# Quality of shows archived to USB drive



## vulcanman (Sep 11, 2007)

I am getting Dish installed on Monday (hope to become an ex-Comcast'r).

I have heard conflicting reports on the USB archive features.

- Is it true that the shows archived to ext. USB are lower in quality (more compression ?)

- Is it true that HD shows are archived to ext. USB drive in SD ? (in other words, they get downconverted from HD to SD)

Thanks //


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## Tulsa1 (Oct 15, 2003)

NO change in quality at all.
NO additional compression.
The show is unchanged in resolution or format.


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## vulcanman (Sep 11, 2007)

Thank you !


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

And I can backup Tulsa1's post 100 percent. Between my 2 ViP receivers I have 5 external drives and I watch a lot of programs from the archives. IMO, DISH did a GREAT job on this feature.


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## bloom (Jul 29, 2004)

The quality is fine. The only drawback to watching archived shows is that the response is very slow. It takes a long time to bring up a recording. Once the show starts, the picture is identical to other DVR recordings.


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## vulcanman (Sep 11, 2007)

How do disconnects / reconnects of USB drives work ? Can it be done with the receiver powered on ?


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

Unplug, Plug in, done.

When yuou unplug the EHD you'll get a pop up to the effect that it has been removed.
Plug it in and you'll get a pop up saying that it has been plugged in and asking would you like to manage it now?


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## vulcanman (Sep 11, 2007)

NEAT !!!


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## Tulsa1 (Oct 15, 2003)

Here's what I did:

I plugged a 2 to 1 USB mini-hub into the 622
2 WD WB 500GB EHDs plugged into the USB 2 to 1 mini-hub
Each EHD power is plugged into an X10 remote power module
When I turn the power on to one it does just as TBone discribes.
I use one EHD for movies and the other for everything else.
You just have be sure to only have one on at a time.
This approach will work on more EHDs if you wanted.


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## plainsman (Nov 16, 2006)

I wonder about no conversion for storage onto the USB drive --

when storing a 1Gb hour-long SD program, transfer time is 4 minutes.

when storing _some_ hour-long HD programs, the transfer time increases to > 1 hour, while the data size is about 4 - 5 Gb.

storing other hour-long HD programs takes 20 - 30 minutes ... is a conversion to MPEG4 taking place for some HD ?


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## Tulsa1 (Oct 15, 2003)

MPEG-4 files require less disk space than the same length show in MPEG-2 format.
Difference in the storage space will be reflected the same on the EHD.
Hope this helps


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## SingleAction (Apr 29, 2005)

bloom said:


> The quality is fine. The only drawback to watching archived shows is that the response is very slow. It takes a long time to bring up a recording. Once the show starts, the picture is identical to other DVR recordings.


Can you tell me what a "long time to bring up a recording", is? Because I don't have that problem.

When I watch a HD show in the archives, the only slow response is when you FF thru the commercials. 300x is like 15>60x, because of the usb2 bottleneck.

Other then that, it's just fine!


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## bloom (Jul 29, 2004)

SingleAction said:


> Can you tell me what a "long time to bring up a recording", is? Because I don't have that problem.
> 
> When I watch a HD show in the archives, the only slow response is when you FF thru the commercials. 300x is like 15>60x, because of the usb2 bottleneck.
> 
> Other then that, it's just fine!


(1) I find, when I go to the "manage" screen for USB storage, there is a long, long pause, as it searches for the disk.
(2) Once the material shows up, finding the archived show is slow - there is no quick and easy way to navigate the list.
(3) I highlight the show and hit play, and again, a long pause, as the program is brought up.
Finally, once play starts, everything is fine and normal.

Perhaps I am the only one experiencing this. It is not really a big deal, just a pain to access the recorded material.


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## mwsmith2 (Nov 15, 2004)

1) I have the same experience, but that's only when the drive is asleep. Once it spins up, response is fast
2) I assume here you are referring to that fact that searching for your program takes a while, because of the organization, not the response of the device. The response here is fast for me
3) I don't experience this at all.

Sounds to me like your drive is going to sleep too quickly?


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## Galaxie6411 (Aug 26, 2007)

I've found mine is a few seconds slower than dealing with shows directly on the DVR, the slowest is the initial interface with the EHD, although once you have interfaced with it and gone back to the DVR it will fire right up next time you go to it for a short while. I've also noticed that my transfer times have been cut at least in half if not shorter since I got the 4.43 patch. 3-- 2hour movies off say monster HD would take at least a few hours to transfer before, now they usually take around 45 minutes. I compared the file sizes to previous movies and they were all comparable.


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## mwsmith2 (Nov 15, 2004)

Galaxie6411 said:


> I've also noticed that my transfer times have been cut at least in half if not shorter since I got the 4.43 patch. 3-- 2hour movies off say monster HD would take at least a few hours to transfer before, now they usually take around 45 minutes. I compared the file sizes to previous movies and they were all comparable.


This is most likely a result of MPEG4 encoding, rather than the software patch increasing throughput.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

mwsmith2 said:


> This is most likely a result of MPEG4 encoding, rather than the software patch increasing throughput.


Except if you take notice he says that the file sizes are comparable and therefore the transfer sizes should be the same. It is my understanding that a Mpeg4 file of the same size would be smaller than a Mpeg2, However he is saying same size. Hopefully not straying into forbidden teritory. The file size and quality seem to stay the same and I'm fairly sure that the 622 has no encoder in it. Which makes me wonder how they do the encryption, but that is a different topic.

AFAIK a USB 2.0 throughput is around 30MB/sec so it would be easy to figure out how long a transfer should take. The big thing could be that moves to and from the EHD are given a low priority for internal drive access so as to not interfere with recording programs and playback of programs from the internal drive.

From this thread where they benchmarked http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/24609792/m/329006286831

"This thread made me curious to bench my Seagate 7200.10, 320 GB drive in a brand new Seagate FreeAgent enclosure (note, not the Pro version, so no 1394 tests.)

It would sustain between ~32-36 GB with HDTach giving it a 35.1 MB/Sec rating. That's presumably with a competent USB chip."


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## gnm313-1 (Apr 24, 2005)

bloom said:


> The quality is fine. The only drawback to watching archived shows is that the response is very slow. It takes a long time to bring up a recording. Once the show starts, the picture is identical to other DVR recordings.


We are talking a few seconds here, not minutes. This is not a drawback, considering the benefit. Great job Dish!


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## brmann (Apr 22, 2002)

Bill R said:


> And I can backup Tulsa1's post 100 percent. Between my 2 ViP receivers I have 5 external drives and I watch a lot of programs from the archives. IMO, DISH did a GREAT job on this feature.


Just out of curiousity (and soon to be of necessity), how do you track or log what show is stored on which ED? The only thing I've figured to do is maintain a database manually, but surely latter revisions will do something wike this automatically.

Thankx, Burt


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

brmann said:


> Just out of curiousity (and soon to be of necessity), how do you track or log what show is stored on which External Drive? The only thing I've figured to do is maintain a database manually, but surely latter revisions will do something like this automatically.
> 
> Thankx, Burt


Burt,

What I do is I store HD programs (mostly movies) on one drive, SD movies on the second drive and misc. SD programs on the third drive. I am adding a third drive on my other receiver so that I have the same setup on both ViP receivers. Very little is duplicated between receivers (although "The War" from PBS is an exception, one receiver is recording it in HD and the second is recording it in SD for later archiving to DVDs).

Sometimes when looking for a movie I do have to check two drives (the SD and HD ones) and very rarely, the other receiver but, so far, that isn't much of a problem. I might put together a data base application to track my archive contents but that is just something else that will need to be maintained. I'm hoping that DISH comes up with a solution.


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