# Poll: What do you want to do with the 921 DishWire?



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

There was a poll asking about the Fire/Dish wire for Monitors. But, I'm curious about what, in general, people are looking for from the Dishwire ports.

PS There are people already using PC DVHS emulators and (free) WM9 compression to create HD DVDs. Currently, these are played back in Home Theater PCs. A few WM9 capable DVD players are due this year.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=227837
http://www.vividlogic.com/products/dtvr_overview.html


----------



## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

I'd like the ability to archive HD content, so I'll be getting a DVhs recorder eventually, once they activate the capability.


----------



## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

BobMurdoch said:


> I'd like the ability to archive HD content, so I'll be getting a DVhs recorder eventually, once they activate the capability.


I would like to archive content too, but I'd rather do it on DVD, which probably means DVHS emulation (or capture) on a PC first.

-Chris


----------



## TVBob (Dec 19, 2003)

Good poll.

But I believe D-VHS will fade fast. DVD recording seems like the way to go. For example, the Pioneer TiVo 810 includes a DVD burner for archiving to DVD.

Therefore, could the poll include:

I'm ready to burn DVDs with my external Firewire DVD burner
I'm ready to record with my standard standalone DVD recorder's DV input
I want to be able to record to a Blue Ray DVD recorder's DV input
Granted, the firewire input of most (all?) standalone DVD recorders only works for a Camcorder bit rate (6 Mbps?), which is far lower than the max. HD bit rate (19 Mbps). But at least we could archive SD recordings to DVD with Dolby 5.1 Surround, and that would be pretty cool. Very few set-top box DVD recorders can do this today.

My external DVD burner (Sony DRX-510UL) has both Firewire (400 Mbps) and USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) ports. Oh how I wish I could just plug this burner into my DVR-921 and save recordings to DVD, with full Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio.

This would be a big advance over even the best DVD recorders with hard disks, such as the Panasonic DMR-E100. Great box, but it can't record Dolby 5.1.

External FireWire or USB 2.0 DVD burners would be easy for Dish from a hardware standpoint: just plug it in and go. No one has to open the box. Consumer can choose either DVD-R, DVD+R, or both, whatever they like.

But unfortunately, it will probably be hard for Echostar (or Eldon) to match the capabilities of the minimal editing and DVD authoring software that's already built in to the Panasonic Hard Disk / DVD recorders. I hope they prove me wrong some day.


----------



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

I don't think an in-progress poll can be changed (not that I would want to).

TVBob: Most of what you mention is only going to record SD. My guess would be that the people that have forked over multi-thousands $$$ (921, TV, Sound) aren't going to be looking for SD recording.

It may not be possible to get SD mpeg2 out of the 921. Consider.... The 921 uncompresses the mpeg2 then scales it for your TV. It would have to be able to recompress it at this point. There are no mpeg2 encoders in the 921.

We'll probably get HD DVD recorders in the next 1-2 years and hopefully E* will add support for them. But, I was looking for solutions available today.

A PC based conversion to WM9 will get you a pretty good HD recording with 2 hours capacity on a current DVD recordable. DVD+R is supposed to have dual layer recording later this year (8 gig / disc). This should provide very good HD (with WM9 compression). I'm VERY intrguged by the WM9 possibility (archiving to those DVHS tapes is going to get expensive).

The thrust to my poll is really to see how many people are more interested in hard drive space then DVHS. But, it is looking like DVHS is winning.

If I do decide to mess with D-VHS, I'll wait for the next JVC model (later this year) with HDMI and ATSC tuner. At least that would be a machine with useful functionality when the 921 is busy.


----------



## Mike Richardson (Jun 12, 2003)

David_Levin said:


> It may not be possible to get SD mpeg2 out of the 921. Consider.... The 921 uncompresses the mpeg2 then scales it for your TV. It would have to be able to recompress it at this point. There are no mpeg2 encoders in the 921.


The original MPEG-2 stream would be sent to the firewire port.


----------



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Mike Richardson said:


> The original MPEG-2 stream would be sent to the firewire port.


Right, which no current SD DVD recorder is going to be able to deal with.


----------



## metallicafreak (Jan 20, 2004)

Can windows emulated DVHS (WM9) do the 5C incription? Can it emulate the JVS 30K/40K so the 921 will let it record? 
FREAK!


----------



## jpoklop (Jan 20, 2004)

Mike Richardson said:


> The original MPEG-2 stream would be sent to the firewire port.


If you can get me an MPEG-2 stream to my PC, I can burn it to a dvd. It will be downsampled and not HD, but it will be much cleaner than I can do now via other methods. If I could connect a 921 to a PC, I would stay with Dish. Right now I am waiting for the HD-Tivo to be released before deciding if I am going to switch providers.


----------



## dfergie (Feb 28, 2003)

Wish a HD-replay was in the works


----------



## wcswett (Jan 7, 2003)

David_Levin said:


> There was a poll asking about the Fire/Dish wire for Monitors. But, I'm curious about what, in general, people are looking for from the Dishwire ports.


I have a Maxtor 250 gig external firewire hard drive, which I believe is the same type of drive being used in the 921. It could easily be moved to the living room. Also, I'm currently using a Panasonic DVD burner to record from the s-video output on the 921 and would really like to do the same for HD via firewire. I'm not plunking down for a DVHS until the firewire works and the reviews are in. Since I waited a year for my 921, HD-DVD-R may be out before the firewire works.

--- WCS


----------



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Plus, there seems to have been some reliability issues with the JVC D-VHS. Hopefully the new models (one with atsc) coming out this year will be better (notice that Sears is closing out the 3000? - it's off the website).

The firewire hard drive people have picked up some ground (almost tied with the D-VHS). I really with Dish would consider this (though I wouldn't hold my breadth).

Excuses about qualifying hard drives are silly. They could support it for archival/playback only, in which case only 1 data stream would be needed. From the legality standpoint, if they can archive to a DVHS, they should be able to archive to any other types of media.


----------



## moooog (May 10, 2002)

I had the 30000 - and it was problematic, but I have had the 40000 for months and love it. D-Theater tapes are superior to the HD I see on the 921 - zero compression, and the DTS and DD soundtracks are superior to DVD. The built in archiving memory is a good idea, it's a good product and is very affordable when you consider it's capabilities - not much risk involved with buying one. I'd assume HD with DVD-RW abilities will be very pricy, and I don't want to waste 5 years of my life waiting for them to become common and affordable. I don't like the bulkiness of DVHS tapes, and of course it is inferior to DVD for searching etc. - but convenience is usually last on my list of important features in a product.


----------



## peterd (Dec 17, 2003)

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Thanks to JVC, Dish has some incentive to enable DishWire for JVC DVHS decks. They have no incentive yet to do more. Once there are several competing HD-DVRs, then add-on drives could be a differentiator, but I'd bet anything there will never be PC support.

I'd be happier if I could use my Pannys & Mits deck as well, but I'll be happy to have some output turned on. If subscribers want to try some unsupported experimentation connecting other things...


----------



## Kagato (Jul 1, 2002)

I honestly don't get the PC support for firewire. All you have to do is emulate a DVHS device. Apple has been including sample DVHS software in their Firewire Developement kits since version 16 which came out in 2003.

From apple's site: "example projects including FireWireMPEG, DVHSCap, VirtualDVHS"


----------



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Yes, hopefully that's true and the PC support will come with the package. It's an interesting connection option that many are probably not aware of - so I included it in the poll.

I don't really want a PC in my theatre, but with the WM9 DVD players its something to consider while we wait for real hi-def DVD recorders.


----------

