Author Topic: Best DVR option? (Read 781 times)

Skuzzy · « **Reply #15 on:** December 20, 2006, 09:06:27 PM »

The HD DVR from DiSH has an Ethernet port on it. However, they have not said exactly what they intend to do with it yet, but it is initialized at power up.

I also like the HD/DVR system from DiSH.

The only downside I have with DiSH and thier PVR's is you cannot replace the HD in it. You have to send the unit in if the HD fails and they put the same thing back in. I would really like to increase the capacity of the HD.

ByeBye · « **Reply #16 on:** December 20, 2006, 09:07:04 PM »

holy crap Skuzzy, go to bed!

Shaky · « **Reply #17 on:** December 20, 2006, 09:32:16 PM »

Just went HD with comcast and picked up their HD-DVR box. Damn thing has more access ports than my audio system...dual firewire, HDMI, USB, Ethernet, along with the standard optical, component videao and audio jacks. Dunno if the firewire jacks are enabled tho.

Two tuners are nice too, letting me watch on channel ad record another, or record 2 channels, swapping back and forth to watch without interrupting recording.

Drive size seems a bit small, tho..and I've just started playing with it. I envision it to just record shows I miss until I get a chance to see them, and am not planning on using it for long trm storage. Comcast plans to add box supported picture in picture in the future, eaning even those sets that don't have PiP would be able to use it.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #18 on:** December 20, 2006, 10:34:00 PM »

Yeah, the DiSH HD PVR has PIP, and it can record two non-HD broadcasts, while you watch an HD broadcast, or it can record two of any broadcast while you switch between them or watch something you already have stored.
Sounds like the boxes are similar.

bj229r · « **Reply #19 on:** December 20, 2006, 11:06:36 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
The HD DVR from DiSH has an Ethernet port on it. However, they have not said exactly what they intend to do with it yet, but it is initialized at power up.

I also like the HD/DVR system from DiSH.

The only downside I have with DiSH and thier PVR's is you cannot replace the HD in it. You have to send the unit in if the HD fails and they put the same thing back in. I would really like to increase the capacity of the HD.

Mine's an older one and has been great--but the HD has gone once, is flaky now--stuff that has been on there a while starts to lose its audio track in spots-- I deal with CCTV dvr's every day, and though there's nothin to replacing the IDE HD's, you're likley not gonna have access to whatever shell software is on them to make them run...bastids. The major manufacturers most all use Maxtor, which ALWAYS fails in 2-3 years (having ups helps much) talked to a rep from Integral Technologies--they had to yank some 2000 hard drives out of field (lot of units have multiples) and change them to Western Digital per gov' mandate

Eagler · « **Reply #20 on:** December 21, 2006, 06:09:18 AM »

a dvr/tivo gives you back 20 minutes of your life per hour as that is the min commercials bloat the average 60 minute tele program these days ... don't watch anything "live" anymore

scottydawg · « **Reply #21 on:** December 21, 2006, 06:19:13 AM »

I have digital cable with 2 series 2 TiVos and one PVR from Comcast.

The Tivos are much better since the recent software update, they were really sluggish before that. They do not do HD, but that's OK because the TVs they're on aren't HD.

The Comcast PVR (Scientific Atlanta) is the biggest POS ever. However it does record HD, and does record 2 channels at once.

The TiVo interface is great. The Comcast PVR interface SUCKS.

As for the Dish PVRs, I wonder if you could just yank the drive and ghost it onto another... I've done it with the TiVos, which use (I believe) ext2 filesystem and a monolithic Linux kernel, and only require a file change to indicate the size of the new drive(s)... I put in 2 150GB drives in one of the Tivos, it was pretty easy, I think I used TiVoMAD.

scottydawg · « **Reply #22 on:** December 21, 2006, 06:20:10 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Eagler
a dvr/tivo gives you back 20 minutes of your life per hour as that is the min commercials bloat the average 60 minute tele program these days ... don't watch anything "live" anymore

AMEN, BROTHER. I don't think I've watched anything live besides the news in years.

lazs2 · « **Reply #23 on:** December 21, 2006, 08:48:03 AM »

I am stoneage and record shows once in a while with a vcr. How do these dvr things skip commercials? With vhs I have to fast forward through em.

lazs

x0847Marine · « **Reply #24 on:** December 21, 2006, 09:07:03 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by bj229r
Same here:aok --wish it had network out that I might copy stuff straight to pc, without having to capture it

Dishboxes run something called 'Dishlinux' or somesuch junk, and there are ways to grab video I have read about.. but I'm too lazy for that.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #25 on:** December 21, 2006, 09:23:51 AM »

The DiSH boxes do run a Linux variant. I have considered yanking the HD out of the older non-HD PVR we have and seeing if I if my Linux box could mount the drive's filesystem.

If it can, then I can replace the drive.

I hope they are not using the ext2 filesystem, although that would explain why it takes so long to delete a recording.

scottydawg · « **Reply #26 on:** December 21, 2006, 09:53:57 AM »

The TiVo series 2 does use the ext2 file system... that could explain the slowness. I wonder if the software upgrade changed the caching system to make it better performance-wise.

It encodes its recording using MPEG1 I think... with some proprietary encryption at the file header... I believe I saw something on slashdot recently that announced someone had broken the encryption. Ah yes: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/04/1952224
http://www.alt.org/wiki/index.php/TiVoToGo

Have to mess with this one day.

I noticed that the commercial/program ratio on some shows has gone up dramatically. Lost went up quite a bit after the first season and this year it's ridiculous. Also finale shows during sweeps appear to have increased commercials almost 20%. Jerks.

Don't use reiserfs, it will make you kill your wife and go to prison.

Chairboy · « **Reply #27 on:** December 21, 2006, 10:22:59 AM »

Lazs, none of the modern commercial DVRs skip commercials, the last company to do that was ReplayTV. Mine still has that feature, and it's fantastic. But the media companies sued them into the stone-age.

Tivo, Dish, Comcast, at best they allow you to fast forward like on your VCR. Some of them can be hacked to skip 30 second chunks per click.

The only way to currently get a new setup that has automatic commercial skipping (as in, it fades to black at the end of a scene, then the next scene starts, no interruption) is probably with a PC based DVR like MythTV.

The technologie usually uses a combination of monitoring black cut screens and volume changes. Very rarely my commercial skip will go off at the wrong time, usually during Law & Order because of how they switch scenes sometimes, but it's an infrequent problem.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #28 on:** December 21, 2006, 11:17:33 AM »

DiSH still has the 30 second skip forward.

And yes, never use ReiserFS for anything like this. It will corrupt data. ext2 is ok for writting, it is just horrifically slow for deleting large files.

scottydawg · « **Reply #29 on:** December 21, 2006, 11:21:35 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
DiSH still has the 30 second skip forward.

And yes, never use ReiserFS for anything like this. It will corrupt data. ext2 is ok for writting, it is just horrifically slow for deleting large files.

I was actually taking about this.