Has Dish changed its OTA rebroadcasts?

[KKlare]

I monitor the size of my recordings and about 2 weeks ago the size of my PBS recordings became larger. Tonight looking to perhaps get a "tighter" recording of Wonderful Life (NBC) I re-recorded it. It was 8864MB versus the previous years' 5957MB, each for 3 hours. An episode of Downton Abbey on our PBS "MPEG-4" is now 9608MB vs. an earlier 4212MB. These are nearly the size of MPEG-2 recordings 6MB/hr vs. the recent MPEG-4 ones of less than 3MB/hr and mostly less than 2MB/hr. They were recorded on different 722s and an old Dish Pass for the PBS, each on the HD .0 channels.

My only guess is that Dish is now sending the MPEG-2 versions without reconverting it. This is recent and undesirable as it uses a lot more EHD space. Has there been a complaint? Or is Hopper PTAT causing complaints about the conversions?--a wild guess.

-Ken

 

[garys]

OTA is set by the local stations and Dish only encodes the signal in the receiver and does not do anything to compress the resolution of the signal. If however, you are referring to the Dish supplied locals (which would not be OTA), then I don't know.

 

[Bobby]

Yes, your use of the OTA definition is unclear. OTA refers to signals off of a TV antenna, locals refer to local channels via satellite. If you are recording off of an antenna you will be seeing much larger files because they are MPEG-2. The satellite signals are MPEG-4 and will be approximately half the size.....

 

[mike123abc]

Dish satellite signals are multiplexed with a bit rate that varies based on content. If the other channels are showing low bit rate content you can see a higher bit rate.

 

[dfergie]

He's talking about the Albuquerque locals, I didn't record Wonderful Life so can't say what mine would have been... (same "locals")

 

[Hall]

Given that PBS is mentioned, that suggests he's referring to true OTA broadcasts, not satellite-delivered ones. To repeat what others have said, Dish does nothing to those.

 

[Bobby]

Given that PBS is mentioned, that suggests he's referring to true OTA broadcasts, not satellite-delivered ones. To repeat what others have said, Dish does nothing to those.

Dish has the Albuquerque PBS station in HD on the satellite. There is no answer to any suggestion...

http://www.satelliteguys.us/thelist/index.php?search=dnall&sub=true&market=Albuquerque, NM

 

[KKlare]

Sorry, I was referring to Albuquerque Dish-delivered locals, thus the .0 mention. The OTA is still big. But now I can't get a well compressed version for saving as Dish is not, it seems, using MPEG-4 or at least not with the normal compression. My 2TB PBS disk is full as is but I was making progress on storing more with the HD .0 channel reruns. I don't want to dedicate another disk to this.

Yes Alb, aka ABQ, has 2 PBS HD channels, each with a smaller sub-channel and the main channel. I need to re-test the size of KNMD(9) given KNME(5) is too big now. Just looking for some info on what Dish is doing. Thanks,

-Ken

 

[TheKrell]

You might record both the OTA version and the Dish version of the same program, and if they're the same size, then in all likelihood they are both mpeg-2.

 

[sethwell]

get a bigger external hard drive and don't worry about the size.

 

[harshness]

If you have a drive dedicated to PBS, I'm guessing you've got others that have room for experiments.

 

[TheKrell]

I just got two 3TB drives for Christmas. Will they work on a Dish VIP receiver?

 

[GaryPen]

Does the PQ look any better in the larger recording? If Dish is compressing their locals less, I'm all for it. I'd gladly put up with recordings taking more space if they looked better.

 

[KKlare]

Dish states that 2TB is the maximum. They are often wrong or late in correcting. (It likely has to do with the addressing and could require circuit/software changes for more.) You may get the 3TB to act as a 2TB. If it works for the full size, however, we will all be interested as it is now the cheapest/TB. It is still likely that dual-width "fat" drives (like 4TB) don't work. 3TB is near pre-Thailand flood price--$40/TB, raw disk. Let us know. Watch out there may be a limit on the number of recordings/files so put small recordings on a small disk.

"get a bigger external hard drive and don't worry about the size." was not helpful as I am at max on any one drive and size does count when you already have 12 disks/drives starting from 750GB up to the limit of 2TB. (3000 movies plus series, etc.)
-Ken

 

[osu1991]

when you already have 12 disks/drives starting from 750GB up to the limit of 2TB. (3000 movies plus series, etc.)
-Ken

Someone is a Dish customer for life with that investment in storage

 

[TheKrell]

Dish states that 2TB is the maximum. They are often wrong or late in correcting. (It likely has to do with the addressing and could require circuit/software changes for more.) You may get the 3TB to act as a 2TB. If it works for the full size, however, we will all be interested as it is now the cheapest/TB.

A 612 will not format my 3TB Seagate. I thought I read on this forum that it worked, at least one one of the VIP line.

 

[sethwell]

"get a bigger external hard drive and don't worry about the size." was not helpful as I am at max on any one drive and size does count when you already have 12 disks/drives starting from 750GB up to the limit of 2TB. (3000 movies plus series, etc.)
-Ken

SMH, if you migrated those smaller drives content to a 2TB drive then you might could use half the number of HDDs for your library and still have the old ones if needed.

Not sure if you use stand alone EHDs or use a hot swap dock like I do. I have one dock and 4 HDDs that I can swap easily.

YMMV

Sent from my phone using SatelliteGuys

 

[navychop]

I favor more, smaller drives, so that WHEN one dies, you don't lose so much.

 

[KKlare]

I favor the largest so that there are not so many. I started with the largest I could afford in 2007 .75TB WD at ~$190 BestBuy. The price kept falling and after the initial 5 of the .75, the smallest is 1TB. Next I started migrating to a "stand" and raw drives to avoid the $10 penalty of a case with 4 raw now. Now I would only buy 2TB (larger when permitted), like 3 of the originals. I try not to spend more than $40/TB now, still hard to find. The disadvantages are the access time and the time to go through the lists. The advantages are a reduction in power supplies and USB cables and shelf space.

(Plug: Dish why can't you give us access to all lists like the internal list--1 to top, 9 to bottom, 5 to middle, so 1 to 9? This should work for all lists that don't use numbers for actions. (n-1)/8 sure speeds up access: simple, clean, efficient.)

Recordings are stored by .1 increment in IMDb rating from the current lower limit of 7.2 up to 7.8 (IMDb 8.0=4 stars for reference to Dish and other ratings.) The 3 drives of the best are 7.8 and 7.9 (2.0TB with some series), 8.0 to 8.3 (1.5TB), and 8.4 and up (.75TB). Drives for PBS and current shows are separate where possible. (Dish and newspaper use critics', IMDb uses users.) The loss of any disk is sin at anytime. Were I to start over I would just store it on the next disk and enter it in my spreadsheet and sort them there.

-Ken

BTW, drive makers consider a TB as 1000^4 bytes but Dish and users call it 1024^4, likewise for kB MB and GB. Called formatting loss by some but it isn't.

 

[DishSubLA]

As stated in a previous post, the size could be related to the Statistical Multiplexing (I just know you know what that is KKlare). Of course we are discussing more precisely Local Into Local (LIL) channels since we a grasping for labels here.

Anyway, If Albq N.M has more than one spotbeam (as does L.A.) for LIL, then perhaps Dish moved the channels around between them for optimum PQ relating to Stat Mux resulting in more data for the channels providing for better PQ and larger files. Or it could be that your original recording was during a time of heavy demand from another service on the same transponder (LIL Spot, I presume) such as a sports event or high action programming and the Stat Mux provided significantly less bit rate to that recording (with color, luminance, and other data provided at minimum that an old B&W film could afford to give up in the Stat Mux compared to your recent one. Or, Dish could have since adjusted the Stat Mux to favor certain LIL's, such as the big 4, and provide a lower bit rate than your first recording. This last option seems more likely. Yes, it takes up more room, but it does provide a better PQ (for all programming, not necessarily noticed on a black and white film with not much action) for the most popular LIL's, and this can result in fewer complaints about LIL PQ as often seen on this forum.

Just ideas. Perhaps you can follow up with Dish at their DishQuailty email. It would be interesting to know. And, I for one, understand your desire, as well. I also prefer larger (yes, they have their risks) for fewer HDD's, and I do count on the data being close to consistent without huge variances. If you find out, let us know.