DISH PVR721: Actual Record Time

[Bill R]

I was just wondering how much actual recording time 721 owners are getting. I have read that you can get "up to 96 hours of recording time" but it appears that the estimate is high. I just "cleaned up" my 721 this morning and I have 22 hours of recorded programs on it and it says that the "approxomate record time left: 51 hr. 42 min." My recordings are mainly network programs (highly compressed) and the are no movies. I have had as many as 60 hours of recordings on my 721 and at that time it estimated that there was about 14 hours left.

I just would like to see what others are getting.

[Chris Blount]

I've had mine up to about 65 hours. No problems at all. Bob Haller I think has had his filled up so he may reply here.

[Scott Greczkowski]

The most I have put on my 721 was 72 hours. No problems at all (I probably could have filled it up more but I went away for a few days while my wife was in the hospital having the baby and it filled up while we were there) :D

[Kagato]

I think dish now says "up to 90 hours". Perhaps that's 90 hours of Musak channels.

[Bob Haller]

Were were really close to 90, at about 88 I think. I dont know f its still there but there was a bug where the true time wasnt reflected. I would have to reboiot to see it. Once it said like 30 hours recorded 5 hours available:(

Since jen has been off ill the to do list is huge:( and the actual time in storage very short.

[Mike123abc]

The shorter the record time the less compression. Probably a good thing that Dish has spread out a lot of channels to 110 and now uses less compression. Just takes more disk space and less recording time.

[DmitriA]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
The shorter the record time the less compression. Probably a good thing that Dish has spread out a lot of channels to 110 and now uses less compression. Just takes more disk space and less recording time.

I don't understand that. How does the total time for the program affect MPEG compression levels?

[cschlik]

I would think that more compression would mean more record time, but worse picture quality. If I am not mistaken the unaltered data stream is recorded directly to the hard drive. If this is the case a highly compressed program would take up less space than the same slightly compressed program.

I have gotten down to 10 hours left on my 721 with no problems. Then I realized that I recorded 3 different movies twice. How did we ever get by without a PVR.

Chris

[Scott Greczkowski]

Yes Chris you are correct more compression = more recording time.

As a test you can record one of the music channels, I did this one night, recorded for 3 hours yet used less then 20 minutes of record time on the drive. :)

So as a DAR (digital audio recorder) the 721 is good for about 810 hours...... woo hoo :)

[Randy_B]

We have just under 20 hrs recorded on ours and it says 60 hrs and some minutes available.

I don't we have yet crossed the 50 hrs of recordings stored on the HD yet.

[EvanS]

SO FAR....no matter how much I have recorded my 721 has always had the recorded-plus-time available = within 3 hours of 90.
All the recordings have generally been standard channels though, no music and the occasional TMC movie

[Scott Greczkowski]

Originally posted by
So as a DAR (digital audio recorder) the 721 is good for about 810 hours...... woo hoo :)

Of course the audio service which Dish carries STINK, now if they had XM's audio services it would be worth it.

Actually recording the Muzak stuff on the 721 is nice because you can fast forward through the crap (the on screen display with the song title is shown as your rewind and fast forward.)

[Mike123abc]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
The shorter the record time the less compression. Probably a good thing that Dish has spread out a lot of channels to 110 and now uses less compression. Just takes more disk space and less recording time.

I guess I should clarify what I meant since the above could be read in a couple different ways.

Dish after launching E8 moved a lot of channels around, many off of 119 and onto 110. This resulted in them being able to do less compression on the channels. They achieve less compression by having a higher bit rate. The higher bit rate makes the picture look better, but it also uses up your hard disk space on your PVR faster. Since for example a 1 hour show now is 15% less compressed it means that it will take up 15% more disk space on your PVR and the number of hours you can record on your PVR goes down 15%.