external hard drive usable on multiple receivers?

[jimdandyvi]

I have no idea what the buffering capacity is. I will put a show on pause this evening and see if it will stay paused all night.

I do know that when I paused the Bears vs. Packers game I had 1 hour and 42 minutes qued up in HD.

Jim

 

[TonyT@DISH Network]

Thanks for that info, and I would be interested in the all night scenario as my 722 stops at an hour (which actually concerns me). Also, you do not have to press record on the show right? You can change the channel and hit pause immediately and it holds it? Or maybe if you are watching one channel for a long period of time you could see how far back it will let you go before stopping. I just want to be clear that its does not require the record button to be pressed as well. Sorry for the third degree, but I am so interested in this now that I may go this route myself for one of the TV's in my house that is usually mirrored (its a home office and my housemate would LOVE DVR in there).

 

[DishSubLA]

Could Dish just please be forthcoming to us (on this board, at least; I would not expect them to send out a press release) that the DVR capability promised long ago and confirmed to be coming soon in last year's "Tailgate Charlie Chat" (the one where Charlie said all they have to do is send a software update to make the 222/222K DVR capable, but Jim interrupted Charlie in mid-speech at that point by saying, "No, no. Now," and Charlie kept talking over Jim continuing to say it was a comin' soon, and Jim talking even louder over Charlie saying 'No, not, it's") and just tell us if DVR for the 222/222K is DEAD? A few of us suspect that it is the limitation of USB 2.0 being cheap and ubiquitous (every other DVR maker at that time went with eSATA, which has the bandwidth to handle dual tuner functionality) that is causing Dish to hit a wall with this promised upgrade. Quite a number of us bought the 222/222K with the expectation of DVR capabilities. Please, tell us what you know, Tony. We can accept the truth, however painful it may be. Thanks.

 

[TonyT@DISH Network]

All I can say for sure is that at this time it is not possible to run an EHD on the 222/k. Will it be in the future? I have not heard anything so your guess is as good as mine. I have a 222 and to be able to make it DVR-capable would be great! If I had any information on the availability of an EHD activation in the future for this platform I would not be seriously considering switching this receiver and upgrading to another 722, or even the 922 (where I could get rid of my SlingBox and save some much needed shelf space).

I did want to make mention of your USB 2.0 comment though. The 211 can record two shows at a time to an EHD via USB (one via OTA and one via the satellite feed), so I do not see why the addition of an extra satellite tuner would make that any less possible on the HD DUO platform. In reference to "upgrading" the 222/k to use eSATA to overcome a bandwidth limitation (which has yet to be proven as the issue with allowing EHD activation) and be more competitive with the DVR market is also virtually pointless as it is not, nor was it ever, marketed as a DVR. I will say that I am very committed to finding an answer to whether or not this feature will be available in the future. It seems that there are a lot of people that would really like to see it added, and I would love to be the one delivering the good news.

 

[leepell]

I could have made mention that ANY receiver can be used as a DVR if slinging to a Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows 7 PC as the media center has built in DVR capability and with proper setup, shazaam! You have a DVR on a 311.

Tony, or anyone else..... care to enlighten us on HOW this is done? I would LOVE to do this. I currently have a 922, so does this capability extend to recording "slingged" content from that? What exactly IS the "proper setup"??