Pictures from CEDIA: Dish Network

[Ilya]

No major announcements at CEDIA. No InHD yet...
Here are some pics from Dish Network booth at CEDIA:



ViP222 - a dual tuner HD receiver.
This is essentially ViP622, but without hard drive. Limited availability is expected later this year.




DISH 411 an ViP-series receivers can communicate with each other over power lines with this DishCOMM device.







Demonstration of the external hard drive. Release date not announced yet.




User interface for video archiving: you can select movies and move them to the external drive. The move takes about 1/3 of the playback time for an HD program. This can be done in the background while watching TV. Once transferred to the external drive, programs can be played directly from that drive. Playback is smooth, but navigation may be slower than with the internal drive.
They had a half-a-TB drive on display, but refused to comment on whether third-party drives would work - business model has not been finalized yet.

 

[riffjim4069]

SOON: without undue time lapse; in a prompt manner

Ok, does anyone know if E*'s definition of soon is the same as Merriam-Webster's?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Wow 4 minutes of HD video takes up 374 MB.

 

[Smith P.]

Ilya, could you grab a remote and check what software version on this 622 with external disk ?

 

[roachxp]

Looks like they are using an external Maxtor USB drive so maybe we can use our own

If not I think it wouldn't be to hard to copy the bios from one and flash another store bought one.

 

[riffjim4069]

Don't forget to ask about the USB Storage Enabling Fee...

 

[Ilya]

From what I was told, technically they are ready, but they are waiting on business decisions now: whether to charge for this and how.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They would make more money if they DID NOT charge for this feature and instead made it a feature of its receiver.

 

[riffjim4069]

It would be a mistake for E* to charge a "support fee" when it provided free-of-charge by cable operators. If you ask my opinion, E* is going a little nuts with all the additional fees. For example, if I were to drop down to the $19.99 value pack, my final bill would be over $70 after paying multi DVR fees, additional receiver fees, HD enabling fees, etc. (and I own my receivers).

 

[Kirby Baker]

Wow 4 minutes of HD video takes up 374 MB.

Thats actually kinda low, that file is only running an average of 12.5 mbps. Full rate HD at 19.3 mbps would use up about 579MB for the same 4 minute clip.

 

[Paradox-SJ]

Wow 4 minutes of HD video takes up 374 MB.

HD is roughly 8Gb and hour.

 

[HokieEngineer]

Thats actually kinda low, that file is only running an average of 12.5 mbps. Full rate HD at 19.3 mbps would use up about 579MB for the same 4 minute clip.

Yea exactly. Storing HD is no fun. Thats why I have a 3TB raid array

 

[Kirby Baker]

Yeah, I have about 5TB online right now Cant wait for the 750 anf 960GB drives to drop in price (and come out WRT 960gb).

 

[vurbano]

Yea exactly. Storing HD is no fun. Thats why I have a 3TB raid array

Yup I have about 3 TB and a growing collection HD-DVD disks burned too and plugging one drive into the DVR, a drive that probably will only work with the DVR (or if the shows cant be extracted to a server) is a Mickey Mouse solution IMO.

 

[JamesD]

What client/server software are you using to distribute video from your server? I am currently using the Pinnacle Show Center, but they seem to have dropped the ball on new development.

 

[epsilon]

For serving, I use wizd. My player is an IOData AVLP2.

PS. About 4TB here and growing

 

[Kirby Baker]

I use SageTV for everything.

 

[HokieEngineer]

Wow, look at all us HD junkies. Who wants to bet their external storage solution is going to be like another 300gig for a whopping 30 more hours? If they were smart they would look at what their highend customers are already doing (homebrew archiving methods) and try to improve on those.

BTW, I use a roku HD1000 to playback my archived material. It attaches either linux or windows NFS shares. All the software is open source, however roku has discontinued support for the hd1000 . I eagerly await a media center that can handle h.264/VC-1 high level streams.

 

[luckycat]

They had a half-a-TB drive on display, but refused to comment on whether third-party drives would work - business model has not been finalized yet.

Give me a break! The business model should be simple: attract new customers with features like this, without nickel/diming them to death. I'm already paying to lease AND a fee to use the DVR. Shouldn't the fee I already pay for the DVR include the ability to hook up an external drive?

If there is an External Drive Enablement Fee I'll sh*t my pants. Get the change of clothes ready....

 

[Smith P.]

From what I was told, technically they are ready, but they are waiting on business decisions now: whether to charge for this and how.

So, can you pull the current version from demo box ?