When Your Mom Calls in Prime TimeI

t happens all the time: You’re totally caught up in the season finale of your favorite show, the tension’s been building for months, the final moment comes and your mother calls to remind you that it’s grandma’s birthday tomorrow, and your Uncle Ahmed wants you to help him choose a present, and should she order sandwiches from

By the time her voice trails off, the credits are rolling. Thanks, Mom — 22 cumulative hours of devoted television viewing, down the drain. If only you could somehow stop the TV broadcast long enough to deal with life’s little distractions.

With Showtime’s new Showbox DVR, you can do just that. A DVR (digital video recorder) records live television signals and stores them on its hard drive. The box allows you to pause, rewind and play back live TV on the spot — or hours or days later (just like a DVD), with no loss of video quality.

It’s a snap to peruse recorded content quickly, fast-forwarding past the commercials, or watch in slow motion to see if the ref really did blow that foul. Choose which shows to record by selecting from the integrated program guide or by setting specific times, dates and channels.

Though DVRs have been available elsewhere for several years, the Showbox will be the first supported DVR system to be released in Egypt. It is an integrated DVR-satellite decoder, so you won’t need a separate device.

The Showbox allows for different output to two separate televisions, with optional parental controls for one or both sets. This means that while the kids are watching Teletubbies, mom and dad can enjoy Zombie Cannibals’ Revenge III in the other room.

The Showbox promises to record up to 40 hours of content and can automatically record shows if you input your favorite series, actors, directors, genres and so forth. It will also connect to a VCR, so you can save programs.

The Showbox will support free-to-air Nilesat channels, in addition to Showtime’s 50 channels, mostly oriented towards movies, sports and western programming. Showtime’s other services, including its Home Cinema on-demand movie service, will also be accessible.

Lacking the elegant simplicity of the TiVo DVR’s classic peanut-shaped controller, the Showbox remote is a fairly standard satellite remote — a confusing array of brightly colored buttons with dubious functions. The one exception is the video-playback controls, which protrude from the face of the remote, making them much easier to use. The blocky on-screen interface, difficult to read from a distance, will also be familiar to satellite subscribers, but such failings will likely be of no concern to customers upgrading their service.

At press time, Showtime was unable to quote a definite price or release date for the Showbox, but was aiming for a LE 2,000–3,000 unit to be available by the beginning of Ramadan (September 23 or 24). See www.showtimearabia.com/showbox for more information.

Media players vary widely in price, from LE 250 to more than ten times that, so what do you really need? Do you want a glorified CD player or more storage space than you have on your PC? Or do you just want a flashy new toy? There are plenty of technical differences between these devices, but here are some of the most crucial:

Audio formats: MP3, WMA and Apple’s proprietary AAC are all ‘lossy’ formats, meaning some sound quality is lost in the file compression process. The music will usually sound fine if it’s encoded at a minimum of 160 kilobytes per second (kbps), which sets a good balance between size and sound quality. But more exacting listeners will encode their music in a ‘lossless’ format such as VMA Lossless or Apple Lossless, providing CD-quality sound at the cost of drive space. WMA and AAC also come in ‘protected’ formats, with files that are usually purchased from a subscription service like iTunes Music Store or Napster To Go. Protected files will only play on devices which recognize the subscription service and won’t play on more than one device.

Size: The standard calculus is 1MB of storage space equals one minute of MP3 playback, with songs averaging around four minutes long. 128MB will hold around two CDs worth of music, or 32 songs, while 30GB will hold 7,500 songs — around 500 albums.

Storage: Data is either stored on a small hard disk like on a PC or in flash memory such as is found on USB memory sticks. Although flash memory is becoming cheaper, it is still much more expensive compared to hard disk storage. The advantage is that flash memory has no moving parts, so it’s less likely to break if you step on your player. Spinning hard disks also create a buzz that is sometimes audible when listening to music or recording with a built-in microphone.

T he fifth generation (5G) of Apple’s iconic hard-disk MP3 player offers 50 percent (or 200 percent for the 60GB model) more storage space than its forebears — at the same time that it is smaller and lighter, but it was the full-color video that really created a stir on its release last year.

Apple’s made a lot of bank on the sleek style of its iPods, which are easy to use and interface seamlessly with its own iTunes software (for Macintosh and PCs), but the company has not maintained its technical edge.

The iPod is an MP3 player with video added. The screen is bright and sharp, but at 64 millimeter and with no built-in speakers, the iPod is a one-person party. Though you can buy music videos and TV shows through iTunes, the program won’t convert third-party video to iPod, so you’ll have to do that tedious chore yourself.

With the 5G iPod’s vulnerability to scratches, lack of FM tuner, poor battery life and hefty price tag, maybe you should wait for the 6G.

RadioShack (Tel: 19419) has the 30GB iPod for LE 2,750. 30 and 60GB units available at Best Buy (Tel: +2 (02) 762-8391/2) (out of stock at press time at Best Buy).

T wice as thick and more than twice as heavy, the A2 is by no means as sexy as the video iPod, but the large display coupled with built-in speakers means you can watch with a friend (or two).

Its bundled software (PC only) converts files smoothly into the proper formats, although it supports a decent array of video and audio formats natively. It will also record video files directly from a TV or camcorder.

You can’t save playlists — a feature common in much lower-end devices — and the FM tuner is prone to interference and may not pick up distant stations.

The control stick is too sensitive to be very accurate, but the real stumbling block is probably the price.

W hile the iPod’s display takes up less than half its front to make room for its controls, the U10’s display plate is itself the main interface: Pressing on the outside edges replaces the four-button control; power, volume and screen orientation buttons can be found on the top.

The audio playback is top-notch, the built-in mic records quite well (no hard disk means no background whine), as does the FM tuner, which will pick up weak signals.

The U10 doesn’t ship with the video conversion software — a shame since the device only plays one video format — but freely available iriver software will convert most files. With a 15-frame-per-second video display rate, watching long videos may cause eye strain.

Video games are also available, a rare feature in a device of this type.

RadioShack carries the U10 2GB for LE 2,200.

I f a memory stick had a headphone jack and cost way too much, it would be the iriver T20. This solid, low-to-mid-range player plugs directly into your PC by way of a retractable USB connector. The design is pared-down, the buttons are cramped and hard to manipulate, and the menus are hard to maneuver, but iriver did manage to cram in a line-in jack so you can hook up an external microphone.

The sound quality is not bad, but if you use the SRS audio enhancement you won’t get anywhere near the 14 hours of playback iriver claims for the device. You could buy two brand-X ‘throw-away’ players from the electronic shop on the corner for the money you’d spend on this similarly featured player, and a built-in USB connector with a cheap rubber cover (which won’t do much good keeping out grit during an Egyptian dust storm) is not really enough reason to cough up the extra money.

It doesn’t have the flash of a Nano, but the Sansa m200 series has all the same storage and audio capabilities at about half the price. The 1GB m240, which seems to be the only locally available model in the m200 line, does not have a color (or even backlit) display to match its competitor, but it does have decent audio and a built-in mic, transfers files easily and runs a good 19 hours on its AAA battery. It fits comfortably in the hand and is surprisingly light.

So Apple releases a flash-based iPod, prices it competitively and gives it a good portion of the features sported by the competition. Oh, and it’s smaller than two sugar packets stacked on each other. Really.

Sure, it’s not technically any better, it’s missing key features like an FM tuner or support for recording, has a disappointing battery life, but good God, it’s so small!

Yeah, Apple may not think that much of us, but the Nano does have a nice display for such a small screen, great audio and an intuitive menu when moving between tracks. It’s not a bad machine by any means, but it’s quite a premium to pay for a fancy package.

A good choice if you plan on sky diving or crocodile wrestling to a soundtrack. It’s bulky compared to similar players, but the T10 is sturdy and attaches easily with a built-in belt clip, which frees the hands without requiring a pocket or an armband (though it does come bundled with one).

It’s designed to be used in the left hand, and can be difficult to operate in the right.

Sound quality is very good, and the AA battery will give you upwards of 45 hours of playback.

You can capitalize on the FM tuner’s excellent reception by recording songs from the radio. There’s no line in, and the built-in mic will pick up interference if you hold the player while recording; this is aggravated by the fact that the T10 will not lay flat on a desk.