501 taking more "time" for recordings?

[manicd]

Has anyone noticed it now takes more "time" for recordings on you pvr since the 1.95 upgrade?
It now takes 1.5 to 2 times more space to do a 1 hour recording.
Examples
1 hr. 2 min. show took 1 hr. 47 min. of space
2 minute recording actually took 7 minutes
9 hours and 7 minutes of recordings took 14 hrs an 15 mins.
I even had 10 hrs. take 18 hrs. of space. (before the upgrade this same 10 hrs. would have only taken about 12 hrs.


I know a 1 hour show could be slightly longer or shorter. This happens on both of my PVRs and my friend's PVR. Show that is 3 PVRs it i doing it on. Anymore out there?

I talked to Dish in Englewood long distance and they were'nt aware of the longer times. But said they would look into this.

[Mike123abc]

Since they simply record the MPEG stream from the satellite, it would tell me that the channels you are recording now are less compressed than those you recorded before. Some channels will take more or less depending on how much action is in them. The more action, the more likely the bit rate will be higher since they dynamically give more bandwith when available to channels that need it.

[TerryC]

If Mike's right about lower compression then you would notice better PQ.

Do you?

Of course, if this were the case then everybody would notice both increased PQ and more space used up on the HD per recording.

[salsa]

I have a pvr 508 that does the same thing. I start out with 60 hrs. of recording time left, but after recording 4 hrs. of programming, it shows that I have only 50 to 51 hrs. of recording time left. I had them replace the 508 with a new one, and it still does the same thing. Maybe there is a problem with the software and the 508. I also have a 501, and it works fine.

[Mark Holtz]

The time left is a aproximation, not a exact number. Since the PVR is recording the exact bitsteam from the DBS Provider, the amount of data will vary. Channels with higher bitrates will take up more disk space than channels with lower bitrates.

[Mike8675309]

The time remaining is only an estimate based on some averaged channel bandwidth and available disk space. When you record a show, the actual bandwidth is what takes up the space. If the show you record happens to have used more bandwidth than average, it won't match the estimation.

You should try and record a PPV event. 3 hours of WWE Wrestling can eat up 7 hours of disk on a 501.