Real world HD recording time on 722 (and 622)

[project86]

I know what Dish says (25 HD hours for 622, 55 for 722) but I hear vastly different reports. Please post your real results about how much HD content you have fit before your drive was nearly full.

Thanks!

 

[DishSubLA]

I have found The Dish numbers are accurate. However, there is going to be imprecision because if content doesn't have a lot of movement or objects, such as a talking heads show like Oprah or a movie like My Dinner with Andre, you can expect that content to take up less room on the HDD. However, if the content has more action and more detail such as a sporting event (X Games) or an action packed movie, then it may consume more space than the talking heads show on the disc. This is true for both SD and HD. However, this isn't going to make a big difference on your HDD capacity, as the variety of content you record will generally even things out in the end. This is how MPEG works and is not unique to Dish. The same is true for any DVR, Tivo included, as this is the effect when digitizing moving pictures. Dish does have a disclaimer regarding its maximum capacity for DVR's by stating that actual capacity depends on the content of the programming you record.

Having said all that, the 55 hours for the 722 is quite accurate. However, you will want to invest in an external HDD to plug into your HD DVR as you will quickly fill-up your HDD with 55 hours of content pretty quickly.

 

[FitzAusTex]

I find that I get roughly DOUBLE the 30 hours that my 622 says is available when I record MPEG4 channels. OTA (MPEG2) is pretty much spot-on to what the DVR says, and the MPEG2 HD channels, HBO (ch300), Showtime, HD Theatre, NDNet, etc use almost, but not quite, as much time as the DVR anticipates.

But I repeat, for the MPEG4 channels (which over 90% are), I'm getting about 60 hours of HD recording time on my supposedly 30 hour 622.

 

[oljim]

I find that I get roughly DOUBLE the 30 hours that my 622 says is available when I record MPEG4 channels. OTA (MPEG2) is pretty much spot-on to what the DVR says, and the MPEG2 HD channels, HBO (ch300), Showtime, HD Theatre, NDNet, etc use almost, but not quite, as much time as the DVR anticipates.

But I repeat, for the MPEG4 channels (which over 90% are), I'm getting about 60 hours of HD recording time on my supposedly 30 hour 622.

I have found the same thing, I recorded a 1 hr HD program from OTA and it was 7379 MB the same from sat MPEG4 was only 4620 MB

 

[Smith P.]

I have found the same thing, I recorded a 1 hr HD program from OTA and it was 7379 MB the same from sat MPEG4 was only 4620 MB

Did you measuring size of the recording while transferring it to EHD ?

 

[sdschramm]

Yes, you will mostly likely get MORE space then they advertise. That is because they are constantly degrading the HD picture quality (*cough*...I mean "compressing it to MPEG 4") and and time goes on and they worsen it more, the file size will go down. And the lower the raw file size, the more hours of recording space you will have.

Enjoy you new TURBO-sized pixels as Dish adds more compression!

 

[Jim5506]

Actually MPEG4 is a more efficient compression algorithm and offers better picture with approximately 1/2 the bandwidth.

The most important thing is necessary bandwidth and MPEG4 needs <50% of the band width that MPEG2 needs for the same "picture" quality.

 

[oljim]

Did you measuring size of the recording while transferring it to EHD ?

Yes

 

[8bitbytes]

Enjoy you new TURBO-sized pixels as Dish adds more compression!

The TURBO refers to a variation on the 8PSK encoding scheme for transmitting digital data. Compression is not increased - this is an error correction improvement and actually allows for MORE data bandwidth.

 

[Hall]

Dish clearly erred on the side of caution when they coded the "time remaining" counter on their DVRs and took a worst-case scenario. If they say 30 hours, feel confident you'll get at least 30 hours. And as noted, these estimates were done with MPEG2 data, not MPEG4. Smith P did a pretty in-depth test and you pretty much get double the space if you record exclusively MPEG4 channels.

 

[FitzAusTex]

I just checked again. I now have only MPGE4 HD recordings on my DVR. These recordings total 13.75 hours, and my 622 says I have 24 hours and 4 minutes available. It appears that MPEG4 is taking up 44% of the space that MPEG2 do (at least for the particular recordings I have on my DVR).

 

[ccuser]

I just checked again. I now have only MPGE4 HD recordings on my DVR. These recordings total 13.75 hours, and my 622 says I have 24 hours and 4 minutes available. It appears that MPEG4 is taking up 44% of the space that MPEG2 do (at least for the particular recordings I have on my DVR).

I don't know about you guys who may watches live tv but I kinda like compression and get more recording on dvr with slightly degraded quality picture. Difference is pretty much same as " burnt dvd vs Original dvd" quality. Casual viewer may not even notice difference.

 

[smoeke]

once all channels in HD switch to mpeg 4 the recorders will hold about 100 hours of HD (722)

i have over 80 hours of Hd on my 722 right now.

 

[Hall]

I have to believe that once Dish is all MPEG4, they will send a software update to "fix" the counter on our DVRs.

 

[osu1991]

I have 60 hours of hd ( mixture of OTA and Mpeg 2 & 4 channels) and 16hrs of sd recordings and my 722 shows 12hrs of hd space left and 73 hrs of sd space left.

 

[8bitbytes]

I have to believe that once Dish is all MPEG4, they will send a software update to "fix" the counter on our DVRs.

Hours are only going to be so accurate with variable bit compression. I would like to see a measure of GBs remaining. Maybe flip between the two gauges for space left.