ECHOSTAR PVR921 Info

[Eyedox]

ECHOSTAR PVR-921
EchoStar's soon to be released PVR-921 HDTV Compatible, Twin Tuner, PIP, Satellite Receiver should include a 200G to 300G Hard Drive for recording both Standard and High-Definition Programming. It will be high speed internet ready with high resolution graphics for online gaming, possibly competing with PS2 and X-BOX and should be compatible with new "VIDEO ON DEMAND" Technology and other services not yet available.
The PVR-921 could realize new features for years to come.
This may end up being the box we are all waiting for!
It's networkable, possibly moving, up to, a GIG a second.
It will have "FireWire."
It will use DISHPRO Technology, STARBAND, DSL, wireless and more.
It should mirror the PVR-721 with HDTV.
It'll be released, maybe, in Q2 - 2003.
It is projected to cost between $1,000.00 - $2,000.00.
Follow the *JVC TU-PVR9000, that might give you some idea.
(This info courtesy of a DBS Reseller website.)

[t2]

WOW!! sounds like one cool machine w/ almost every feature imaginable (except for dvd player amd moxi-like capability)!! Maybe this will be the butt-kicking DTV needs to put forth a similar machine.

[James_F]

Originally posted by Eyedox
It will be high speed internet ready with high resolution graphics for online gaming, possibly competing with PS2 and X-BOX
After I pick myself off the floor. :rolleyes:
It's networkable, possibly moving, up to, a GIG a second.
Yea, they are going to throw in a gigabit card. :rolleyes:

Hmm two :rolleyes:.... :p

[Scott Greczkowski]

I think I posted this info here the other day. :)

And NO they are not putting in a gigabit ethernet connection.

And BTW I am the one who posted the Info on DishRetailer. :D

See the REAL specs here http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9741

[Eyedox]

Originally posted by Scott Greczkowski
I think I posted this info here the other day. :)

And NO they are not putting in a gigabit ethernet connection.

And BTW I am the one who posted the Info on DishRetailer. :D

See the REAL specs here http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9741

Hi Scott ... You must really get around, you whore! Hahaha! j/k! I believe it was you too. I believe that if they are indeed going to add ethernet, it would more likely be just the 100Mbps FAST ETHERNET speed, that is the standard in homes still. It will be cool to see what happens!

[Scott Greczkowski]

There will be no ethernet on the units, instead Ethernet will be available by using a USB Ethernet adapter.

Because they are not even using USB 2.0 there is no way that units will support gigabit ethernet connections.

I think (and could be wrong) that 100 MB is even too fast for USB 1.1 (Although a 10 MB should be ok) :)

[scottcorinna]

Just a quick note on the Firewire front.

Apple, the developer of Firewire just came out with something called IP OVER FIREWIRE. The technology enables Macs and other devices to communicate using TCP/IP through FireWire instead of Ethernet or other common networking media.

This info came from MacCentral.com
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0212/04.ipfirewire.php

Scott McIntire

[DarrellP]

Dish needs to wake up and enter the 21st century. No USB 2.0? How archaic is that? They must have designed this thing back in 1997.

[scottcorinna]

Firewire is already as fast as USB 2, and Firewire 2 or IEEE 1394b is scheduled to be out soon.

IEEE 1394b allows speeds of 800Mbit/sec., 1.6Gbit/sec. and 3.2Gbit/sec., all over copper wire.

Why limit yourself to USB 2s max speed of 480 Mbps.

Scott

[cws80us]

The 921 was first announced around 18 months ago. At the time it was announced, it was cutting edge. A year and a half later it's still not on the market, has no solid release date, and is already outdated. But, if they take the time to update the design and incorporate the latest technology, it will put them even further behind.

E* seriously needs to do something about it's R&D; the time it's taking them to get new products released is getting ridiculous. And what makes it even worse is that when they do get products to market they half half the original feature set and take a year or more of bug fixes and software updates to become stable. The need to get better engineers or get some outside help.

[Jacob S]

I think they need some outside help. I think the ideal receiver is one in which you can upgrade in the future, instead of having to buy new receivers all of the time. Upgrades in which you can switch boards out for new graphics, new features, and would be cheaper than buying a whole new receiver. It would be like replacing a smart card only for a different purpose.

I suppose since the receivers are made in bulk that it may not be any cheaper to make them upgradable unless it is a higher priced receiver such as a pvr unit such as 721 or 921. A dvd recorder or something in which you can save the programs and retrieve them later while freeing up hard drive space would be great to have, like a disk or something in which would compress it and could be inserted into the receiver to record it to it, download some or all of the shows that are on the hard drive onto it, or to play back shows. If they could make a chip to do this, that would even be better, and take up much less space.

They have already changed moniters, a lot of the computer systems are starting to come wth the flat moniters standard, they should also change the pc to have chips isntead of hard drives in computers and pvr units. They would not be so sensitive to traveling or bumping, would be a lot more compact, and could be cheaper in the future when enough is made in bulk.

[zztzed]

Jacob, existing drives can take a pretty good jolt before they fail, especially if the heads are parked (i.e., the drive isn't running), so I don't think that's a very compelling argument for switching to solid-state drives.

There are two problems with solid state storage that will probably prevent its adoption anytime soon. This is a bit of a digression from the main topic of the 921's feature set, but bear with me here.

The first problem with solid-state storage is that it's hellishly expensive in the quantities that your average user expects -- for example, a 512MB solid state disk is $290 -- that's $1.77 per megabyte, and 512MB is a pretty paltry amount compared to the 80gig and larger drives shipping in a lot of machines today. Compare that to $308 for a 200GB traditional magnetic hard drive -- that's $1.54 per gigabyte. (That comes out to about $0.00150390625 per megabyte.) Magnetic storage is obviously a lot cheaper, and it will probably remain so as long as hard drive manufacturers keep managing to increase areal density (the amount of data that can be crammed into a given area of a hard drive platter) as fast as they've been doing. Solid-state storage will probably never become this cheap because of simple supply and demand. Because of its high cost, there is no demand. Because of low demand, supplies are low. Because supplies are low, costs are high. And no one's likely to try to break this cycle for a while, if ever. If it does happen, it probably won't be until solid-state has caught up with traditional hard drives in terms of density...but again, that's not likely to happen due to low demand. The few people or organizations who do use solid-state storage either use very small amounts (embedded systems developers) or can afford the exorbitant prices on larger quantities (the military).

The other problem is that with solid-state/flash memory, or at least the type that goes into the media used in digital cameras and whatnot, is that each sector can only be written a certain number of times before it will not reliably hold data anymore. This 'certain number of times' is usually up around a hundred thousand or more, but the way modern operating systems work with virtual memory you could probably blow through that hundred thousand pretty quickly. This limitation may not be true of solid state drives, or at least newer ones, but I haven't heard of any new developments in the solid state storage area that would invalidate this -- although I don't really keep track, either.

So basically, it's unlikely that anything that needs any appreciable amount of storage will use solid-state anytime soon -- especially not the PVR921. It would probably cost as much as a new car if it did.

[Jacob S]

So at least we know it is possible, but not cost effective. Could this be compared to the cost of what a computer used to cost in the 60's and its size to the size and cost now? There may have to be something else to come out that is different than what we have now, or a lot smaller hard drives in which would not be as sensative as the ones we have now. Possibly a really small laser or head reading the disk on a real small hard drive capable of storing lots of information.

[axelmarzan]

Jusst how long it gonna take to get out here?