DBSTalk Forum banner

Discussions Showcase Albums Media Media Comments Tags

1-20 of 59 Results
  1. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I don't know if you'll understand this answer, but... "it is what it is." If you are watching an HD channel that's playing SD, then SD is "what it is." The HR20 will record SD, because that's what you're receiving.
  2. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    Ahh.. the 7411 is there for the H.264, and it can only decode one HD stream at a time. So they don't want to offer PIP b/c they can't make it work w/two HD H.264 channels at once. Then again, Echostar manages to decode 2 streams at once with this chipset... there's usually an SD version of the...
  3. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    Are you sure about that? The HR20 uses the BCM7038. According to Broadcom's Product Brief, one feature is "Two Complete HD/SD Video/Audio Channels", and the benefit of this feature is, "Dual video/audio channels allow dual TV support, along with independent PIP support on main and secondary."...
  4. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    It's possible to corrupt the whole hard disk if you pull power while file system data are being written.
  5. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    I choose "other." There's a storage solution described on Tom's Hardware, which daisy-chains drives together. When your drive fills up, you attach another drive. You buy storage as you need it. The only downside is that I don't know if the HR20 will "see" the added storage, but this is the...
  6. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    By my calculations, you should be able to get at least 30 hours of HD for every 250 GB. My guess (only a guess) is that perhaps your external drive isn't actually being recognized, and you've been filling up your internal 250 GB drive. Two ways to test this: Easy way: Take a look at the...
  7. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    That's concatenation. True, the HR20 will recognize the increased capacity, but if you concatenate storage to a RAID volume attached to the HR20, the HR20 will reformat the entire volume and you'll lose all of your stored recordings. For example, let's say you have a 4-drive RAID box with 3...
  8. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    Standalone RAID 5 controllers are still quite expensive, b/c they take a lot of processing power, and because they require 3 drives minimum, they don't sell in very high volumes. There are several RAID10 solutions - basically, a pair of mirrored drives is fast-striped. With RAID5, 3 drives...
  9. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    The 1 TB "limit" was written when 500 GB was the largest drive capacity available. The Thecus unit can accommodate larger drives.
  10. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    You hit the nail on the head. I wish this were so.
  11. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    Here are some of the advantages of the HR20 over the DirecTV Tivo: * Supports the MPEG-4 high-def channels. This gives you more HD channels. * You can plug in an eSATA hard disk and expand the recording capacity. So instead of the 250 GB drive, you can attach a 500 or 750 GB drive. However, you...
  12. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    I have a four- drive enclosure that works fine. The enclosure has a Silicon Image 4726 RAID chip inside. The RAID chip makes the four drives appear as a single drive to the HR20. The only disadvantage is that you can't grow the storage without the HR20 erasing everything and starting fresh.
  13. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    eSATA - I have 1.2 TB attached. There are five of us in the house and nobody's ever lost a recording they wanted to keep.
  14. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I had two DirecTV TiVo units, and replaced one with a HR20. There is absolutely, positively no doubt in my mind that the DirecTV TiVo units were FAR superior to the HR20. The DirecTV product managers should know better than to put out a product that is inferior to the previous product. This...
  15. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    Electricians know how to "fish" cables through walls. If you can talk to the guy who just installed your new coax cable, he might remember how he routed it, and whether it would be possible for the DirecTV installer to tape the two cables to the end of the coax cable and then just pull the new...
  16. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    You'd only have one Cat 5 connection at each TV, except for the "main" TV location, where you'd need one for Internet (WAN) and another for LAN. I don't think it makes sense to run Ethernet this way; I think the DirecTV boxes should network to one another via the coax, since this always runs...
  17. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    It's not likely that the company spent money on a second Ethernet port with no intention of using it.... the "different ROM code" you're speaking of could simply be an upgrade applied to the existing model. Multicast traffic can be harmful to a standard IP network; your home network and...
  18. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    I read about the decision. Nobody can yet be certain how it will be applied, but TiVo's auto-correct feature is pretty darn obvious. What I mean is, if you use a video recorder or DVR, it is obvious that pressing Play after a FF or REW will cause you to over-shoot, and it is obvious that the...
  19. DIRECTV HD DVR/Receiver Discussion
    You're right that ViiV's main offering is a video encoder and streamer. The ViiV idea is very sound -- your PC can decode "anything," but set-top boxes cannot. If your PC can decode it, ViiV can re-encode it into something your set-top box can play. The video encoder is why ViiV has such...
  20. DIRECTV Tips and Resources
    Are you sure that you're waiting long enough? When the HR20 sees the new drive, it will format it, and it can take a long time to format 750 GB.
1-20 of 59 Results
Top