# Looks like D* wins the external storage race



## cooldude919 (Sep 21, 2006)

With the eSATA port being enabled on the HR20, looks like they win the race. I was hoping dish would be first with the 622, but seems thats not the case. Seems with the eSATA that it only uses one drive at a time, so it cannot use the internal while using the external, so you will need to buy a pretty big drive for it to be worth it. Heres hoping dish keeps their promise to have external storage by the end of the year, and from what ive seen in the testing pictures, looks like we will get to keep using our internal drive, and just archive whatever we want to the external drive.


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Dish's external drive solution isn't going to work the way you describe the HR20's. Most likely, the Dish external drive will be for archival only, meaning that you will have to transfer a program back to the internal drive before it can be played back.

And I think calling this a race is ludicrous. It's a single feature among many features.


----------



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Mark Lamutt said:


> And I think calling this a race is ludicrous. It's a single feature among many features.


OK, it's not a race. And, it is only a single feature. But, it's an important one that we've been waiting on for a long time (heck, you can still see the drool marks on my 921 firewire port).

In the poll of desired features, hard drive expansion was number 1 (not VOD). If I remember the desire to turn off VOD as a trade for more storage was number 2.

Having a PVR is great, but it's also maddening if I lose programs because I was called away on a business trip. Dish spoiled me with a PVR that could store 100 hours, I want that back (TiVos users have been expanding hard drives since day 1).

As far as the HR20, this implementation is almost useless. This was an easy quick fix experiment for Direct. They even say there is no customer support for this feature.

All they did is tell the box to boot off a different drive. The software is probably 99% untouched. Timer events are stored on the hard drive (so events must be recreated after installing the external drive). The internal drive is not visible when the external is installed (can't record to one and playback from the other).

HR20 users had figured out that they could install a larger drive and the box would automatically format it AND USE THE EXTRA SPACE (something else Dish will not let us do). There are HR20 users running the Seagate 750 gig drive and getting close to 100 house of HD storage (drool).

So, Direct may have activated this quick solution in the hope that people would be less motivated to open up the box.


----------



## mchaney (Aug 17, 2006)

To me, this feature is almost wasted on the HR20. It's more needed on the 622 because unlike D*, we actually have some HD content to watch/record!  

Mike


----------



## conehead433 (Aug 27, 2006)

cooldude919 said:


> With the eSATA port being enabled on the HR20, looks like they win the race. I was hoping dish would be first with the 622, but seems thats not the case. Seems with the eSATA that it only uses one drive at a time, so it cannot use the internal while using the external, so you will need to buy a pretty big drive for it to be worth it. Heres hoping dish keeps their promise to have external storage by the end of the year, and from what ive seen in the testing pictures, looks like we will get to keep using our internal drive, and just archive whatever we want to the external drive.


You mentioned archiving to an external drive. I wasn't aware there was a way to do this currently with the 622 other than sending a SD signal to a HD or DVD recorder.


----------



## TNGTony (Mar 23, 2002)

Pocket Dish?


----------



## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

SD only and won't downres anything you already have recorded in HD.


----------



## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

ChuckA said:


> SD only and won't downres anything you already have recorded in HD.


Exactly, and since I watch HD 90-95% of the time, I sent mine back. Hopefully, there will be one that is capable of transfering HD material (in the same aspect ratio) downconverted to SD via USB.


----------



## Tom-Tx (May 23, 2005)

David_Levin said:


> OK, it's not a race. And, it is only a single feature. But, it's an important one that we've been waiting on for a long time (heck, you can still see the drool marks on my 921 firewire port).
> 
> In the poll of desired features, hard drive expansion was number 1 (not VOD). If I remember the desire to turn off VOD as a trade for more storage was number 2.
> 
> ....


Bingo, Bingo, Bingo!!!
I choose to call it a customer focused response.


----------



## cooldude919 (Sep 21, 2006)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Dish's external drive solution isn't going to work the way you describe the HR20's. Most likely, the Dish external drive will be for archival only, meaning that you will have to transfer a program back to the internal drive before it can be played back.
> 
> And I think calling this a race is ludicrous. It's a single feature among many features.


Im betting someone at dish/directtv was thinking of it as a race. You notice in the last charlie chat how he was saying dish was the first to do this and that(a list of multiple things). Bragging about being the first kinda seems like a race, no? If they had gotten external storage first, im betting that would have been added to the "we did it first" list.

Also if you have to transfer the content back to the main drive before you can play it, that seems like a waste of time, and i hope thats not the case. I would hope they could make it play off the external drive, but i guess we will have to wait and see.

I also feel it is somewhat wasted on the hr20, hell it doesnt even have the OTA enabled yet, you would think they would do that first, but for some reason they havent.


----------



## invaliduser88 (Apr 23, 2002)

The only reason it's taken this long is that they are trying to do this in a way that appeases Hollywood. Heaven forbid we exercise our "fair use" rights and archive content to an open standard that can be played on our PC's or Automobile video centers.


----------



## kmcnamara (Jan 30, 2004)

D* may have been first on the external storage, but Dish won the "having a functional OTA tuner" race.


----------



## cooldude919 (Sep 21, 2006)

kmcnamara said:


> D* may have been first on the external storage, but Dish won the "having a functional OTA tuner" race.


Agreed. Now wheres the device with both of them?


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

As I understood the demo shown, it did play off the external hard drive. But it didn't record directly to that drive. I don't know if Mark is beta testing and knows for sure but the info I have comes from eyewitness of the product in action. I hope that report is true. To my way of thinking, it makes sense because directing recordings to the external would probably task load the USB pipe beyond it's capability in an HD record session of two recordings at once. Playback only, restricts the data in the USB pipe to just one program at a time. There may be a question on the 622's dual mode but my guess is that will be the limitation that dual mode will not permit the external drive to playback 2 recordings at once. But I admit this is mostly technical speculation on my part. 
Additionally, I was told the transfer of main drive recordings would take a considerable length of time but could be done in the background while watching live TV.


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

What is tested can change before release --- describing the look and feel now could be misleading as it might be different when made public --- but your description of what has been shown publicly (transfering videos to the external drive and playing back directly from the drive) is accurate from the trade shows where E*'s been showing off the future feature.


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Hmmm...some of my comments were premature and based on older information...


----------



## lakebum431 (Jun 30, 2005)

Interesting response Mark...


----------



## s8ist (Aug 21, 2006)

cooldude919 said:


> Im betting someone at dish/directtv was thinking of it as a race. You notice in the last charlie chat how he was saying dish was the first to do this and that(a list of multiple things). Bragging about being the first kinda seems like a race, no? If they had gotten external storage first, im betting that would have been added to the "we did it first" list.
> 
> Also if you have to transfer the content back to the main drive before you can play it, that seems like a waste of time, and i hope thats not the case. I would hope they could make it play off the external drive, but i guess we will have to wait and see.
> 
> I also feel it is somewhat wasted on the hr20, hell it doesnt even have the OTA enabled yet, you would think they would do that first, but for some reason they havent.


It's only a race if the team you favor is winning. :lol:


----------



## Rick_R (Sep 1, 2004)

I am not particularly enthused about the external hard drive feature. When the 622 is superceeded (my 6000 lasted 6 years only) then the videos on the external hard drive are worthless. I still would like a firewire interface to transfer videos for saving. This is an industry standard that will probably have a longer life than the 622. It is also tape which I feel is more reliable.

However I know this will not happen.

Rick R


----------



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

I'll chime in a bit...

The eSATA solution on the HR20 ...

It is a toss up... there is good and bad with it.

We have one user that has already successfully used a RAID-0 solution with two 320gb drives, to get a 640 HR20... One user has on order two 500gbs with the same enclosure, 1TB or storage.. Another has already chimed in that they are going to try with two 750's.

So it is good in the sense that you can get some seriously large storage today. 

What is bad... yes, you have a dormant 300gb drive sitting in side the unit not being used.

So it was either have this solution now... or wait a while to have a different solution. At least this way, users can get larger space without opening up the unit.



Does anyone know of a company that would be willing to work on an idea?

An eSATA box... that can hold two drives... that is roughtly the width of the DVRs on the market... just tall enough to hold the two drives and a cooling solution, power in the middle and RAID0


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Earl, is the H20 external SATA drive hot swapable? Obviously not while playing and recording, but how mush of a fit does the H20 throw when changing from the internal drive to the external drive and back again?

The main thing I like about the concept that E* has presented is that it is an archive and not a replacement. I assume that once content is transfered the archive drive can be powered down and the DVR continues it's normal operation. (Probably with banners telling you your drive was detached or attached such as displayed when a camera or pocketdish is attached via USB.)

I can envision people with a rack of inexpensive USB drives who plug in the drive they want to work with and simply put it away when they are done - with playback being the main use of the drive.

I assume the permissions will be tight on E*'s boxes (it's just an archive not a method of transfer) although it would be great to be able to use the USB drives to transfer content between receivers on the same account. (My #1 feature request, after actually having archive drive storage.  )


----------



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Right now the HR20's eSATA is a complete replacement for the internal drive.
On startup of the system, it detects the drive... and uses it as it's primary drive.

Thus it is not hot swapable.
You can use more then one, but then you have to setup your Recordings again.

If you pull the eSATA while the system is on... crash.
If your eSATA is not connected when you start up, it will use the internal drive.

In it's current implementation, it is more of a LARGE DRIVE upgrade, rather an extension of the drive space.


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The upside is if you blow the HD on the HR20 you can just replace it externally. It is cool that you have guys getting RAID arrays working.


----------



## brettbolt (Feb 22, 2006)

For me, my new Pioneer DVR-640H won the external storage race!

Its got a 160 GB HD and can save to DVD. It functions as a DVR (pauses live TV, etc). But best of all, you can EDIT with it. The DVR-640H's software is stable and will never get an unwanted update -- and potential new bugs that might come with it.

This setup, along with a laptop PC (much bigger screen) seems better to me than a pocket dish.

On the downside, its not High Def and there is no program guide.


----------



## cooldude919 (Sep 21, 2006)

Hopefully us 622 users will get what we have seen, an external archiving option. It would also be nice to get it by years end like charlie said, but who knows what will really happen. I guess its time to start saving up for that 1tb drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136061 ).  
Hopefully the 2x750gb will work out for you hr20 guys, seems like thats a lot of cost though, along with the external storage box.


----------



## scooby2 (Nov 29, 2005)

Thoughts on the R5000 if you own the 622? Seems to be the only way to archive HD permanently.


----------

