fig1 illustrates the underlying context of the operation of the present invention . timeline 130 is depicted illustrating a particular example from 8 : 00 to 10 : 00 . of course the times and durations of this example are for illustrative purposes only and any time or duration may be used . random access viewing position 100 represents the current location within the recorded buffer from which viewing is taking place . buffer storage 110 illustrates the use of a 30 - minute buffer and once again , this is for illustrative purposes only and any duration may be used . similarly , archive storage 120 illustrates archive storage of over two hours of recorded material . in the example of fig1 , assume the viewer wishes to time - shift their viewing by 15 minutes . with recorded material illustrated as gray - shaded , fig1 shows the case at 8 : 15 , whereby half of buffer storage 110 has been filled with recorded material from 8 : 00 to 8 : 15 . only half the buffer is filled in this example because this figure depicts the situation soon after present invention was initially turned on . once the buffer fills up it acts as a circular buffer , as described previously . the underlying context shown in fig1 corresponds with the example set forth in section 3 . 3 . as depicted for buffer storage 110 , within this buffer the user has complete vcr - like control such as rewind and fast - forward . so the viewer may begin playback of the 8 : 00 material and immediately has the capability to fast - forward up to the contents of the current buffer which in the illustrative example is 8 : 15 . archive storage 120 maintains an archived copy of all the recorded material . fig1 is used to illustrate the use of buffer storage 100 and it &# 39 ; s relationship to the current time . recording continues simultaneously during any of these operations , continuing at the position of the current real time as depicted in the figure . the unique functional advantages of the invention are shown in fig2 . this example depicts the situation at 9 : 00 . in this case , buffer storage 210 is now filled with material which was recorded from 8 : 30 until 9 : 00 and the viewer has full vcr - like control over this range of time . all components of this figure , timeline 230 random access viewing position 200 , buffer storage 210 , archive and storage 220 are functionally equivalent to the corresponding elements of fig1 . fig2 simply illustrates the conceptual use of the buffer storage at a later time than that of fig1 . also , the buffer storage and archive storage of both fig1 and 2 correspond directly to the storage in the block diagrams in fig3 and 4 . fig3 illustrates the operational overview of the preferred embodiment . analog input video source 300 is connected to capture / compression card 320 which includes capture / compression hardware 330 and decompression playback hardware 340 . storage input connection 340 illustrates the writing of the compressed program data to storage device 380 . storage device 380 corresponds to the aforementioned buffer storage and may also be used as archival storage . for playback , storage output connection 350 transfers data from storage device 380 to decompression / playback hardware 360 . during playback , via video out connection 310 , the program is transferred to a standard video device ( not shown ) such as a tv , monitor or vcr . recording direction arrow 370 is included to conceptually illustrate the use of storage 380 as a circular buffer as explained previously . fig4 depicts a block diagram of the preferred embodiment . housing 400 is an enclosure for the present invention , including necessary power supplies , casing , fans , buttons , power cord and connectors . these components are not depicted but are well - understood in the design and manufacture of consumer ( or professional - grade ) electronics . contained within this housing in addition to the aforementioned basic components are : cpu 530 , capture / display hardware 500 , compression / decompression hardware 480 , output display switch 470 , network interface 550 , i / o controller 570 , system ram 560 , system bus 510 , storage 580 , removable storage 590 , set - top - box switch 424 , tuner bypass switch 426 , capture bypass switch 460 , and input monitor switch 428 . also depicted but not included as part of the present embodiment are external components set - top box 410 , content provider 420 , television 430 , monitor 340 , vcr 450 , telecommunications connection 520 , telecommunications cloud 490 , workstation 595 and set - top box bypass switch 422 . content provider 420 comprises , without limitation , over - the - air television broadcasters , cable tv operators , satellite - feed providers and direct broadcast satellite ( dbs ) broadcasters . in some cases , the program material as made accessible to the user via set - top box 410 instead of directly from content provider 420 . set - top box 410 may be a common cable converter box or a digital video and user - interface box as used in upcoming cable and satellite services . the video format provided by both set - top box 410 and content provider 420 is most often a standard analog video signal and is routed to capture / display hardware 500 . however , in some cases a digital video signals is provided and therefore the capture ( analog - to - digital conversion ) ordinarily provided by capture / display hardware 500 is not needed . capture input switch 560 is provided for such a circumstance and the input digital video is routed directly to compressor / decompressor 480 . this switching may be automatic by the system , automatically controlled by the content provider or set - top box or it may be user - selectable . in the case of a analog video input signal , the program must first be converted to a digital format . capture / display hardware 500 is a video capture and playback card . alternatively , this may be implemented in a chipset form and integrated onto the main circuit board of the system . capture / display boards are well - known in the art . current examples include hardware mpeg capture / compression boards commonly used in computer systems . such boards often integrate the compression element of the present invention , compressor / decompressor 480 , into the same board for a full capture , compression , decompression and playback functionality . such components may be used in the present invention to implement both capture / display hardware 500 and compressor / decompressor 480 . alternatively , separate boards may be used . however , any of the capture , compression , decompression and display elements may be incorporated directly onto the main circuit board of the invention . the capture and compression of the incoming video program , or the automatic or user - selectable switching out of the capture element , are all managed under control of cpu 530 which is a conventional microprocessor . software running on cpu 530 manages the capture , compression and storage of the program . in doing so , it controls system bus 510 , to which all major components are connected . in this manner , cpu 530 controls the i / o controller , which in turn is used to operate storage 580 and removable storage 590 . storage 580 may be implemented by one or more digital storage devices for buffer storage and / or archive storage as discussed previously . system ram 560 is used as needed by the system for software execution and temporary data storage . the software controlling capture / display 500 and compressor / decompressor 480 may use this as buffer memory . in another embodiment , compressor / decompressor 480 may be eliminated entirely , with cpu 530 performing the compression / decompression operations in software , in which case compressor / decompressor 480 uses system ram 560 as buffer memory for such operations . in a similar embodiment , compressor / decompressor 480 may be eliminated with set - top box 410 performing compression / decompression . and in yet another embodiment , compressor / decompressor 480 and capture / display 500 may both be eliminated , with all of these functions being performed by set - top box 410 . storage 580 is implemented as any type of digital storage media . this includes , without limitation , internal or external versions of hard disk , optical disk , dvd , magnetic tape and semi - conductor storage . similar storage solutions may be implemented for removable media 590 . although only one storage device is depicted , more than one may be used . network interface 550 connects the device through network connection 520 to telecommunications cloud 490 . telecommunications “ cloud ” is a term commonly used to denote a myriad of inter - connected telecommunications connection types and interfaces . it is essentially a superset of the internet and may include networked computers , telephone lines , and other telephone company equipment such as satellite , microwave and so forth . the portion of telecommunications cloud 490 to which the present invention is connected determines the type of network connection 520 and network interface 550 . for example , in a home - based embodiment , network interface 550 is likely to be a modem and telecommunications connection would be a telephone line . other examples include , without limitation , cable modems and cable networks , computer networks such as ethernet and their associated interfaces , and satellite modems . the present invention is operatively connected through telecommunications cloud 490 to workstation 595 . workstation 595 is any type of computer used by advertisers , broadcasters , ratings companies and so forth to receive indirect feedback from viewers regarding viewing preferences . data about the user &# 39 ; s viewing habits and use of the invention may , at the user &# 39 ; s option , be transmitted via network interface 550 through the aforementioned operative link to workstation 595 . many options are available for implementing the simultaneous read and write of storage 580 . commonly - available hard disks may be used , depending on the data rate of the compressed data stream of the capture / compression hardware . for example , if mpeg - 1 video is used , one stream requires a data rate of 1 . 5 mbits / sec . therefore , to simultaneously read and write , storage 580 must be capable of sufficient throughput for one write stream and one read stream , totaling 3 . 0 mbits / sec . such input / output speeds are well within the realm of current hard drives , which can sustain data rates of over 10 mbits / sec . other embodiments can use other solutions for storage 580 . for example , some embodiments will record many channels simultaneously and may even play back more than one channel simultaneously to provide a ‘ picture - in - picture ’ feature similar to current televisions . the total required bandwidth may exceed the sustained data rates for conventional disk drives . in such a case raid ( redundant array of inexpensive disks ) systems may be used . these systems are disk array subsystems which use several disk drives in parallel to achieve faster overall throughput . similarly , the present invention may simply incorporate individual drives for each tuned channel . ram and other high - bandwidth storage solutions may be also be used . the ultimate use of the recorded data is in the playback . as the user views programming through all the aforementioned features , the data is read from storage 580 or from removable media 590 . this compressed data is routed to compressor / decompressor 480 for decompression under control of cpu 530 . in some embodiments , the data may be in an uncompressed form and compressor / decompressor 480 may be bypassed . once the data is uncompressed , it may be routed directly to monitor 440 for viewing on a digital monitor such as those used by computer systems . set - top box 410 and / or television 430 may also be capable of accepting digital data in either a compressed or uncompressed form and consequently data may be routed there directly . in the preferred embodiment , the uncompressed digital data is routed to capture / display 500 for conversion to an ntsc , pal , secam or other standard video signal for viewing on one or more of the display devices , tv 430 , monitor 440 or vcr 450 .