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  1. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    It would be nice if there was a DVR out there that could just handle recording a ton of material without memory leaks, slow downs, jitters, jutters, glitches, reboots, etc. Do the job, do it reliably so you can trust it, and do it fast.
  2. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    300GB was nice back when we were recording SD and that could hold 200+ hours, but if you record primarily HD, it fills up real fast. 3TB is actually a reasonable number for a HD DVR in my book. Alas, another problem is that the DVRs weren't designed with that much space in mind. It's not...
  3. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I think it saves DirecTv a ton of money. Because all your recordings are locked away and tied to a specific DVR, the last thing you ever want to do is upgrade that DVR, or swap it out. You can't just swap DVRs or even service, you have to run the old side by side with the new until you've...
  4. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    No doubt because they fear people would exploit the ability to pirate movies. From the POV of someone who pays for what I watch many times over, though, I find it ridiculous.
  5. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I use native output, so I never would have noticed.
  6. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    Understandable. The old UI filled a 16:9 screen and displayed/looked fine regardless of whether you were watching in 480i or 1080p. It's not like they can squeeze a lot more information on the display, because people won't be able to read it, and it's not like they had the problem SD UI's on...
  7. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I like those features, and since they don't actually do anything until activated - I don't think they're the problem. In fact, they suffer from the same slowness and inattention to detail that the rest of the system does. Hopefully this thread keeps rolling because DirecTv isn't going to...
  8. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    FIOS has more On Demand content, but they only permit 2x fast forward and rewind. The ability to actually download entire on demand programs is actually kind of cool - if your internet is fast enough.
  9. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    Typically an embedded OS is used, and the non-portable chipset specific functions are relegated to the device driver level. It's quite possible that the folks working on the UI level code don't even deal with the CPU directly or work on the drivers. A disconnect between the high-level...
  10. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    When it comes to manufacturing, there are generally multipliers on every part to account for indirect expenses. So adding a $25 part may add $100 to the selling price - all depending how the company computes their overhead, profit margins, distribution costs, etc. So, this can be pretty...
  11. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    There's an enormous range of capabilities in the embedded market, but it all costs money so if you put more power than you need in to a box, it's just going to cost more to manufacture, consume more power, require more cooling, etc. And it's not really all that hard to blow through a megabyte...
  12. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I'm not talking about fragmentation, dissimilar data naturally gets spread all over the disk - and this includes things like the disk structures themselves. Recording to disk and play back from disk are no doubt given the highest priority, which means other requests like piecing together the...
  13. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    Correct. A typical WD Green drive can manage something like 80 MB/s write speeds. A 15Mbps HD feed would require less than 2 MB/s. There's also going to be a hit when the disk fills up and the inner tracks are used more, but in terms of raw bandwidth, there's plenty. Meaning there's plenty of...
  14. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I don't believe the speed issue is any one thing, but rather all the things we're making these DVRs do: 1) Large eSATA hard disks filled way beyond the original intended 150MB or so of recordings (assuming 2/3 full or so). 2) Multi-room viewing & networking in general 3) Merged play list from...
  15. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    The only thing that would even make sense is if they had 15 or so redundant images of the same firmware packed together to deal with drops in the transmission. It is likely that they break their code up in to multiple images. Maybe the kernel/OS portion is just 1MB, and their application code...
  16. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    Which doesn't really mean anything other than that BIOS's have become bloated with features such as quick-boot-versions of Linux and that the cost of a flash ROM chip is reasonably low. The original IBM PC BIOS used to fit in what ... 8 K bytes? Of course it was written in assembly language...
  17. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    Given TV technology originated in 1920 using vacuum tube technology, I think they umm exaggerated. ;) TVs do use mixed signal technology, much like our DVRs include a satellite receiver and PC tech, but that's really not a great hurdle for either device. It's no longer enough for a piece of...
  18. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I agree, alas it's always easier to pile on new code than it is to optimize or re-design existing code; and companies that don't derive their revenue directly from s/w may see it as little more than a necessary evil/marketing device.
  19. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I was concerned about performance the moment I found out they'd removed the SD overlay of the HD UI. It was a sure sign that the new s/w in fact did not improve the efficiency of the box, but had slowed it down to the point that they had to remove features in order to compensate. The fact they...
  20. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    A vast improvement at what? Not updating the SD overlay lets the unit draw the screen faster, but it doesn't eliminate the time it takes to build the screen in the first place. I've already discovered a sure fire way to speed up my HR20-700: just disconnect it from everything. If it doesn't...
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