# DVR Pros and Cons



## music_beans (Mar 21, 2003)

I have a Dish DVR 510 $99 upgrade in my horizon, and I was just wanting to know what are the evident pros and cons of having one of these beauties. 

Oh, and when does that $99 upgrade promotion end?


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Once you have a DVR, be it a 501/508/510/522/721, Tivo, DirecTivo or Replay (yea I know cable has some also), you don't know why you didn't get one earlier. No more missing part of a show if the phone rang or you need to visit the facilities. Also the audio/video quality, when using a E* or D* PVR is exactly the same as watching it live, including playback of Dolby Digital 5.1 material. 

You might want to consider the 721 deal going on. It's a but more up front, but it has two tuners and doesn't carry the E* $4.95/month PVR fee like the 510. Being able to watch one show while recording another or recording two shows at once while watching something you recorder earlier is a nice feature to have. I think there's a special going on now for existing customers. If new you might want to check out the 522.


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## erasmu (Nov 17, 2003)

The only con I know of is the $4.98 per month (unless you have America's Everything Package). I would say it is still easily worth it. It is so much more pleasant to watch with a DVR.


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## homeskillet (Feb 3, 2004)

When you're watching a ballgame you have your own instant reply. I know on the 522 in live mode, you can hit the 10 second jump back button and watch the play over again. THAT is a nice feature come NFL season.


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## music_beans (Mar 21, 2003)

The Cons I meant are like bugs and glitches. Currently, I am limited to a 510 because of its low price.


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

My 510 is pretty much bug free. I use it constantly and it behaves itself. I've had its since last Nov and I've only missed a timer once, and that was around the daylights savings time change.

Don't the let the Doom & Gloom posts fool you. The 510 is a solid DVR.


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## Link (Feb 2, 2004)

One con is that the picture is not as sharp on the DVRs than with regular receivers. However, I wouldn't use a regular receiver for anything. I usually watch all taped stuff hardly ever live.


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

I protest that "con", the Picture is equal from my 510 and the 4900 that it replaced.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Link said:


> One con is that the picture is not as sharp on the DVRs than with regular receivers. However, I wouldn't use a regular receiver for anything. I usually watch all taped stuff hardly ever live.


I don't see how this can be the case using receivers of more or less the same generation. Have you ever actually tried a straight A-B comparison using the same cabling type? If you watch your DVR over, say, composite, and you watch your non-DVR over, say, S-Video, it's quite possible to get different picture qualities, yes. However, if you are using identical wiring / input configurations, you should in fact see an identical picture.

Please note that this can vary somewhat depending on the electronics in the unit, though (e.g. compare a 6000 to a 301 watching the same SD satellite channel, both of which are non-DVRs, and the picture quality can differ). So there is some truth to the fact that different receivers sometimes produce slightly different images, but this shouldn't be a case of DVRs producing sub-standard images when compared to non-DVRs.

Why? Because Dish Network DVRs do not re-compress the signal. They write the Mpeg2 stream directly to disk, without re-compressing or transcoding the signal. This is in sharp contrast to a stand-alone device like a ReplayTV, which certainly will re-compress any signal it is recording (since the signal is uncompressed, sent to it, and then recompressed).


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

You shouldn't see any SUBSTANTIAL picture degradation from the DVR510 compared to a nonDVR receiver that uses the same video chips. I don't see any difference in my 510 compared to my 4900 either, even on the recorded stuff.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Link said:


> One con is that the picture is not as sharp on the DVRs than with regular receivers. However, I wouldn't use a regular receiver for anything. I usually watch all taped stuff hardly ever live.


This is absolutely FALSE! Digital data is the same whether it is live or recorded and played back. There is NO difference in PQ whatsoever. BTW, your DVR does not "tape", it records digitally. The fact that you refer to your DVR as "taping" is noteworthy.

Any differences you may have noticed are due to other variables, not the DVR.


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## ypsiguy (Jan 28, 2004)

Cyclone said:


> I protest that "con", the Picture is equal from my 510 and the 4900 that it replaced.


Same here, my 510 has the best picture, followed by the 501. The 301's when I was using them were dead last out the bunch.


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## Link (Feb 2, 2004)

Nick said:


> This is absolutely FALSE! Digital data is the same whether it is live or recorded and played back. There is NO difference in PQ whatsoever. BTW, your DVR does not "tape", it records digitally. The fact that you refer to your DVR as "taping" is noteworthy.
> 
> Any differences you may have noticed are due to other variables, not the DVR.


Well there has to be something to it, especially with a big 50 inch TV. My neighbors have Tivo and the picture is down right blurry at times on certain shows but with a regular receiver the picture is clear.

I will say that the 721 comes closer to a regular receiver picture like with the 301, but the 522 was terrible and grainy. There definitely was a difference with it and that's why I have it put away until the day Dish Network releases reliable software for it and better features.


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## homeskillet (Feb 3, 2004)

If they are using a TIVO with Dish Network, yes it will have picture quality loss. The digital signal is converted to analog and into your TIVO and back into digital. 

With DISH DVR's it records the mpeg2 stream that is fed into the reciever directly onto the hard drive. No decompression. I imagine the DirecTIVO's do the same as DISH DVR's?


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Apparently my post pointing out that distinction (storing the signal as is digitally vs. converting it to analog, back to digital, and then recompressing it) was completely ignored. Hmmm.

If at all possible, you want an integrated unit which does both the reception / tuning of the signal and the storing of the signal (a Dish PVR or DirecTivo). If the signal ever leaves that unit, it's being sent in some non-MPEG format, and hence has already been decompressed, so another unit which wants to store it has to re-compress it, causing a loss of perceived quality. A stand-alone Tivo or ReplayTV will give you a sub-standard picture compared to the original, yes.

Have you ever noticed how there's no quality setting on Dish PVRs? That's because there's no signal re-compressing being done, and hence no need to ask the user how much compression should be applied.


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## Guest (May 27, 2004)

Don't listen to all of the uber-negative people. Seriously, I think there are people who spend all their time looking for reasons to complain about their satellite systems.

You'll love the 510, it's worked wonderfully for me, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the Tivo, but a software upgrade sometime this summer should at least bring it a little bit closer.

It's wonderful to have a DVR, and this one works great, and has lots of recording space! Enjoy


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

BTW, doesn't this thread belong in the Dish DVR Discussion forum?


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

_No, in my opinion, it belongs in the general forum since it covers all dvrs, not just DishDVR. - *Holtz*_


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## dfergie (Feb 28, 2003)

I like my 501, the only glitch I have had was the time change week when I missed Survivor. But I got Jeopardy and Wheel of fortune  That being said, I love my Replay it has so many more features, the only one it lacks from the 501 is the ability to back step the program being buffered and start recording. Another drawback is no internal reciever but upgradable hard drive, ethernet connection and archiveability to computer and streaming make up for that. PQ better on Replay because I only record downrezzed hd on it  I have had the 501 for a couple of years and have a couple of videos on it from Dec of 02, so it has been stable.


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## DarrellP (Apr 24, 2002)

And Name Based recording is coming soon so those missed episodes will be a thing of the past.


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## dfergie (Feb 28, 2003)

Another pro for the 501/508 and I guess the 510 is the guide info is in the Hard drive, so you can instantly go days into the future instead of waiting for guide info to load  Replay will go 9 days, do not remember how far the 501 wil go.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Gee, my four-year-old Dishplayers (2-7200s) do all those things and more - and they work like a charm. The wireless keyboard is icing on the cake, so to speak.

Pity they're so obsolete. :grin:


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Nick said:


> Gee, my four-year-old Dishplayers (2-7200s) do all those things and more - and they work like a charm. The wireless keyboard is icing on the cake, so to speak.
> 
> Pity they're so obsolete. :grin:


And who wrote the software for your Dishplayers, gee, not Echostar.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

What the hell IS your point, or do you even have one?

Microsoak did author the PTV side of the s/w, and it was screwed up OOB. MS bailed and EchoStar kept working on the s/w until they finally got it right. Thanks, Charlie!


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Nick said:


> What the hell IS your point, or do you even have one?
> 
> Microsoak did author the PTV side of the s/w, and it was screwed up OOB. MS bailed and EchoStar kept working on the s/w until they finally got it right. Thanks, Charlie!


Sorry, I seemed to remember on the Chats that Charlie always said that Echostar was waiting on Microsoft to fix something, not that they were fixing it.

So we have another vote for the Echostar puts out POS hardware/software but give them a few years they'll make it right camp. If you're so patient with them why are you such a rag to everyone else?


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## catman (Jun 27, 2002)

I saw at bestbuy yesterday a DVR forgot the price . Tivo basic is free .


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

If you use a standard alone unit (rather than one integrated into your satellite receiver), there will be some quality degradation, as noted several times earlier in the thread. The exact amount depends on the quality setting being used for the DVR.

In my opinion, it's much easier to use DVR functionality which is integrated with your satellite service, rather than having to have a separate box and worry about it having its own guide, controlling the satellite receiver, etc. etc.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Link said:


> One con is that the picture is not as sharp on the DVRs than with regular receivers. However, I wouldn't use a regular receiver for anything. I usually watch all taped stuff hardly ever live.


Only if you aren't using an intergrated receiver/DVR unit. Both the DishDVR and the DirecTiVo record the datastream as it comes down from the satellite, thus it's already digital.

A standalone DVR, however, has to encode the signal using a on-board MPEG chip. I don't know on a replay, but there is a quality adjustment on a standalone TiVo that trades off quality for more recording time. Since Dish and DirecTV (in the name of squeezing more channels onto a transponder) use expensive compression technology, no quality setting is needed.

There is, of course, the cable issue. But one thing is for certain... I won't go back to cable unless I have to, and they have to pry my DVR from my hands. Classes comes first, work comes second, TeeVee comes third. And I am not about to schedule my classes around a TV show.


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## dfergie (Feb 28, 2003)

I usually only record downrezzed hd on my replay(except for upconverted survivors)  The Replay has option for standard, medium and High quality. On the replay forums they claim medium is near dvd quaility, don't know only record on high. ( I know the bitrate is high when I convert a replay video to dvd) and the quality is certainly better than my sd 501. I bought another replay last week and put it with my X-1, I can stream anything from either replay and have been stuck watching all the downrezzed hd with my x-1  I put a 200 gig drive in my first replay a couple of months ago, 200 gigs = 200 hours standard quality or 67 hours at hq, I have since had to put the original 40 gig drive back in it as a slave drive as I was running out of space.... Replay outputs component out-progressive scan. Oh yeah when I got my first replay and the drive was empty... I had 13 hours of buffer time(with the 40 gig drive) don't know what the 200 would show...


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

You are correct that the quality of down-converted HD, recompressed and stored on an external ReplayTV or Tivo will be better than SD content stored in its original form on the 501/508/510. However, this is because the source quality is so much better, not because the ReplayTV is doing anything particularly good here; it is still degrading the image to some extent.

If you want the proper comparison, record HD content on the 921, and then compare that to re-compressing it and storing it on the ReplayTV; obviously the content when viewed on the 921 will be superior. Hence, the point I'm trying to make is that you can't do an apples to oranges comparison with the 501 and HD content; the 501/508/510 are for SD, and give the best recording quality one can get on SD, since they store the feed directly as it comes from Dish (complete with any and all Dish overcompression artifacts).


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## kwajr (Apr 7, 2004)

Cyclone said:


> I protest that "con", the Picture is equal from my 510 and the 4900 that it replaced.


me too 510 301


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