July 28th revisited... three months later...

[Mark Holtz]

Well, it is interesting how things change in three months. Along with the the annoucement of the SuperDish for International and HDTV programming, there was also the infamous July 28th annoucement about Dish's DVR fees. While we had known about 510 which was a single tuner DVR receiver that would have a 120MB hard drive, as well as the 522 dual-tuner DVER (also with a 120GB hard drive), and the 921 HD-DVR. However, what caused many people to be unhappy was that there was going to be a "Video On Demand" of $9.95 for AT-50 subscribers, $4.95 for AT-100/AT-150 subscribers, and free for Everything pack subscribers. The 501, 508, and 721 were grandfathered receivers, and thus there would be no fee. Needless to say, people were unhappy. The 510 was made available a short time later, and the 508s were closed out.

(For the record, the monthly fee for AT-50 has been reduced to $4.95)

At the same time, Dish had made the initial annoucements about the SuperDish. Utilizing satellites at 105 and 121, these satellites would broadcast HD-TV, additional local markets, and International channels. That product is almost ready for the official launch.

Now that three months have elapsed, what's your feeling about all this? Some Dish subscribers decided to jump from Dish to DirecTV. I was one of them. The AT-150 and the Total Choice Plus were roughly equivelent minus the Encore Theme, The Movie Channel, and a sports channel or two. But, it contained all of the channels that my mom and I wanted. I picked up a triple LNB Dish, a HDVR2, and two HBH-SAs. This past Sunday, I just swapped out the 40GB hard drive for a 160GB hard drive, and my recording capacity went from ~35 hours to ~120 hours, and I still plan on adding a second large hard drive. The hard drives on Dish's DVR products are non-expandable.

Shortly after I switched in late August, Dish finally fixed the program guide for the 301 so that it could home a 44 hour guide once again. However, the HBH-SA holds a 7 day guide, and the DirecTiVo holds a 14 day guide.

What did I lose out of this switch? I no longer have the superstations, and because of the NFL Sunday Ticket promotion, I'm still paying around the same price as Dish. At the end of the year, I will be downgrading the service. Might as well load up on a lot of pan-and-scan movies out of this.

Your thughts? Did you switch services? Or, are you thinking about it? Were you about to make a decision, but the announcements made you change your mind?

[Bob Haller]

I am about to switch. Based on well everyone here knows. I was going to wait but the latest 721 software sealed the deal.

Anything else you miss about E. Other than no supers? Our locals are up so they arent as big a issue.

Anything you DONT like about tIVOS? I will get only PVRs here, I think standard receivers are obsolete and have messed with tivos in the store but its not like living with one. Just like women everything has its problems.

[Mark Holtz]

I will be doing a followup on my "impressions" article with a more in-depth article with screen shots. Most of it is usability, lack of a indicator for free disk space, etc.

[spanishannouncetable]

I will be doing a followup on my "impressions" article with a more in-depth article with screen shots. Most of it is usability, lack of a indicator for free disk space, etc.

As far as TiVo software is concerned there is no "free space" - Suggestions are supposed to fill all the drive space all the time anyway :)

I turned Suggestions off the first day I had my DirecTiVo and came up with my own free space indicator. I recorded a 30 minute show and left it on the hard drive without changing the save date. When that show automatically deleted itself to make room for something else I would know I was running out of room.

Since then I've always left something unimportant (news, a Simpsons rerun, etc) on the NP list that was at least a couple of months old and so far neither of my DirecTiVos has autodeleted anything. Of course, having 2 DTiVos @ 106 hours each helps, too :D

[Mark Holtz]

In a sense, you're right. I look at Suggestions as part of free space though. To each their own.

Of course, my HDVR2 has 120 hours. :)

[BrettStah]

Mark, you hit upon a common issue when talking about "free" space... you (and I) think that of suggestions as free space, but others think differently.

But if we got just a pure free space indicator, it wouldn't tell me what I really want to know... when the heck is it going to run out of free space and have to delete one or more of my recordings (non-suggestions)? I have a wife and daughter who both occasionally schedule various shows to record. So if I would see that I have 10 hours free, it doesn't mean that I'd be able to record a football game this Saturday. I'd have to go into the To Do List to see what's going to be recorded, and then figure out if enough items will use up enough space to the point my football game won't fit (without causing something to be deleted).

So some sort of free space indicator that took into account the existing schedule would be more helpful. For example, if each recording in Now Playing had something like the following it would be more useful for me:
"This show is currently scheduled to be deleted on Wednesday, November 12 2003 at 8:00 PM so that "The West Wing" can be recorded".

Or, for people with lots of space like us, most of our shows may wind up with something like this:
"This show is not currently scheduled to be deleted, based on the most recent scheduling information available (Data available through November 14th 2003)."

If calculating all of this is not practical (because of the CPU requirements, and/or due to the variable sizes of DirecTivo recordings), then maybe a more general statement at the top or bottom of Now Playing:
"Based on the most recent information available, you will run out of space by Thursday, November 13th 2004"

I'd be willing to bet that they could do a decent job in estimating, though... and they could be conservative and assume a larger size for most recordings, or take into account things such as a football game presented "live" will take more room than a normal recording.

I'd go ahead and put current free space on the System Information screen, right below the current line that lists current max capacity.

[Win Joy Jr]

For a DirecTiVo, you can never estimate what the free space is. Since the various channels have different bit-rates, you can never tell. Locals have the lowest, standard channels are next, then sports, then premium movie, then PPV. While you may have 10 hours for locals, you may only have 3 hours for a sunday ticket game. And datarates can be changed on the fly, so the datarate for channel "a" may be different tomorrow than it is today.

[BrettStah]

True, and I alluded to this difficulty in my post above yours. But they could make a conservative estimate (so that it may tell me that a show is scheduled to be deleted tomorrow night, but it actually could very well last longer before deletion), and/or take each channel into account... so scheduled football games on Sunday Ticket channels would be assumed to use a lot of space per hour, while scheduled content on local channels would be assumed to use a lot less. If they use conservative estimates for each channel, and then you'd have a good idea of when your shows would begin to be in danger of being deleted.

[sorahl]

With all the hacks that are available isnt' there one to fix this??

[BrettStah]

There is some sort of free space indicator via Tivoweb, which is a pretty popular hack. (I've never tried it though).