some questions about our sat/cable DVRs

[Seeker47]

1. If you have a lot more years experience with this than I do (which is less than 2 years), how long should I expect the receiver box to last, and especially how long should I expect the HDD in the DVR to last ? Mine are ON 24/7, which I would guess is pretty typical, as it is the only way to have the "Rewind Live" / joined-the-broadcast-late feature, plus several other system features. It seems to me this must be fairly akin to an always-on server, where the HDD runs continuously. And that probably equates to a shorter hardware lifespan ?

[One receiver box here got fried by a power outage we had in this area a couple months back, despite all of that equipment having power protection ahead of it. Fortunately, two other boxes were not affected, so far as I can tell.]

2. Another guess I would make is that recording space on the HDD is released on a Last Out, First In basis ? I may be able to test this, because some concert material I recorded from PBS recently had scattered minutes that were garbled by freezes or blocky picture breakups. If this is an indication of some HDD problem, I know what was recorded right after I deleted that program -- so perhaps I will see similar problems with it. (But I'm hoping this was actually a transmission glitch, rather than a hard drive problem.)

3. Do the HDDs in these DVR boxes (DirecTV, in my case) have some algorithm that maps out bad sectors as they develop, such as should happen with the HDD in your PC ? (Or maybe it happens when you defrag -- I'm not sure.)

4. I think that if / when the box or HDD goes, whatever movies etc. we had on there is just gone ? And there is no real way to back it up, en masse, ahead of time ? (Supposedly, there once was a way with DISH, but that was the only exception. Oh, wait a minute -- Tivo 2 Go, so that makes two exceptions. But neither applies to me.) I have a hard time keeping my DVR storage at more than 50 % free space, and that's a lot of stuff I hoped to watch.

[Seeker47]

BUMP.

Plus these updates: Like Samsung with their Blu-Ray players, DirecTV continues pushing software updates our way, whether we happen to want them or not. They are probably even less open to our declining them with DirecTV. I like to offload a fair amount of stuff to my Pioneer DVDR, and now I have to put up with their obscuring error message box ("Your cables are NOT HD. Please Reset your receiver to SD mode by pressing EXIT on your remote.") Yeah, I know that device is not fed by HD cables -- DUH ! Had I not set up extra recording time defaults both before and after each item -- allowing enough time for that message to clear on its own -- that annoying box would have defaced many an item I wanted to archive. This is almost as annoying as the goddamn 'Test of the Emergency Broadcast Network' that just unnecessarily ruined the middle of a rarely screened film I had been waiting a few years to record. Really ? You idiots couldn't schedule that test a few minutes after the movie was over ?!

Another recent example is DirecTV suddenly switching us over to a default of a new "Power Saving Mode", where the box apparently goes to sleep (?) if it has seen no deliberate activity for four hours. When you turn it back ON the next day, ti can take a ridiculous amount of time to power back up, and your last A/B channel flashback function is gone. While this does not seem to lose any scheduled recording events, I have to seriously wonder how deeply asleep the box actually was, and just how much power it could really be saving by doing this ? Why ? The Lookback / Chase Play feature still works, meaning that you can still rewind to view the previous 90 minutes of whatever was coming in on the channel you were tuned to. If the HDD was still doing that, I don't see how we could have been saving much power. So, this looks to be a stupid and useless change. Screw the power saving ! I've set the boxes back to their original, Always On behavior.

And I would still very much like to get some good info on my earlier questions, about DVR box longevity etc.

[edDV]

#1

and especially how long should I expect the HDD in the DVR to last ?

HDD should fail in first 6 mo (in warranty) or in decline after 4+ years of use. The longer it goes after 4 years continuous use, the more likely it will fail.

Ref Google.

While this does not seem to lose any scheduled recording events, I have to seriously wonder how deeply asleep the box actually was, and just how much power it could really be saving by doing this ? Why ?

These boxes never turn off. Just go into low power mode. It will power down a connected "Energy Saving" receiver and TV. Neither of those fully power down either.

[jagabo]

These boxes never turn off. Just go into low power mode. It will power down a connected "Energy Saving" receiver and TV. Neither of those fully power down either.

Many don't even go into a low power mode. Our old cable DVR consumed 120 watts whether it was "off" or "on". It finally died and we got a new one. It consumes something like 25 watts -- all the time.

[jman98]

In your first post, questions 2 and 3 probably can only be answered by someone who actually has first hand knowledge of how the device actually works, such as someone in IT at DirecTV or someone who works for the company that actually designed the device.

With regards to question 4, you can send the output to a DVD recorder and record it that way, but that's not really "en masse". Look, you've been around the forums for a long time and you're not some dumb newbie. You know good and well that Hollywood doesn't want you to record ANYTHING from TV. They just can't legally prevent it. But what they can do, and DirecTV and cable providers are VERY happy to comply, is to make it inconvenient as hell to do anything but watch the video. So usually the videos are recorded using proprietary encryption so you can't really do anything with them outside of the DVR. Very few customers care as the number of people in the USA and Canada who actually want to keep copies of recordings around to re-watch is extremely low. So there is no reason for the companies to not make Hollywood happy because almost nobody cares about the limitations.

[jagabo]

2. Another guess I would make is that recording space on the HDD is released on a Last Out, First In basis ?

Our cable DVR has several settings (per recording) including, keep for 1 week, keep until next episode, erase only when space needed, don't erase, etc.

[Seeker47]

In your first post, questions 2 and 3 probably can only be answered by someone who actually has first hand knowledge of how the device actually works, such as someone in IT at DirecTV or someone who works for the company that actually designed the device.

I may have to do that, insofar as I've started getting spontaneous system reboots on a couple of their DVR receivers -- each with only about 1.5 years worth of use. On one this is infrequent, on the other (and main one) up to a couple times per day, but unpredictable. Based on some preliminary online reading, this could be due to a bad firmware release or a HDD issue or some other component starting to fail. There is no indication that this is a power-related issue.

With regards to question 4, you can send the output to a DVD recorder and record it that way, but that's not really "en masse". Look, you've been around the forums for a long time and you're not some dumb newbie. You know good and well that Hollywood doesn't want you to record ANYTHING from TV. They just can't legally prevent it. But what they can do, and DirecTV and cable providers are VERY happy to comply, is to make it inconvenient as hell to do anything but watch the video. So usually the videos are recorded using proprietary encryption so you can't really do anything with them outside of the DVR. Very few customers care as the number of people in the USA and Canada who actually want to keep copies of recordings around to re-watch is extremely low. So there is no reason for the companies to not make Hollywood happy because almost nobody cares about the limitations.

Here's the flip side of that: We here at places like VH or AVS are hardly within the sample norms; we are enthusiasts and buffs / collectors. I don't give a flying **** what Hollywood or the providers want: these are the things that are important or essential to me. And I always vote with my wallet. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $150./mo. to the cable / sat provider, and not be able to do this the way that I want to do it. At that point, I'm GONE ! But before reaching that last resort, I'll do whatever I have to do -- whether it's the Fury gizmo, or Tivo 2 Go, or whatever effective option may exist -- without being overly concerned about the price.

[yoda313]

I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $150./mo. to the cable / sat provider, and not be able to do this the way that I want to do it. At that point, I'm GONE ! But before reaching that last resort, I'll do whatever I have to do -- whether it's the Fury gizmo, or Tivo 2 Go, or whatever effective option may exist -- without being overly concerned about the price.

For OTA hd material its simple - just use a computer hd capture unit and save to a harddrive.

For cable/sat hd material you are extremely limited on your preservation methods as mentioned already.

Basically if you don't want to do the dvr and have high speed internet you can do hulu. You can do free hulu on the pc and pay 8.00 or 10.00 a month or whatever it is now for hulu plus on multiple settop units - just like netflix.

Also the xbox 360 and ps3 services have quick returns on new tv shows of course its pay per episode or buy a season at a slightly reduced cost per show. Of course you better have a big harddrive for that.

VUDU HD is very good as well.

But you should know the days of simple recording like analog cable are over and will likely never come back.

My solution is two fold - 1 -wait for the season to be on dvd/bluray and buy it when it comes out 2 - save the recording and dub to my hauppauge hd pvr. I get 720p and 5.1 (if originally broadcast in 5.1) and it looks pretty damn good.

I haven't done my hd pvr dubbing much recently but I just did do a recent history channel repeat that I wanted to save. And I finally made an avchd dvdr from a dubbing I did awhile ago.

If you go tivos route your double paying essentially - you still have to pay the cable/sat companies to get access to the hd channels and then to tivo to use their system.

Personally I'm ok with doing the dvr for the time being. My personal situation is at a point I can do the dvr. If it comes to it I can drop the dvr and let go of hd for awhile if the circumstances warrant it. I'll know that most things come to dvd/bluray eventually IF they are big enough. Only downside is live events and special things that don't come around all the time.

But thats what YOUTUBE is for! I've recently dug up a lot of stuff on youtube I've been trying to find and saving with its handy dandy download button to sd mp4 (and hd when available). I'll be burning these to dvdr and backup to an extra harddrive eventually. And I'll be using it with my ps3/xbox 360 and wdtv gen 1 whenever I like.

For now those are the choices. It is what it is. We have to work around it the best we can.