DVR quality versus live TV quality

[theinv]

I am wondering whether there are any quality differences between playing recorded shows from the DVR and watching live TV.

In TIVO recorders, you can set the recording quality. why is this feature not available to dish receivers?

 

[NoWhrMn]

For as long as I have been using a DVR with E* I have never noticed a difference between the live feed and what I have recorded. I do believe that the entire stream of information is saved on the hard drive when you record shows, so there is not any loss, therefore no difference.

 

[RandallA]

I don't see any difference either. Why would you want to change the recording quality?

 

[theinv]

I do believe that the entire stream of information is saved on the hard drive when you record shows, so there is not any loss, therefore no difference.

Well, a lot of people saying that, but there is no proof whether the entire satellite stream is saved to disk.

 

[NoWhrMn]

The only reason I could see is to save space like you used to do with VCR tapes. But now there is no way I would want anything less than full quality video, espically with a big screen tv.

 

[theinv]

I don't see any difference either. Why would you want to change the recording quality?

It is just a thought. If this feature is available, I would record my favorite shows in highest quality setting and the others in standard quality.

 

[NoWhrMn]

I think (and again I am by far no expert) that if you were to look at the all of the factors that are involved with the show that you are recording and take into account the file size of these shows you will see that if you are not getting the entire stream you are only missing a very small portion of it.

 

[Hall]

In TIVO recorders, you can set the recording quality. why is this feature not available to dish receivers?

What the TiVo was doing was compressing the data to make it smaller. I don't know what the settings were, but "Best Quality" basically means the data as it's rec'd. I'm sure they then used a term like "Least space" which in turn means horrible quality !

 

[NoWhrMn]

It is just a thought. If this feature is available, I would record my favorite shows in highest quality setting and the others in standard quality.

That is an interesting thought. What I get from E* is "standard" quality. I say that because I would not want to see video quality any less than what I am getting now.

 

[caam1]

The digital bit stream from the satellite (or an OTA channel) is recorded without any changes. The playback quality is the same as watching the program live.

 

[Cold Irons]

Like caam1 says - the DVR records the actual, complete digital stream from the satellite.

When you watch playback, you are watching at exactly the same quality as live - you're watching the same digital stream of information.

There is no quality setting - you always record "best quality".

 

[drsings]

My DVR transmission is always a couple of seconds behind my non-DVR receiver therefore I just assumed the stream was written directly to the hard drive and then sent to the TV from the hard drive. Watching from the hard drive would give you the ability to easily pause and go back etc. and your recordings would be exactly the same as what you watch "live".

Is that even close to correct??

 

[bsexton]

There is no mpeg encoder in the Dishnetwork DVRs. Therefore it must be the original datastream that is recorded. This is also why there is no ability to change the quality of recorded material to save diskspace.

 

[mammothskier]

In TIVO recorders, you can set the recording quality. why is this feature not available to dish receivers?

The TIVO was actually compressing data while recording, since it had analog inputs only. This compression could be done with different quality settings (better quality = more space needed).
DVRs record the original signal which is compressed at E* (D*) facility, therefore no quality settings.

 

[ncted]

Even the "best quality" on Tivos is not the same as the original broadcast as it has to encode it from analog to digital. HD Tivos do not have a quality setting for digital channels and neither do DirecTivos. They just store the encoded stream as is. Additional compression would require decoding and re-encoding while displaying the show which would require more computing power, and the storage savings would probably be very small.

Ted

 

[Jeff003]

I don't notice any difference on my 510.Both the sound and picture are the same as they are live.Unlike with a vcr or dvd recorder when you record off the dish dvr you don't lose sound and picture quality.You don't really need to set the recording quality.

 

[Hall]

Even the "best quality" on Tivos is not the same as the original broadcast as it has to encode it from analog to digital.

Yes, the conversion alone degrades quality. Just anyone who watches analog channels through a digital set-top.

 

[steve4810]

The digital bit stream from the satellite (or an OTA channel) is recorded without any changes. The playback quality is the same as watching the program live.

I agree. What is sent to your receiver is what is recorded.

Tivo has settings because the Tivo box has to make a digital bitstream to save to disk from an analog TV signal. And since it's doing that they figured they could get by with a smaller drive and still advertise huge space by using the lowest quality conversion but having a high quality setting with not much room for picky customers.

None of these issues can occur with Dish. It's bits in = bits out. No compromise and no complex calculations used.

 

[Tyralak]

I am wondering whether there are any quality differences between playing recorded shows from the DVR and watching live TV.

In TIVO recorders, you can set the recording quality. why is this feature not available to dish receivers?

Because there's no difference in quality. Dish DVRs don't have any re-compression hardware. They simply divert the data stream to the disk. It's all the same data no matter if it's decoded as it's received, or decoded as it's played back.

 

[TheKrell]

Like caam1 says - the DVR records the actual, complete digital stream from the satellite.

When you watch playback, you are watching at exactly the same quality as live - you're watching the same digital stream of information.

That's not quite what caam1 said! Just to clarify a little more, the DVR does not record the "complete digital stream from the satellite", nor even the complete stream from a single transponder. Rather, it records the transport stream from a single channel (demultiplexed and usually decrypted from the complete stream from a single transponder), and adds a few more bytes from the previously-stored program guide in ancillary files associated with that program. I imagine that's what Cold Irons meant to say.

Bottom line: you're watching the same decompressed and converted (D to A) digital data in all it's pristine perfection, and not a converted (A to D), compressed, and reconverted (D to A) version a la Tivo. I don't own a Tivo, but I suspect it has knobs to turn for aggressiveness of the compression, if not the two converter steps as well. A Dish network receiver has at most the scaler/deinterlacer (D to A conversion step) knob to turn on HD receivers. SD receivers of course have no knobs. If you are comparing the picture on the same TV, set up the same way, with the same cabling, and the same receiver set up the same way, then the two pictures (recorded and live) should be identical.

All clear now?