A little USB feature I'd like to see

[Tom Bombadil]

I'd like to see the 211 be able to use an external USB memory stick to record to. If for nothing else, but to give pause & replay capabilities to the 222.

Someone could stick in a $20 1GB USB stick and have 45 minutes or so of SD pause buffer space.

Or use a 2GB or 4GB card to get more HD buffer space.

I think this would be a nice feature for "quiet" rooms, like bedrooms, where the 622's constantly spinning hard drive is too noisy. A USB-memory stick enabled 222 would be just as quiet as a regular 222.

Likewise if the 211 could handle one of those small, very quiet USB-powered hard drives, that would also be very nice.

It would be even nicer if Dish built-in a couple of GB on th 211's system board to give it inherent pause & replay capabilities. Given the extremely low price of memory, this could be done very cheaply.

If Dish releases the hard disk-less 622 in the form of a 222 that has been oft-rumored, one would think this could be done.

 

[Smith P.]

Nay, write into flash is too slow; small quiet disk (2.5" 80-120 GB) that's the solution.

 

[John Kotches]

Write into flash would require sustaining no more than 20 Mbits/second which is 2.5 MBytes/second.

Current flash drives start around 6 MBytes/second sustained.

Cheers,

 

[Smith P.]

No way, especially for HD channels.
Sustain speed of naked flash chip, but try use it in real DVR !
You'll need to write special processing in firmware of DVR with deep buffer(s) for the type of storage.
Non-practical yet.

 

[KKlare]

What I need is to download and then upload my timers and favorites.
My 622 HDMI went out and a replacement is alleged to be on the way.
It's going to take a a lot of copying and entry to get all those timers set up.

Can I do this with one (old or new) not activated?

Trying to avoid writing them all down. Some cannot be set without the missing prototypes.
-Ken
Dish 1000+Dish 500 I 61.5+DPP44
VIP622+Samsung HL-S5687+RCA HDMI up-convert DVD+R
921+Toshiba 46H83+LiteOn DVD+R
501+Sony 26" console

 

[John Kotches]

No way, especially for HD channels.
Sustain speed of naked flash chip, but try use it in real DVR !
You'll need to write special processing in firmware of DVR with deep buffer(s) for the type of storage.
Non-practical yet.

You're talking about sequential reads and writes, which will be fine. I've played with this on my laptop and have no problem sustaining 6MB/second to the laptop from a 5400RPM drive.

We're talking about (maximum) of marginally more than half that (19 Mbits/second or 3 MB/second) for a single data stream on a 211. We aren't talking about a full fledged DVR with multiple streams simultaneously or at least I'm not.

I agree, going > 1 HD stream deep would be problematic, but since the 211 only has one tuner that's a physical impossibility.

Cheers,

 

[kb7oeb]

Flash drives will not hold up under constant writes, I've read after 100,000 or so writes a cell will start to fail.