[El Gabito]

Is this possible?

Asking for a friend looking to switch who has 1 HD in the living room and 2 SD elsewhere. Can they watch something recorded on say an HR34 in HD on one of the standard SD receivers and/or an SD DVR?

Searched around and couldn't find an answer.

 

[JohnTSmith]

Maybe someone who "100% knows the answer" will say otherwise, but just looking at the technology involved (HDDVR=MPEG4 SDDVR=MPEG2) and the fact that an SDDVR may not receive or recorde an HD signal... I doubt that what your friend wants to do is possible

 

[wahooq]

only hd rcvrs can participate in whole home

 

[dishrich]

Asking for a friend looking to switch who has 1 HD in the living room and 2 SD elsewhere. Can they watch something recorded on say an HR34 in HD on one of the standard SD receivers and/or an SD DVR?

As already mentioned, MRV ONLY works between HD receivers.
BUT, you said "looking to switch" - which I take to mean he's going to be a new customer, correct?
If this is the case, ALL new customers can get 1 FREE HD DVR (NOT necessarily the HR34) & up to 3 FREE HD receivers as well...so it's a moot point.
And yes, HD receivers WILL work on SDTV's; although if the TV does NOT have an A/V input, they would need an cheap A/V modulator, since no HD receivers have RF outputs.

 

[veryoldschool]

Maybe someone who "100% knows the answer" will say otherwise, but just looking at the technology involved (HDDVR=MPEG4 SDDVR=MPEG2) and the fact that an SDDVR may not receive or recorde an HD signal... I doubt that what your friend wants to do is possible

"Besides that", the SD receivers don't have a network port, so they can't do anything with MRV, "even if" it was a MPEG-2 program.

 

[dpeters11]

If one of the SD boxes happens to be an R22, it can participate in Whole Home. However the account must have one HD DVR and one HD receiver/DVR, the R22 would be a third box.

 

[El Gabito]

As already mentioned, MRV ONLY works between HD receivers.
BUT, you said "looking to switch" - which I take to mean he's going to be a new customer, correct?
If this is the case, ALL new customers can get 1 FREE HD DVR (NOT necessarily the HR34) & up to 3 FREE HD receivers as well...so it's a moot point.
And yes, HD receivers WILL work on SDTV's; although if the TV does NOT have an A/V input, they would need an cheap A/V modulator, since no HD receivers have RF outputs.

Ah very interesting. Yes, new customer and didn't realize you could do SD on a hd box.

So it will automatically scale down HD content?

 

[dishrich]

Yes, just put the box on 480I or P output & it will work just fine to your SDTV.

BUT, unlike ANY other HD boxes, while it can simultaniously put out an HD AND SD picture - it will NOT allow ANY on-screen displays to show simultaniously.
If you are watching HD output to your TV via the HDMI or component output, & are sending a (downconverted) SD output via the composite &/or S-video connection, AND then you have any OSD come up, while they WILL come up on the HD outputs, on the SD outputs you get a nasty "can't display OSD; switch box to SD mode" message.

This can be a problem when, say, you want to send an HD signal out to your HDTV, while sending a (downconverted) SD signal to a DVD recorder. Or doing an SD backfeed to a secondary TV. You'll find PLENTY of posts here about this very issue, & workarounds. Again, shouldn't be an issue for your purposes...

 

[bobnielsen]

With a HD receiver you can also downscale HD programming to 480i and it will look better on a SD TV than the equivalent SD channel.