Orby TV DVR STB

[harshness]

Keep in mind that Orby charges extra for a DVR account, and the DVR receiver has two tuners instead one. They need a way to manage that.

DISH managed to deal with that situation on the Wally (switching from one tuner to two as well as enabling mass storage support remotely). IIRC, when you unplug the EHD, the Wally effectively reverts to a basic receiver. The Wally can also enable OTA support if the right kind of dongle is connected.

Perhaps the only specialized firmware would be that required to run an automatic dish.

Lots of options can be available if you plan ahead.

 

[IntelPennny4]

im sorry to all i have been really busy working. this is just a hobby to me and do this on my own time. i will get to what i said i would. i have not yet open the non dvr stb. i will get to it and take pics like i said i would for everyone. im thinking tomorrow will be the day i take more pictures dont give up on me ILL BE BACK HEHEHE

 

[NYDutch]

DISH managed to deal with that situation on the Wally (switching from one tuner to two as well as enabling mass storage support remotely). IIRC, when you unplug the EHD, the Wally effectively reverts to a basic receiver. The Wally can also enable OTA support if the right kind of dongle is connected.

Perhaps the only specialized firmware would be that required to run an automatic dish.

Lots of options can be available if you plan ahead.

Yes, but the Dish Wally/211 EHD/DVR changes don't occur until you contact Dish and pay the activation fee to have the correct codes sent to your receiver. Just plugging in an EHD doesn't work...

 

[IntelPennny4]

so my non-DVR stb is the same as titanium. i want to know if anyone knows what kind of sim this is? the boards for the dvr and non dvr or two different animals i believe. yeah sure they both do the same thing besides one recording and the other one not recording and yeah one having one tuner and the dvr having two tuners. im going to mess around with the 1 TB tonight and see if the DVR will work with it

 

[IntelPennny4]

so when i push and hold the power button and plug the STB in i get this picture. looks like a firmware aka upgrade screen to me. im going to try and plug in a usb drive and see if i can use it as a dvr device. i did try using the sim card in the non dvr from the dvr and it reads it and the dvr sim card in the non dvr and it works too. what i mean by works is that it reads it. so it makes me wounder if someone that has there stb active if they took the sim out of there active stb and put it in the non active stb if it would work

 

[IntelPennny4]

So if you wanted to add the DVR later you'd have to buy another receiver and the original box becomes a paperweight? As a business model that wouldn't make a lot of sense. Making a single box that could be upgraded would be much more cost effective. If I'm going to test drive the system I'm not going to invest in a DVR up front and if I decide I like it I'm not footing another bill to buy a whole new receiver. That's just silly.

from what i understand you would have to buy another STB and im going to say no the box that you had wouldnt became a pay weight bc its already active and working. its the option for PPL that want to record or not. if ppl dont then they buy the cheaper stb. i understand that it would be cool if one box could work for both as in saying you want dvr so the dvr side of it works and if you didnt want dvr then the dvr dont work but is there if you ever wanted to use it. i hope that makes sense

 

[harshness]

Yes, but the Dish Wally/211 EHD/DVR changes don't occur until you contact Dish and pay the activation fee to have the correct codes sent to your receiver. Just plugging in an EHD doesn't work...

My point was to show what kind of flexibility might be available in provisioning the same firmware to have different features enabled or disabled based on the presence/absence of additional hardware and configuration instructions delivered via satellite or the Internet.

This is why I suspect that the receivers aren't necessarily all that different (other than the DVR having a hard drive installed).

 

[Radioguy41]

A lot of supposition and speculation for something that none of us know for fact.... Guess that is what makes forums fun? Let me get offended by something that is unknown... LOL

It makes a lot of sense that only one hardware model is produced like IntelPennny4 received with the add being a HDD. Anyone want to call and ask or is it more fun to postulate over the unknown?

Well heck yeah it's fun!

 

[N6BY]

Not sure why anyone would want a non-DVR capable STB. Without the ability to record, timeshift, pause, skip commercials, etc. I don't think I would get much use out of a set top box.

 

[NYDutch]

My point was to show what kind of flexibility might be available in provisioning the same firmware to have different features enabled or disabled based on the presence/absence of additional hardware and configuration instructions delivered via satellite or the Internet.

This is why I suspect that the receivers aren't necessarily all that different (other than the DVR having a hard drive installed).

I do agree they're likely not all that different, but my point is that just plugging in an HD isn't going to turn the basic STB into a DVR. Some interaction from the Orby folks will be required, whether it's a firmware update or just a firmware activation code. Then again, there may be hardware differences that prevent the upgrade at all, such as missing HD interface components on the PCB. It'll be interesting to see what approach they took in their STB designs.

 

[harshness]

It'll be interesting to see what approach they took in their STB designs.

I reason that among customers without broadband options, a DVR is virtually a must. Until they discover that there is a market for non-DVR STBs, I would imagine that they would have to go with what is baseline and add the other options later for those who step over dollars to pick up dimes. For those that think they don't need a DVR, a disabled DVR will certainly do and they don't have to know.

This is very much the Wally approach.

 

[NYDutch]

I reason that among customers without broadband options, a DVR is virtually a must. Until they discover that there is a market for non-DVR STBs, I would imagine that they would have to go with what is baseline and add the other options later for those who step over dollars to pick up dimes. For those that think they don't need a DVR, a disabled DVR will certainly do and they don't have to know.

This is very much the Wally approach.

Looking at the photos that have been posted, the non-DVR PC board does not have the grounded mounting pads for an HD like the DVR version. I can't tell what other differences there are except the smaller case. After looking at the two boards side by side, I see there are significant differences.

 

[IntelPennny4]

so got a update for installing a bigger hard drive. i took out the stb HD and install it on my pc looked at the partitions on the drive and the box is using a EXT4 partition that is a Linux type. i installed the 1tb drive into the box and it formatted it but... it didnt use all 1tb it just formatted it to 500gb again. so i took the 1tb HD out and installed it in the pc and resized the 500gb partition to the full 1tb and then installed it back into the box and then again the box reformatted it once again back to 500gb. so im thinking the box is set to 500gb max and needs to be changed to accept a bigger drive size or 500gb is the boxes board max size it can handle. i maybe totally wrong on all of this and heck i may not know anything at all.

 

[primestar31]

so got a update for installing a bigger hard drive. i took out the stb HD and install it on my pc looked at the partitions on the drive and the box is using a EXT4 partition that is a Linux type. i installed the 1tb drive into the box and it formatted it but... it didnt use all 1tb it just formatted it to 500gb again. so i took the 1tb HD out and installed it in the pc and resized the 500gb partition to the full 1tb and then installed it back into the box and then again the box reformatted it once again back to 500gb. so im thinking the box is set to 500gb max and needs to be changed to accept a bigger drive size or 500gb is the boxes board max size it can handle. i maybe totally wrong on all of this and heck i may not know anything at all.

Good deal. As for a supposed 500gb limit, that's more than likely a firmware limitation. They don't really expect hobbyist people out there for their service that would install larger drives. Though they SHOULD expect it!

So, they'd likely have to have the firmware modified for a larger drive, and unless people clamor for larger drives, it's not likely to happen yet for a long time. Calling them this early in their life and requesting a larger drive probably wouldn't help, but maybe it couldn't hurt to wake them up to the possibility.

 

[Titanium]

Does it recognize multiple partions?

 

[IntelPennny4]

Does it recognize multiple partions?

when i hooked the drive to the pc it saw 5 partitions. 4 of the partition where smaller as in like 2gb or smaller in size and then there was the bigger partition aka the DVR spot im guessing.

 

[Stargazer]

I’m going to guess that you can’t watch the content when hard drive is moved from the stb to computer as a slave drive.


Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

 

[IntelPennny4]

I’m going to guess that you can’t watch the content when hard drive is moved from the stb to computer as a slave drive.


Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

im going to say yes you could be able to transfer the recordings. playing them on the other hand maybe more tricky tho. im not sure what kind of codec the box uses. if im thinking of the right thing im sure its going to be the same codec as DI*H uses on there DVR boxes. but then again it could just be a plain old mpeg-4 or maybe even mpeg-2 in there case.

 

[primestar31]

I'd say it's likely that at least the SAT recordings will be encrypted, BUT, somebody should test for sure. Then again, if they are NOT encrypted, and people post that and it's seen they might encrypt the recordings right after that.

There's no legal reason to encrypt the OTA recordings.

The recordings are likely Mpeg-4 HEVC, which means H.265. VLC Media Player should be able to play them I believe.

 

[coltonjared]

Question for other dvr owners. Has anyone found a way to schudule recordings like record only new episodes or record all episodes? When I want to record a show I half to manually select every episode to record