# Vip 622 -> 500GB: when? How much HD?



## Tweakophyte (Dec 11, 2004)

Hi-

Do we have a firm date when the 500gb version of the 622 will be released? How about an estimate? Also, how much HD recording time do we expect with the increase?

Thanks,


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## R_Childress (Jan 4, 2006)

No date yet, but since the existing 622 has a 250gb hard drive, the capacity should be double if not more.


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## Mardi Gras (Dec 22, 2006)

Tweakophyte said:


> Hi-
> 
> Do we have a firm date when the 500gb version of the 622 will be released? How about an estimate? Also, how much HD recording time do we expect with the increase?
> 
> Thanks,


First question - No.

Second Question - Any estimate would be a pure guess. My guess is later rather than sooner.

Third Question - Since Dish refuses to say how space will be dedicated to VOD, it is impossible to know how much extra HD space will really be available.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Recording capacity is in question because at CES the implications were that the driving force behind the larger hard drive in the new 622 was for more VOD features.

It is entirely possible that the ViP622-1 will still only have 30 hours HD/200 hours SD available for users with the rest of the hard drive being reserved for more VOD. As it stands right now, there isn't much room on the ViP622 reserved for VOD so they cannot really provide much in the way of HD VOD... but with the extra space, they would be able to provide hours of HD VOD, which seems to be what they want to do for the future.

So... I'm not sure the new model will really be that much different in terms of what you or I can record even with a larger hard drive.


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## killzone (Dec 27, 2006)

Why would anyone with a DVR need/want VOD? I would expect increasing the capacity of the DVR to 50 hours of HD would take major precedence over increasing VOD storage.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

killzone said:


> Why would anyone with a DVR need/want VOD? I would expect increasing the capacity of the DVR to 50 hours of HD would take major precedence over increasing VOD storage.


I agree with you... but cable companies brag about having VOD and many satellite customers have cited that as a feature they can get with cable and not DBS, so naturally the satellite companies are trying to figure out how to get VOD to customers.

Personally, I view it as a non-feature having seen it on Time Warner... and I do not feel like I am missing anything at all by not using VOD. I too would prefer more recording space.


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## Tweakophyte (Dec 11, 2004)

Those are fair comments regarding the increase in drive size and what we'll actually be able to use. Still, I wish I had a larger hard drive without having to buy an external one.

I saw in another post a reference to the new boxes being able to handle VC-1. Does that ring a bell for anyone? What is VC-1?

Thanks,


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## ndyclrk (Jun 5, 2006)

VC-1=Windows Media 9.


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## rdavi22 (Jan 28, 2007)

I just got a 622 last week. It shows 50 hours of HD or 200 hours of SD record time available. I don't know the hard drive size.

rdavi22


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

R_Childress said:


> No date yet, but since the existing 622 has a 250gb hard drive, the capacity should be double if not more.


The original 622 has a 320GB drive. It does have a bunch of that divided up so that it is not available including 100GB for Dish on Demand. So double is possible, if they don't also grab some of teh new space for other functions.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

rdavi22 said:


> I just got a 622 last week. It shows 50 hours of HD or 200 hours of SD record time available. I don't know the hard drive size.
> 
> rdavi22


Might want to take another look at that screen... I'm pretty sure you meant to say 30 hours of HD or 200 hours of SD. That's what mine has always said.


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## ssmith10pn (Jul 6, 2005)

1 hour of SD 1 GB (1024 Mega Bytes)
1 Hour of HD 7 GB (7168 Mega Bytes)

Give or take a few hundred MB.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

ssmith10pn said:


> 1 hour of SD 1 GB (1024 Mega Bytes)
> 1 Hour of HD 7 GB (7168 Mega Bytes)
> 
> Give or take a few hundred MB.


People recording the new mpeg4 streams (NFL-HD, FOOD-HD, NTGEO-HD, etc.) report 622 only sees 30 min record time for 1 hour show on those 6 mpeg4 channels on one transponder. Twice the compression, pic is near the same, uses 1/2 the space on HD.


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## ssmith10pn (Jul 6, 2005)

Jim5506 said:


> People recording the new mpeg4 streams (NFL-HD, FOOD-HD, NTGEO-HD, etc.) report 622 only sees 30 min record time for 1 hour show on those 6 mpeg4 channels on one transponder. Twice the compression, pic is near the same, uses 1/2 the space on HD.


Sweet! I figured it would convert to MPEG2 when recording to the drive!


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

ssmith10pn said:


> Sweet! I figured it would convert to MPEG2 when recording to the drive!


Nope... the cool thing is that since it just records what it gets, that means we not only get the bonus of potentially more channels with MPEG4, but our "effective" HD record time doubles when recording from those channels... so you just have to mentally remind yourself that if you have 4 hours of HD recording time left, but you record off one of those channels like FOODHD or HGTVHD you sort-of have 6-8 hours left for HD recording there.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Something else that gets forgotten about the ViP622...

Besides the 30 hours of HD/200 hours of SD space for recording... at any given time the DVR may also be "recording" using the up-to-60 minutes buffer on two different tuners... and since both tuners could be on an HD channel... assuming 7 GB per hour as an estimate, there is another 14+ GB being used/reserved for the buffer.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

The buffers allocating in same partition with _your_ recordings .


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

P Smith said:


> The buffers allocating in same partition with _your_ recordings .


Are you sure about that? If true, that means you really only have 28 hours of recording time available as your buffer is always in use.

I haven't seen it written anywhere, but I would be very surprised if the buffer space was not part of the pre-reserved space.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

How much you wanna bet ?


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## Tweakophyte (Dec 11, 2004)

nudge... is Dish keeping pretty tight-lipped on this?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

P Smith said:


> How much you wanna bet ?


I don't bet. Either you know something or you don't... but it doesn't make sense for me that the buffer space overlaps the my recordings space, unless we really have 32 hours and they just don't count those 2 hours. Either way, the buffer has to be discrete space reserved just for that purpose otherwise there will be problems at some point when both services try to access the same space.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

I'll tell you one thing - I'm not aware of any file system based on user's measuring units ( minutes, hours ), but bytes. 
That counter is one time value calculated when you ask via DVR menu.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

P Smith said:


> I'll tell you one thing - I'm not aware of any file system based on user's measuring units ( minutes, hours ), but bytes.
> That counter is one time value calculated when you ask via DVR menu.


I know that... and that isn't the point.

The point is that some space is reserved for "system" use, some space reserved for VOD, some space designated for the "my recordings" space, and I suspect a chunk set aside for the tuner 1 + tuner 2 buffers.

Unless you have some info one way or the other, you appear to be guessing just as I am. It's just that to me, it doesn't make sense for the buffer to be part of the same "my recordings" space, because that lends itself to a problem where some portion of the hard drive is designated for two competing purposes... It makes much more sense to me that the buffer space is part of the reserved space that is not used when making those 30 hour/200 hour calculations.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

I saw a result of dir command for few 622's disks; vividly remember the file names. Yes, I'm 100% positive about location of the buffers.


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

HDMe said:


> It makes much more sense to me that the buffer space is part of the reserved space that is not used when making those 30 hour/200 hour calculations.


I don't have time now to examine my spare drive in a Fecora Core boot (and may never do so), but I'd RATHER see the buffer exist in user space. If live buffer were separate, you would have to
1) Preallocate one hour of worst case HD recording for all three tuners that could never be used for anything else
2) when you choose to backup and record from there, or opt for "Record entire event", it would be necessary to COPY from reserved space to user space for several GBs.

I've no idea how it really is setup, but if you pause HD for an hour and then hit the Record button, I don't notice massive disk activity. It can be done in the background, but ...


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Right point - it's easy to convert the buffer(s) to regular recording.


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## quarrymen1 (Dec 14, 2006)

P Smith said:


> Right point - it's easy to convert the buffer(s) to regular recording.[/QUO it wont be long tonite new sofware for dt..like it p smith??


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

I see you got the right picture , but why you did cut fifth person at right ?!

[0128 is one section longer then 0126 ; 0F71h vs 0F72]


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Maybe I need to say this in a different way... I am not meaning to say that all of the reserved space is clumped together.

My thought is that there is reserved space for system stuff + VOD. Then there is the rest of the hard drive.... BUT some portion of the rest of the hard drive is used (kind of like your windows swap file) in a rolling fashion by the tuners being buffered.

This is why it easily converts to a "normal" recording... but also represents additional space not counted on the screen where you see how much space estimated left.

IF it does not work this way... then when your hard drive space gets down to around the 2 hour or so left for HD then you either don't have any space left to fire a timer OR your tuner buffers have to decrease to less than the 60 minutes of available time OR a timer and the tuner buffer are going to end up fighting for the same space and probably lock up your receiver... which renders that last 2+ hours (15 or so GB estimated) completely useless on your DVR... in which case it shouldn't be counted.

So again, my theory is that it is reserved space for only use by the tuner buffers. I'm sure I could be wrong, and I'll test that theory soon because right now I have about 4 hours left... so another movie and I'll be about to test the theory.

If it lets me fill the 30 hours without overwriting anything and still buffers 60 minutes on both tuners... then there has to be space allocated for that and not being counted in the other estimation of free space.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

The algo include the 2 hours buffers reserved space and display *user's *count [mins,hrs].


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

P Smith said:


> The algo include the 2 hours buffers reserved space and display *user's *count [mins,hrs].


So you are saying you can't use that last 2 hours worth of space on the DVR then? Or does it lock up? Or do the buffers stop working?

Since you are posting as if you know something... you must know also how this affects the use of the DVR when you get down to the last of the space, right?


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

You shouldn't worried about the buffers; just accept inaccuracy of the 'unused recording time'.


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