework for calculating fundamental DVR performance limits

New systems have emerged that deliver hundreds of megabits per second of video to the home. This, coupled with deeper penetration of in-home video networking, will create demand for digital video recorder (DVR) performance to scale up dramatically as well. This paper outlines a simple analytic framework that can be used to estimate the performance of any DVR system, using either hard-disk drives or solid-state disk drives, in terms of both megabits per second and number of video streams. The framework also highlights the extent to which the maximum performance is constrained by the disk, by the host hardware, or by the host software.