921 has a 240Gb Hard Drive?

[Big D]

Last night Charlie said twice that the 921 has a 240Gb hard drive, which is an odd size capacity. We had been hearing the capacity was going to be 250Gb, which makes sense as that is a standard hard drive capacity readily available. Since we know that the 921 does have the physical capability of holding two hard drives, could it be that we will find two 120Gb hard drives inside when we look? Looking at retail pricing, two 120's are probably cheaper than one 250, so maybe. It could also just be that Charlie is just wrong, he missed several other facts during the chat.

Thoughts?

 

[Sean Mota]

Charlie also said a maximum 40 hrs capacity of HD recording. When the Technical Chat said only 25 hrs capacity of HD recording.

I think Charlie is just talking without all the facts together.

 

[John W]

from what I have heard and experienced the hard drives hold about 80% in terms of hours as compared to the size of the hard drive i.e. 240gb x 80% equals approx 192 hours of normal progamming.

I beleive that I have read that HD content takes up 8 times more space so that would be 24 hours of pure HD programming on the same drive.

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong but that's what I have heard

 

[Guest]

Charlie did say 40 hours of HD recording, then said 'or 25 hours or something like that' , so clearly he was not sure. We believe it is 25 hours from what we have learned in the past.

HD content requires about 6 times the SD content capacity, however that really is not the issue. He called the HD 240Gb, whereas we have been hearing 250Gb to date. Since HD capacities are rated as unformatted, a 250Gb drive is 250Gb, I have one in my computer. A 240Gb HD is not to be found, it would have to be two 120s. Maybe someone at Cedia can ask the question.

 

[Guest]

It's possible that 10GB is reserved for system functions, such as the OS, swap partition, guide, software downloads, future "VOD" functionality, etc. I believe that current Dish PVRs have some reserved disk space, but I could have sworn it was counted in the "drive size" total.
It's also possible that Charlie simply misspoke

 

[Stargazer]

I am sure there would be advantages to having two hard drives in a receiver. If people were to upgrade the hard drives themselves then you could have two huge hard drives to do so seeing how HD requires a lot of hard drive space. Also if one hard drive fails you would have the other one as backup.

They were stating "A" 240 GB hard drive so they are indicating one hard drive in the receiver unless they were meaning two hard drives instead.

 

[les017]

It's also possible that Charlie simply misspoke

c'mon now!!! if you're gonna just be silly... 8)

 

[Ken_F]

Actual recording time for HDTV will depend on the channel and program bit rate. For example, you might get 25 hours worth of Hdnet or your local OTA CBS (HD), or closer to 40 hours for HBO HDTV content.

 

[Big D]

The just released spec sheet on the 921 clearly states that it has a 250GB hard drive, holding up to 180 hours of SD or up to 25 hours of HD or a combination of the two.

I guess this one is put to bed.

 

[Kagato]

The issue isn't usable space, it's that Hard Drive makers rip you off. A gigabyte is a base 2 number. 2^30 (2 to the 30th power) bytes (1,073,741,824). But for marketing purposes the vendors define a Gig as 1 billion bytes (1,000,000,000). Hence the cyptic message hard drive makers put on the box saying "A gigibyte is defined as 1 billion bytes". Like that means anything to 99% of the population. So for every Gig you lose 73,741,824 bytes. So the 250 Gigabyte harddrive is actually 232.83 Gigabytes.

 

[Guest]

LBA issue

I guess here is LBA24 issue. If the DVR921 have same microcode for access to disk as PVR721, then we will see 2x120 GB drives.

 

[AllieVi]

The issue isn't usable space, it's that Hard Drive makers rip you off. A gigabyte is a base 2 number. 2^30 (2 to the 30th power) bytes (1,073,741,824). But for marketing purposes the vendors define a Gig as 1 billion bytes (1,000,000,000). Hence the cyptic message hard drive makers put on the box saying "A gigibyte is defined as 1 billion bytes". Like that means anything to 99% of the population. So for every Gig you lose 73,741,824 bytes. So the 250 Gigabyte harddrive is actually 232.83 Gigabytes.

Don't you have that backwards? The number of bytes in a Kilo-, Mega- or Gigabyte is actualy 2.4% GREATER than the indicated amount. A 250GB drive would then have 256,000,000,000 bytes.

 

[Guest]

The bytes(mega, kilo, tera) doesn't make any sense here - one thing is important: is Dish implemented LBA48 addressing or not ?