# HR22 recording capacity way short of what was advertised



## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

The HR22 advertises “up to” 100 hours of HD capacity or up to 400 hours of SD capacity.

I just did a full inventory on my DVR playlist. I have 41 hours of HR and 51 hours of SD content. Based on the general (yes I know it is not precise from show-to-show) assumption of 1% for every hour of HD and 0.25% for every hour of SD content, that works out to 53.75%. The DVR says I have 25% capacity free. So rounding up to 79%, there is over 20% capacity unaccounted for. That is a pretty serious margin to be explained just by programming compression flocculation.

I think there's something else going on. I track the capacity meter religiously every day. For a very long time as the capacity ticked down, I could account for it and it really worked out that for every hour of new HD programming I added, for example, I was losing 1%. What caught my attention is that between yesterday and today I dropped from 31-22% (before I deleted some content to get back to 25%), despite only 1 hour of new HD content (there are many daily kids shows that record each day but they are set for a quota and overwrite previous episodes so they shouldn’t net any increased space – but I checked to make sure each was still only its normal length format). That makes no sense.

Any ideas what could be happening? I did notice the Movies Now selection is expanding, but I thought DirecTV was only supposed to use the reserved section of the drive for that. If they are using more of the drive for their stuff it’s pretty annoying. I have not changed the series being recorded recently or recorded unusual formats, like sporting events which can tend to compress more poorly.

Has anyone else with a majority of their internal drive in use actually counted the hours and compared it to the stated capacity?


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## SWORDFISH (Apr 16, 2007)

Citivas said:


> What caught my attention is that between yesterday and today I dropped from 31-22% (before I deleted some content to get back to 25%), despite only 1 hour of new HD content (there are many daily kids shows that record each day but they are set for a quota and overwrite previous episodes so they shouldn't net any increased space - but I checked to make sure each was still only its normal length format). That makes no sense.


If you haven't already, individually check each program that recorded right before you noticed the big drop. I have had a glitch in the past that has caused a one hour program to record for ten hours. The list still showed it as a one hour recording.

SF


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## say-what (Dec 14, 2006)

You could have a long recording, sometimes that happens. 2 more things to check:

Are you recording on the mpeg2 HD channels (70 - 99)? Those take up more space.

Are you recording OTA HD? Those are also mpeg2 and take up more space.


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## Ken S (Feb 13, 2007)

You could also be recording some of that HD in the old MPEG2 format which takes up roughly twice the room. Make sure you're only recording on MPEG4 channels.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Thanks for the suggestions.

None of the shows are on 70-99.

I believe I have checked the recording length, at least for the stuff that recorded since Thursday night. Here's what I did. I started playing each show and looked at the far left of the progress bar to see how long the show was. Or does the glitch make the progress bar wrong too?


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Just a thought. The only way I could be recording any MPEG2 channels would be my locals. I am in the NYC market so long before they started doing the MPEG4 locals they were doing MPEG2 versions of the locals. The HD versions are listed in the 80's and I am careful not to record those.. But is it possible they have recently swapped back to using the MPEG2's for either the SD or HD versions even when I select the proper single-digit channel? Long shot but the only way I can think I have any MPEG2.


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## bonscott87 (Jan 21, 2003)

Citivas said:


> Just a thought. The only way I could be recording any MPEG2 channels would be my locals. I am in the NYC market so long before they started doing the MPEG4 locals they were doing MPEG2 versions of the locals. The HD versions are listed in the 80's and I am careful not to record those.. But is it possible they have recently swapped back to using the MPEG2's for either the SD or HD versions even when I select the proper single-digit channel? Long shot but the only way I can think I have any MPEG2.


If you're recording OTA HD locals then those are MPEG2.
If you're recording HD locals in the 80s, those are MPEG2.
If you're recording HD locals at their "normal" channels numbers then it's MPEG4.

Also note that size of program can be variable. A 2 hour movie on HBO with full DD 5.1 soundtrack will be larger then a 2 hour show on say Universal HD with a non DD audio track. Also sports tend to be larger for example. I remember this back in the DirecTivo days. Not all 1 hour programs were equal, all depended on how much said channel/program was compressed and if they had a DD audio track. I can't see why it would be any different now.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

bonscott87 said:


> If you're recording OTA HD locals then those are MPEG2.
> If you're recording HD locals in the 80s, those are MPEG2.
> If you're recording HD locals at their "normal" channels numbers then it's MPEG4.
> 
> Also note that size of program can be variable. A 2 hour movie on HBO with full DD 5.1 soundtrack will be larger then a 2 hour show on say Universal HD with a non DD audio track. Also sports tend to be larger for example. I remember this back in the DirecTivo days. Not all 1 hour programs were equal, all depended on how much said channel/program was compressed and if they had a DD audio track. I can't see why it would be any different now.


Never record OTA -- don't even have it setup.
I never record in the 80's.
I record both SD and HD's in the single-digit channels (2,4,5,7 & 13 (PBS)).

I have zero sports recorded and zero movies at the moment. 100% of this content is TV series, a combo of prime-time shows and 30 minute kids programming. I have no recently added season passes -- this is all the same stuff I have recorded for a while.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

As the OP is using an HR22, it is unlikely that MPEG2 HD is finding its way onto the system.

1. The rated capacities seem "optimistic".
2. There is a pretty substantial set-aside that is thought to be the same for 320GB drives and larger drives which gives the larger drives a much higher percent of usable capacity.
3. Content varies widely and depending on your programming desires, you may get considerably less than the rated capacity.


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## say-what (Dec 14, 2006)

To the OP, you can go into the playlist and as you highlight each show, the description and duration will appear at the top of the screen.



harsh said:


> As the OP is using an HR22, it is unlikely that MPEG2 HD is finding its way onto the system.
> 
> 1. The rated capacities seem "optimistic".


:nono2:

The HR23 has the same size drive as the HR22. My experience with the HR23 is that 100 hrs mpeg4 HD is a very realistic estimate, you should get close to that as long as you don't have a bad drive or one of those mega recordings.

As for your equally off mpeg2 comment, just because he has an HR22, doesn't mean he won't get the mpeg2 channels that match his package, they're there and available for anyone who desires to tune them in.


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## RACJ2 (Aug 2, 2008)

Since you brought this up, you raised my curiosity. I checked one of my HR22's which currently shows 36% available, so 64% used. I had 58 programs and 60 hrs of HD programming recorded. With the new padding feature of 2 min/program, add 2 more hours of HD (58 x 2 min). So the total is 62 hours or 62% full, which is within a 2% margin of error from 64%. 

There is one other variable you need to consider. If I'm not mistaken, if you record program that is not HD (4:3 w/pillars) on an HD channel, it is still going to record in MPEG4. So you need to count it as HD content, not SD.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

harsh said:


> As the OP is using an HR22, it is unlikely that MPEG2 HD is finding its way onto the system.
> 
> 1. The rated capacities seem "optimistic".
> 2. There is a pretty substantial set-aside that is thought to be the same for 320GB drives and larger drives which gives the larger drives a much higher percent of usable capacity.
> 3. Content varies widely and depending on your programming desires, you may get considerably less than the rated capacity.


2. My understanding is the set-aside is a fixed part of the drive and shouldn't have an impact on the user programming capacity. That is why the HR22/HR23 have roughly double the capacity despite not doubling the dirve size: roughly, 300-100 versus 500-100 = 200 usable vs 400 usable.

3. I realize content varies widely. Which is why I clarified I have a narrow type of content range (no sports or HD movies, etc.). Also, as I said, my individual content does appear to be taking the appropriate amount of space. As I delete HD hour shows, I gain 1%. Etc. My point was that variance shouldn't suddenly account for over a 20% gap.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

RACJ2 said:


> Since you brought this up, you raised my curiosity. I checked one of my HR22's which currently shows 36% available, so 64% used. I had 58 programs and 60 hrs of HD programming recorded. With the new padding feature of 2 min/program, add 2 more hours of HD (58 x 2 min). So the total is 62 hours or 62% full, which is within a 2% margin of error from 64%.
> 
> There is one other variable you need to consider. If I'm not mistaken, if you record program that is not HD (4:3 w/pillars) on an HD channel, it is still going to record in MPEG4. So you need to count it as HD content, not SD.


I count any program recorded on an HD channel as HD regardless of format and regardless of whether it specifies HD on the individual recording.

So there definitely seems to be something going on with my unit to be so off. As I said, it was fine in terms of the percentages approximately adding up until recently when it got well below 50%. i took a huge amount of time this morning to check each show and I have no instance where the progress bar is showing an actual recording time at variance with the expected length and I could find no instance of programming in the 70-99 range.


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## Ken S (Feb 13, 2007)

Citivas said:


> I count any program recorded on an HD channel as HD regardless of format and regardless of whether it specifies HD on the individual recording.
> 
> So there definitely seems to be something going on with my unit to be so off. As I said, it was fine in terms of the percentages approximately adding up until recently when it got well below 50%. i took a huge amount of time this morning to check each show and I have no instance where the progress bar is showing an actual recording time at variance with the expected length and I could find no instance of programming in the 70-99 range.


Did you delete any programming lately? Sometimes it takes restarting the device to get the counter to update.

You may want to try to watch (at least for a few seconds each) all of the shows you have recorded.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Ken S said:


> Did you delete any programming lately? Sometimes it takes restarting the device to get the counter to update.
> 
> You may want to try to watch (at least for a few seconds each) all of the shows you have recorded.


Yes, I did all of the above. I have deleted programs and watched the counter adjust. I watched the beginning of everything to determine that the progress bar shows the correct time. And I reset the box for good measure.


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## RACJ2 (Aug 2, 2008)

Sounds like you checked everything properly. There must be a problem, since you deleted a 1 hr HD program and it only freed up 1% space. Sounds like the counter is off, but I guess you could keep recording until it fills up. Then see how many hours it will actually hold. That would determine if the counter is off or your not getting the full space that you should have.

Either way you could swap it, but do you want to take a chance on receiving an HR20 or Hr21 with a smaller hard drive? And possibly a recon unit with someone elses headaches?


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

harsh said:


> As the OP is using an HR22, it is unlikely that MPEG2 HD is finding its way onto the system.
> 
> 1. The rated capacities seem "optimistic".
> 2. There is a pretty substantial set-aside that is thought to be the same for 320GB drives and larger drives which gives the larger drives a much higher percent of usable capacity.
> 3. Content varies widely and depending on your programming desires, you may get considerably less than the rated capacity.


Not that optimistic.

After we got back from vacation our HR23 had ≈10% left. I calculated that we had ≈86 hours of HD.

IMHO, that's pretty good. 

It isn't an exact science. As we know an hour of an action movie will take up more space then an hour of a court show.

It's not just the number hours. Even if it's all MPEG-4, some shows will take up more space then others. It is what it is.

Mike


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## russdog (Aug 1, 2006)

Citivas said:


> 2. My understanding is the set-aside is a fixed part of the drive and shouldn't have an impact on the user programming capacity. That is why the HR22/HR23 have roughly double the capacity despite not doubling the dirve size: roughly, 300-100 versus 500-100 = 200 usable vs 400 usable.


About D* HDD capacity (in general, not about the OP's problem)... something about the numbers we're all using doesn't add up right.

The hours-estimate from D* about HR's with the 320GB HDD is 200/30/50.
A HDD labeled 320GB (marketing GB's) really has 298 GB (technical GB's).
The conventional wisdom is that they take 100GB for overhead.
So, a 320GB HDD has 198GB available for the user to store programs.

By the same logic, a HDD that is labeled 500GB really has 465GB.
If D* reserves 100GB, that leaves 365 GB for the user to record programs.
If the 320GB stores 200/30/50, then the 500GB should store 369/55/92.
This is at odds with the D* estimate of 400/60/100.

It would appear that the 500GB has about 1.84 times the useful capacity of the 320GB, but the D* estimate implies it's twice the useful capacity. 
Unless I'm missing something, if the D* story for 320GB is correct, and if 100GB of overhead is correct, then the D* 500GB story is high by about 8%. 
If you use the marketing-GB throughout, that doesn't fix it. If you do that, the discrepancy grows from 8% to 10%.
The only way their numbers work is either (a) if D* reserves 131 GB for both drive-sizes (not 100 GB), or (b) if D* reserves *less* space on the 500GB units than on the 320GB units (e.g., 100 GB on the 320, and 69GB on the 500).

This doesn't solve the OP's problem. It just reduces the Mystery Size from slightly over 20% of useful capacity down to about 15%.

ps: I'm not trying to drum up D* hate, just pointing out that the numbers we're using don't work. 
D* never said their estimates were precise, nor did they officially tell us that they're keeping 100GB for themselves. 
I'm sure the marketing guys prefer to round off numbers when it helps their case (witness the industry-wide lying about how big a GB is).
Horseshoes and hand grenades, etc.


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## Supervolcano (Jan 23, 2007)

russdog said:


> About D* HDD capacity (in general, not about the OP's problem)... something about the numbers we're all using doesn't add up right.
> 
> The hours-estimate from D* about HR's with the 320GB HDD is 200/30/50.
> A HDD labeled 320GB (marketing GB's) really has 298 GB (technical GB's).
> ...


It's my understanding the original HR20-700's only had 300GB hard drives, and somewhere along the line (like a year later I think), they began giving them 320GB hard drives. If this is true, then by your math it's 178GB for HR20 vs 365GB for HR22 which is very close to double.


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## russdog (Aug 1, 2006)

Supervolcano said:


> It's my understanding the original HR20-700's only had 300GB hard drives, and somewhere along the line (like a year later I think), they began giving them 320GB hard drives. If this is true, then by your math it's 178GB for HR20 vs 365GB for HR22 which is very close to double.


Good point.

If their story about 200/30/50 is based on a 300GB HDD, then the appropriate estimates should be something like:
 300GB label = 279GB actual = 179GB usable: 200/30/50
 320GB label = 298GB actual = 198GB usable: 221/33/55
 500GB label = 465GB actual = 365GB usable: 408/61/102
Either way, a 500GB is still gives about 1.8 times the user-capacity of a 320GB.
No matter how you look at it, their estimates got goofed up a little bit.


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

russdog said:


> Good point.
> 
> If their story about 200/30/50 is based on a 300GB HDD, then the appropriate estimates should be something like:
> 300GB label = 279GB actual = 179GB usable: 200/30/50
> ...


Good calculations. 

This is a long thread but there is a lot of good info from the begining of eSATA about the capacities.

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=66201

Mike


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

There are alot of people in this forum who believe the Directv Overhead is more like 60 gig rather than 100 gig and I have seen this proved in another poster's calculations but I can't find it right now.


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## MIAMI1683 (Jul 11, 2007)

Supervolcano said:


> It's my understanding the original HR20-700's only had 300GB hard drives, and somewhere along the line (like a year later I think), they began giving them 320GB hard drives. If this is true, then by your math it's 178GB for HR20 vs 365GB for HR22 which is very close to double.


 Since I happen to have all of them let me say this.

My HR21-700 is very close to holding the same amount as my HR20-700 it may hold a little extra. My HR22 is in my main room. It seems to always be at about 50% capacity. When ever I check the prgrams they are all MPEG4. I have MORE on the HR22 then the full HR21 and i'm only at about 50% capacity.

The HDD does give me "double" the recording space. I like it so much I want to replace all of my other HRxx;s with a 22 or 23 for the extra space


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

richierich said:


> There are alot of people in this forum who believe the Directv Overhead is more like 60 gig rather than 100 gig and I have seen this proved in another poster's calculations but I can't find it right now.


I'm not sure if this is true but IIRC, how much space DirecTV needs is variable.

I think the amount of storage used by DirecTV had to go way up when it started the "Movies Now & Showcases".

In the beginning the "Showcases" tab didn't contain whole movies and used less space then it does now.

I wonder how much the actual space used by DirecTV/OS has changed over the last two years. :scratchin

Mike


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Interesting development.

Last night, still at 25%, I deleted 7 hours of CSI: Miami and 2 hours of My Own Worst Enemy. Before deleting them I started playing each and confirmed they were all an hour on the progress bar, given or take 1 minute. I then deleted them as a block (i.e. the entire folder at a time) rather than individually. I usually delete individually and see a 1 percent change (these were all MPEG4 HD locals). But block deleting revealed very different results and what's more interesting is that mathematically it is pretty consistent and adds up.

When I deleted 7 CSI's together I gained 10%. That works out to 1.43% per hour. When I deleted 2 My Own Worst Enemies together I gained 3%, which works out to 1.5% per hour. Now if you presume with only two shows it rounded up slight on the percentage, it could be that the actual percentage is closer to the 1.4x% which was established by a larger block deletion. I therefore multiplied my entire programming [(41 x 1.43 for the HD) + (51 / 4 * 1.43 for the SD)] from the Friday night study against 1.43% and it worked to 76.96%, or pretty darn close to matching with the 25% capacity it said I had.

Since any since hour would average less than 1.5% with this model, I can see where the counter would typically reflect only a 1% change for 1 deletion.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

I decided to add up all the programming in the Showcase and Movies Now tab just to see what it got me. I am curious if we all have the same amount of stuff there and if it is expanding or not.

The total is 17 hours, 1 minute of HD and 30 minutes of SD content. Not if you apply the general math of 4 gigs per HD hour and 1 gig per SD hour, that works out to approximately 68.5 gigs of disc space for the DirecTV-imposed content. So the previous post about it only taking 60 gigs seems unlikely, at least in my case.

This is also before the space reserved for the OS, program guide, user settings data, live buffer, etc. Does anyone have any idea how much all that stuff is supposed to take up? And to someone else's point, is it possible code revisions are expanding the space needed for the OS?

Do we know for a fact that they are sticking onto to the reserved space for these movies now and haven't changed that?

Also, does anyone know exactly how the live buffer works? I experienced something odd with them at the beginning of the month when I had had CNN HD on live for hours watching the election results. When McCain started his concession speech I hit record. I expected it to record the previous 90 minutes plus what was ahead. The next morning it found it recorded over 3 hour back from when I hit record. And the progress bar wasn't accurate for the go-forward from there either. It looked like it was going to cut off Obama's speech despite my knowing that the scheduled time exceeded it (I had set it to go an hour past just in case). But when it reached the end of the progress bar it just kept playing even though the progress bar showed it was at the end...


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

richierich said:


> There are alot of people in this forum who believe the Directv Overhead is more like 60 gig rather than 100 gig and I have seen this proved in another poster's calculations but I can't find it right now.


The overhead on the R15 and R16 SD DVRs is 60 gig. The overhead on any of the HR2x series HD is 100 gig.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Citivas,

I believe you have one recording that is much larger than it's supposed to be. You can determine this as follows:

Press {LIST} -> {Yellow Button} -> Mark programs to delete

Here you will be able to mark each program one at a time. Look at the status bar at the bottom of the screen. When you see it jump a significant percentage (you should notice it), then you have found the program that is taking up the wrong amount of space.

You can then unmark all recordings and cancel out of this screen.

If you no longer want that problem recording on your HDD, simply delete it and your situation should improve.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

carl6 said:


> The overhead on the R15 and R16 SD DVRs is 60 gig. The overhead on any of the HR2x series HD is 100 gig.


Yes, I believe this is correct, and the 100 GB is the same regardless of the actual HDD size.

So for the HR20/HR21 you have

300 - 100 = 200 GB of user space

For the HR22/HR23 you have

500 - 100 = 400 GB of user space

So, as you can see, the HR22 & HR23 are twice as much as the HR20 & HR21. Also, generally just divide the user space by 4 to get the number of hours of MPEG4 HD you can record. Remember, the "number of hours" is really an estimate and is usually worded as "up to # of hours."


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Now it really gets interesting…

I just finished adding up all the content recorded on my HR20 and running the math. I have 24 hours of HD, 27 hours of SD and 14% free.

When I applied the 1.43% for the HR22 it came out about 1.5% too high but I considered this close enough for the general point. If I adjust the factor to 1.4%, which is still possible as the previous deletions would have rounded to the nearest whole percentage, and apply it to the entire drive’s recordings I get within 0.25% accuracy. If I then double that factor for the half-capacity HR20 (1/2 net the reserved space) and multiple all HD content by 2.8 and divide SD content by 4 then do the same 2.8 factor I get within 0.1% of accuracy (accuracy in both cases being defined as the total recorded content + the available percentage adding up to 100%).

So it appears the exact same ratio is true on my HR20 as well. Like the HR22, this should all be MPEG4 recordings (none older that 2.5 months), no sports, no live programming – 100% prime-time series, 30 minute kids cartoons (none in HD) and some History Channel (The Presidents) and Discovery (Mythbusters). Well over 50% of the content is differentiated between the two boxes so they are mostly not the same shows, which makes the odds that I just happen to have a mix of shows using more than the average disc space less likely.

So here is a summary of the facts:

-- My HR22 had 41 hrs of HD and 51 hrs of SD consuming 75% of the drive
-- My HR20 has 24 hrs of HD and 27 hrs of SD consuming 86% of the drive
-- Based on the promoted capacity I should be able to use a factor 1%/hr of HD & 0.25%/hr of SD on the HR22 and 2%/0.5% for the HR20
-- In practice the factor is consistently 1.4% & 2.8% for HD and the equivalent 1/4th of each for SD on the HR22 and HR20, respectively.
-- The DirecTV-managed reserved space has approximately 68.5 gigs of content (assuming 4 gigs per hour of HD and 1 gig per hour of SD), not including the OS, program guide or other data or live buffer, etc.

I am open to explanations, but it doesn’t seem likely that this is a coincidental drive problem on both of my boxes that works out to the exact same proportionate loss of space or that I have mostly different programming that both work out to exactly the same inefficiency versus the average recording size.

THEORIES:

1) DirecTV has started expanding beyond its previous reserved drive space and that is affecting total user capacity. This works with the facts but doesn’t explain why some others are noting more programming capacity than my boxes. Were it not for others experiences, this would be my preferred theory until someone can counter it with other facts.

2) The ratios of 1 HD hr = 1%, etc. were never accurate and 1.4%/2.8% were always correct. Again, doesn’t explain others experience, or my own early experience with the HR22.

3) My particular selection of programming is less disc/compression efficiency than the average. But this seems unlikely given the differential between boxes.

4) Both of my boxes are screwed up and result in a coincidentally the same ratio of lost capacity. A stretch.

5) A majority of my programs are from the local networks. I live in the NYC market. I record 2,4,5,7, 13, not in the 70-90’s. However, is it possible that DirecTV is secretly using MPEG-2 signals for these anyway? It still would be a stretch that it works out exactly to the same ration between boxes since the HR20 has a much higher ratio of Discovery and History than the HR22, but I’m trying to consider every possibility.

6) There is some disc inefficiency that kicks in when the disc is well below 50% remaining capacity. Again a stretch…

Any other ideas? Now that I have demonstrated that both boxes are behaving the same I am more convinced this is not an issue unique to me but I am open to any facts or ideas. Also, I can provide my full list of season passes if it helps but I really think this is not the issue.


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## SteelersFan_in_CA (Jan 1, 2008)

To the OP, if you haven't yet, try rebooting the unit. I have had one instance on my HR21 where I too thought the counter was off. After I rebooted, it corrected itself and showed a lot more available hours.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

SteelersFan_in_CA said:


> To the OP, if you haven't yet, try rebooting the unit. I have had one instance on my HR21 where I too thought the counter was off. After I rebooted, it corrected itself and showed a lot more available hours.


I have tried that with each unit with no change. Thanks.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Doug Brott said:


> Citivas,
> 
> I believe you have one recording that is much larger than it's supposed to be. You can determine this as follows:
> 
> ...


Thanks. I tried this tonight. It is not a perfect system because it does not show you in percentage terms what will be recovered if you delete a program, it only visually shows you on the graphical bar. I tried this with all programs on the HR22 and none appeared to have a significant impact on the bar individually. As noted previously, I also began playing each program and assuming the progress bar is accurate, none were longer than they were expected to be.

The pattern held true tonight. Only two new hours of content recorded. I physically confirmed it myself by skipping until the end and waiting for it to go to the message to save or delete right when it was expected to. Yet it jumped the progress bar from 38-35%. I separately deleted two hours of different previous programming, which I also confirmed was the length it was supposed to be by phsically advancing through to the end and watching it end. Deleting two hours of HD got me back to 38%. Both of these facts continue to support the math that each HD hour is taking more like 1.4%.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Remember the statement from directv is "up to 50 hours" and "up to 100 hours" The numbers you've noted above do not seem that far off.


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

Also keep in mind that DirecTv uses a variable bit rate. Variable , ie not constant.

So the one hour program you are recording at 8 pm on CBS may take more or less space than another one hour program on NBC at the same time. Or even the same program that gets repeated later in the week.

Trying to nail down an exact % per hour is a fools errand. You can get a rough approximation but thats it.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Thanks. I am aware of the variable bitrate.

No offense to Doug intended, but I don't consider being off by 29% total capacity on each machine "not that far off." That means, rounding down to the nearest whole hour, I can record 71 hours of HD on the HR22 and 35 hours on the HR20. That's not much different than the estimated MPEG-2 capacity; so much for the MPEG-4 advantage.

I’ve now calculated the % of shows in common to be more precise and it is less than 20%. Of those, I have now personally verified the length on every single one to assure it is what it claims. So it seems odd that with over 80% of the content unique between each box and all of the content being of the type generally not considered bitrate hoggish (i.e. no sports, live programming, HD movies, etc.) that I would get exactly the same proportionate capacity on each box.

Just to be complete, the programs in common between the two boxes are select episodes of CSI, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, Mythbusters (all in HD) and Law & Order: SVU, Smallville, Without A Trace, The Wonder Pets, Little Einsteins (all SD), Thomas The Tank Engine (all SD). And the programs not in common are all similar in format -- prime time network series (Heroes, The Office, 30 Rock, ER, Cold Case, Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Simpsons, etc.), 30 minute kids shows (Clone Wars, Secret Saturdays, Ben 10, etc.), plus Discovery's Mythbusters and History Channel's The Presidents. That's it. It just doesn't seem likely that this should add up to a bitrate inefficiency to the supposed norm by +40% factor.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

With my HR21, if I delete a Jay Leno recording 92% becomes 94%, so it looks like 1 hour of MPEG-4 = 2% [50 hours of HD].
The HR21 has a 320 Gig drive with 100 gigs for DirecTV, leaving 220 Gigs for my recording.
The HR22 has 500 [less 100] which should leave 400 gigs for your recordings. Now this shouldn't be the reason for 1.4%, it may be 1.1%, bring this error down to .3%.
I also wonder about the 500 gig. I have a Seagate 500 Gig drive but when formatted is only 465 gigs. I'm used to unformatted size verses formatted, but 45 gigs [lost] sure caught my attention.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

From my calculations and others I have seen I believe the figure of 100 Gig for Directv Housekeeping is high. I believe it is more like 60 Gig.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

richierich said:


> From my calculations and others I have seen I believe the figure of 100 Gig for Directv Housekeeping is high. I believe it is more like 60 Gig.


As I posted above, I can account for likely over 68 gigs of programming on my Showcases and Movies Now right now, so 60 doesn't seem likely, especially when you include the OS, programming guide, etc. I saw others post that it is 60 for the non-HD boxes and 100 for the HD boxes. This seems more likely.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Citivas said:


> As I posted above, I can account for likely over 68 gigs of programming on my Showcases and Movies Now right now, so 60 doesn't seem likely, especially when you include the *OS*, programming guide, etc. I saw others post that it is 60 for the non-HD boxes and 100 for the HD boxes. This seems more likely.


The OS isn't on the drive, but a [large] flash chip [like the BIOS on a motherboard]. FWIW


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

The more I think about this, Theory 5 above seems the most likely -- i.e. that DirecTV is feeding me MPEG-2 versions of my local network channels even though I program the season passes to record 2, 4, 7, etc. Given that a vast majority of my programs are from these local network feeds, they would account for the large variance. And even though over 80 percent of my content is differentiated between the two boxes, it is mostly local networks in both cases. And we know DirecTV is still sending MPEG-2 versions of these same stations in the 80's. I recall reading here a long time ago that even if you did the HBO feed in the 500's that you were still getting an MPEG-2 version of it at the time. Perhaps the same is true with NYC-metro locals -- i.e. DirecTV is saving sat space by not redundantly providing MPEG-4 versions for now and only re-directing what should be the MPEG-4 versions to the MPEG-2 signals. This would also explain why others are getting better results than either of my boxes. It also explains why I saw absolutely no benefit in total hours on my HR20 when I converted all the season passes from the 80's to the single-digit stations.

Does anyone have specific knowledge that this is or is not happening? Or any other theory that fits all the available facts for both boxes?

Thanks.


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## evan_s (Mar 4, 2008)

richierich said:


> From my calculations and others I have seen I believe the figure of 100 Gig for Directv Housekeeping is high. I believe it is more like 60 Gig.


My understanding is that this is also a separate partition not a reserved amount of space on the same partition that other recordings are stored on so it doesn't matter if there is anything there or not. It also means this isn't something that they can simply allocate more space to since repartitioning with out loosing data is not a simple process.

Overall I've found the estimate of 50 hours of hd to be fairly close on my HR21 and it so far it's had plenty of space for my needs. I have filled it up at times but thats more recording things just because and not really running out of space.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Citivas said:


> The more I think about this, Theory 5 above seems the most likely -- i.e. that DirecTV is feeding me MPEG-2 versions of my local network channels even though I program the season passes to record 2, 4, 7, etc. Given that a vast majority of my programs are from these local network feeds, they would account for the large variance. And even though over 80 percent of my content is differentiated between the two boxes, it is mostly local networks in both cases. And we know DirecTV is still sending MPEG-2 versions of these same stations in the 80's. I recall reading here a long time ago that even if you did the HBO feed in the 500's that you were still getting an MPEG-2 version of it at the time. Perhaps the same is true with NYC-metro locals -- i.e. DirecTV is saving sat space by not redundantly providing MPEG-4 versions for now and only re-directing what should be the MPEG-4 versions to the MPEG-2 signals. This would also explain why others are getting better results than either of my boxes. It also explains why I saw absolutely no benefit in total hours on my HR20 when I converted all the season passes from the 80's to the single-digit stations.
> 
> Does anyone have specific knowledge that this is or is not happening? Or any other theory that fits all the available facts for both boxes?
> 
> Thanks.


Well you could try recording from the 380/390s and see how those work.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Until you record 100% MPEG4 with no other recordings, I don't know how you could get a full answer. The mixed formats that you have could lead to incorrect assumptions.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Doug Brott said:


> Until you record 100% MPEG4 with no other recordings, I don't know how you could get a full answer. The mixed formats that you have could lead to incorrect assumptions.


But how do I know if I am recording 100% MPEG-4, short of ditching all my season passes and not recording any network shows which would kind of defeat the point of having the DVR? My point is I am programming 100% stations that are supposed to be MPEG-4 but and questioning whether DirecTV is re-directing them.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Citivas said:


> But how do I know if I am recording 100% MPEG-4, short of ditching all my season passes and not recording any network shows which would kind of defeat the point of having the DVR? My point is I am programming 100% stations that are supposed to be MPEG-4 but and questioning whether DirecTV is re-directing them.


The network channels in the 380-90s are MPEG-4.
I'm not sure that you locals are being remapped from the 80s, but I do know the 380-90s aren't.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

veryoldschool said:


> The network channels in the 380-90s are MPEG-4.
> I'm not sure that you locals are being remapped from the 80s, but I do know the 380-90s aren't.


Someone suggested I try fast forwarding at the slowest speed and that a jerky frame rate means MPEG-4 and smooth would have meant MPEG-2. Based on this, I appear to have MPEG-4 on all the shows I sampled plus my sampling of the networks live (after 30 seconds of pausing). I also checked every season pass and confirmed none were in the 70-99 range. All the Network shows were in the single digit channels. If it was in HD it would say "4 WNBC" and if it was in SD it would say "4 NY4" for example.

Any other theories?

Thanks.


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## SDizzle (Jan 1, 2007)

SWORDFISH said:


> If you haven't already, individually check each program that recorded right before you noticed the big drop. I have had a glitch in the past that has caused a one hour program to record for ten hours. The list still showed it as a one hour recording.
> 
> SF


YEP!! A 30 minute Unwrapped episode became an 11 hour episode on my HR20 a few months ago....that took a bite out of my drive....LOL:lol:


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Thanks. I heard about that and opened every show in the entire disc (over two long sessions) and confirmed the lengths based on the status bar. I assume the status bar was accurate in your cases? I also went further and for the shows I had in common between both units I skipped to the end to confirm that they ended where they were supposed to.


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## SDizzle (Jan 1, 2007)

Citivas said:


> Thanks. I heard about that and opened every show in the entire disc (over two long sessions) and confirmed the lengths based on the status bar. I assume the status bar was accurate in your cases? I also went further and for the shows I had in common between both units I skipped to the end to confirm that they ended where they were supposed to.


Oh, absolutely, with the 11 hr. recording, the status bar showed 11 hrs.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Citivas said:


> Someone suggested I try fast forwarding at the slowest speed and that a jerky frame rate means MPEG-4 and smooth would have meant MPEG-2. Based on this, I appear to have MPEG-4 on all the shows I sampled plus my sampling of the networks live (after 30 seconds of pausing). I also checked every season pass and confirmed none were in the 70-99 range. All the Network shows were in the single digit channels. If it was in HD it would say "4 WNBC" and if it was in SD it would say "4 NY4" for example.
> 
> Any other theories?
> 
> Thanks.


[No theories] I'd try "loading up" the DVR and see how many recording hours you do get.
As I've posted, if I were to swap my Seagate 500 gig drive into my HR21, I don't think I would have twice the recording time.
Using my HR21 [50 hours] as a reference, the HR22 [or my HR21 with my Seagate] would be more like 92 hours.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Just watched Heroes tonight. It was a fresh recording, 1 hour, WNBC, channel 4. Recorded in MPEG-4. Deleted it on my HR20 and gained 4%.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Well, there is one other way to find out whats going on... Set all yor programs to keep till I delete... then start recording all HD MPEG-4 stuff til lyou fill your HD... the when its full, count up all the hours and see what is actually holding...


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Citivas said:


> Just watched Heroes tonight. It was a fresh recording, 1 hour, WNBC, channel 4. Recorded in MPEG-4. Deleted it on my HR20 and gained 4%.


I just did this [same show] with one of my HR20s. 41% before, then 42% after.
Next I deleted a "Bones" from TNT and have 44%.
Clearly "a recording or two" isn't giving either of us "exact" percentages.
Record a larger "sample" and then see what you're getting.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

veryoldschool said:


> I just did this [same show] with one of my HR20s. 41% before, then 42% after.
> Next I deleted a "Bones" from TNT and have 44%.
> Clearly "a recording or two" isn't giving either of us "exact" percentages.
> Record a larger "sample" and then see what you're getting.


You only lost 1% on an HD recording on your HR20 with an internal factory-installed drive?


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

inkahauts said:


> Well, there is one other way to find out whats going on... Set all yor programs to keep till I delete... then start recording all HD MPEG-4 stuff til lyou fill your HD... the when its full, count up all the hours and see what is actually holding...


I was down to 4% last night on my HR20 before deleting things -- that's pretty close isn't it? And it was all MPEG-4. I had exactly 3.5 hrs of HD and .5 hrs of SD more than my previous report Sunday morning. So 3.5 hrs of HD took another 10%, which sticks very close to the ratio I previously established.


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## Ken S (Feb 13, 2007)

evan_s said:


> My understanding is that this is also a separate partition not a reserved amount of space on the same partition that other recordings are stored on so it doesn't matter if there is anything there or not. It also means this isn't something that they can simply allocate more space to since repartitioning with out loosing data is not a simple process.
> 
> Overall I've found the estimate of 50 hours of hd to be fairly close on my HR21 and it so far it's had plenty of space for my needs. I have filled it up at times but thats more recording things just because and not really running out of space.


There are three partitions on a DirecTV HR Drive. One is under 1GB, Second is about 15GB and the third is the rest of the drive.
The DirecTV delivered content has to be on the large partition with the user controlled content.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Citivas said:


> You only lost 1% on an HD recording on your HR20 with an internal factory-installed drive?


Yes, it wouldn't have been very helpful if I was using something else.
Also this HR20 is an early one with "only" 300 gig Seagate.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Ken S said:


> There are three partitions on a DirecTV HR Drive.
> 
> One is under 1GB,
> Second is about 15GB and
> ...


From someone else's post, #1 is 512 MB.
I haven't heard the size of the second, but when Earl first described what would happen with a eSATA being connected, 100 gigs would be not used for recordings. Given the "pushed" video [movies now] on my DVR, 15 gigs doesn't seem to work for the nine HD movies currently there.


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## RACJ2 (Aug 2, 2008)

Citivas said:


> I was down to 4% last night on my HR20 before deleting things -- that's pretty close isn't it? And it was all MPEG-4. I had exactly 3.5 hrs of HD and .5 hrs of SD more than my previous report Sunday morning. So 3.5 hrs of HD took another 10%, which sticks very close to the ratio I previously established.


That's close to full, but as inkahauts and I have suggested, why don't you try to fill it up completely. Maybe the counter is off and even though it shows 4%, there is really 20% left.


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## Podkayne (Nov 1, 2007)

My 2TB array which formats to 1,819 GB has 99 hours of MPEG 4 and a couple dozen hours of SD on it, shows 81% remaining. That equates to about 520 hours capacity or 3.5 GB/hour of programming. This is also consistent with my observation that about 4 to 5 hours of HD programming recorded or deleted will bump the space available bar 1% in the appropriate direction.

A theoretical calculation, assuming 1719 GB space available for recording at 4 GB per hour would yield a capacity of some 430 hours, but my calculations have ranged from 510 to 535 hrs available, depending on when I have bothered to count up and calculate.

Perhaps as I accumulate more programs on the array and hence more data I can be more certain of the actual capacity of this array for program hours.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Podkayne said:


> My 2TB array which formats to 1,819 GB has 99 hours of MPEG 4 and a couple dozen hours of SD on it, shows 81% remaining. That equates to about 520 hours capacity or 3.5 GB/hour of programming.


This is also "in line" with what is streaming from the DVR while using DirecTV2PC [monitoring the network], which I've seen is 3.6 gigs/hour.


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## Albie (Jan 26, 2007)

Is it possible that his drive has some large "bad" sectors blocked out and the drive utility is taking those into account when reporting his disk capacity?


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I don't think that "bad sectors" are counted as being usable good sectors!!! They are flagged as bad and taken out of service so I don't think that they are even identifiable!!!


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## Jason Whiddon (Aug 17, 2006)

Bought a new HR22-100 yesterday and downloaded the NR SW.

Wife recorded and watched Priv Prac in HD on mpeg4, then deleted. Box is empty and shows 90% available, DOH.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

elwaylite said:


> Bought a new HR22-100 yesterday and downloaded the NR SW.
> 
> Wife recorded and watched Priv Prac in HD on mpeg4, then deleted. Box is empty and shows 90% available, DOH.


Wonder what would happen if you did a RED RESET???


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## Jason Whiddon (Aug 17, 2006)

Gonna try tonight, did not have time this am. Regardless, its a wide spread issue and Directv needs to know many of us are having it. Never had to reboot my HR20 for space issues.

Definitely something buggy going on.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

I tired something interesting. I recorded the sam prime time newtork show on two tuners, one on the channel in the 80's (should be MPEG-2) and the other in the 300's (should be MPEG-4). Once should have taken more space than the other. But both used the exact same percentage and remained consistent with my calculations above...


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I would bet they are using the old method of calculating using an MPEG-2 formula. Just my $.02.


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## Jason Whiddon (Aug 17, 2006)

RBR cleared my space back to 100%. Hope I dont have to do this all the time.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I don't believe that the calculation is exact science but more of a guesstimate!!! 

An approximation!!!


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