You may have read my previous thread in regards to program scheduled for recording not showing up in the "recorded programs" list. This has even been the case when the red light on the front of the unit has showed it was recording. My question...do these "ghost" programs still take up space on the hard drive, and if so, how do you regain that hard drive space?!? Right now if I add up all the time-length of the recorded programs, I show approximately 28 hrs of recordings. However, my 100 hr. unit only shows 58 hours remaining...so it thinks 42 hrs. have been recorded. I realize there is probably an hour buffer for each of the TV supported by the 522, but even then I still have approximately 12 hours of unaccounted recording time?!? Any ideas?
Recording time doesn't add up?!?
- Thread starter severtson
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 15
- Views 3K
I've suspected the same thing on my 921, and have no definitive answer, but the consensus at this time is that there's NO 'lost space' issues.
Many of the shows I record actually take up 50% more space than 'they should'. This has to do with the amount of compression the show has. High action, fast movement shows take up more space than things like talk shows. Try recording a test pattern, and it'll take up a lot less space than a basketball game.
You can check on this yourself by noting how much free space you have just before erasing one of your 'typical' shows, then comparing how much free space you got back vs. how long the show was in 'real time'.
The 'space remaining' is just an estimate, and the marketing guys sure want that number skewed to the high side, eh?
Many of the shows I record actually take up 50% more space than 'they should'. This has to do with the amount of compression the show has. High action, fast movement shows take up more space than things like talk shows. Try recording a test pattern, and it'll take up a lot less space than a basketball game.
You can check on this yourself by noting how much free space you have just before erasing one of your 'typical' shows, then comparing how much free space you got back vs. how long the show was in 'real time'.
The 'space remaining' is just an estimate, and the marketing guys sure want that number skewed to the high side, eh?
How - that sounds outrageous. Considering a single 'call' is something like 30 bytes, 4 hours would translate to something like a trillion zillion billion phone calls. I think maybe something else happened.kwajr said:
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the caller ID list is stored in a reserved sector of the disk. Dunno Dish's sector size, but for a video system, it would probably be big - at least 4K. That's over 100 calls.
Anyone know how many calls can be in the history list?
all i know is i had a 510 i put up for sale erased evrything and it said like 96 hrs then cleared caller id history and 100 showed up
I believe you saw what you saw. Just can't believe that E* would be so stupid as to waste that much disk space on caller ID.kwajr said:
Oh - no wait - I've got a 921 - I should believe every stupid thing E* does.
How to recover some space
I noticed that if you re-sort the recorded programs, sometimes, it adds to the amount of time remaining. For example, prior to sorting, it might say 14 hrs 25 mins left, then after sorting it will say 15 hrs 1 min left.
Extra notes:
Re-sorting a second time after that doesn't seem to affect the amount of time remaining.
I don't think there is a difference in what sorting method you use (e.g., date, alpha, length, etc.)
I noticed that if you re-sort the recorded programs, sometimes, it adds to the amount of time remaining. For example, prior to sorting, it might say 14 hrs 25 mins left, then after sorting it will say 15 hrs 1 min left.
Extra notes:
Re-sorting a second time after that doesn't seem to affect the amount of time remaining.
I don't think there is a difference in what sorting method you use (e.g., date, alpha, length, etc.)
I believe you, but that's just strange! All I can think of is the sort deliberately triggers some kind of disk maintenance routine.micty said:
The HD in the DVR holds information in megabytes or gigabytes, not in "hours". The "hours" listed is simply an estimation. One 1-hour show could take up "x" gigabytes while a second 1-hour show could take up "y" gigabytes. It's all in the bitrate/compression used in the broadcast.
A 1-hour sports event will take up substantially more space than a 1-hour talk show. But one hour is one hour, right ?? Yeah, it is, but they'll take up different amount of disk space.
Do you have a DVD drive on your PC ?? If so, and you have software like PowerDVD or WinDVD, play a DVD and turn on "Information". It will display a "bitrate" that constantly changes.
A 1-hour sports event will take up substantially more space than a 1-hour talk show. But one hour is one hour, right ?? Yeah, it is, but they'll take up different amount of disk space.
Do you have a DVD drive on your PC ?? If so, and you have software like PowerDVD or WinDVD, play a DVD and turn on "Information". It will display a "bitrate" that constantly changes.
SimpleSimon said:
I believe that number is 50. No way that was taking up 4 hours. Not to be contradictory, kwajr, but I don't think clearing the caller ID info is what freed up the extra space. I've noticed on my 522 that the time remaining changes +/- by 1 to 3 hours for absolutely no discernible reason. Sometimes after watching a recorded show, I'll check the time remaining and it will say (for example) 50 hours. I'll then check my timer list to see what I'm going to record that day, come right back to the DVR list and it will mysteriously say 47 hours remaining. Then I'll go and delete the (2 hour) movie I just finished watching, and the time remaining stay at 47. Then, if I view live TV and come right back to the DVR list, it will say 53 hours remaining (a 6 hour difference from what it was a minute before!?!?). Like the others said, the time is just an estimate, but more than that it seems to be an incredibly inaccurate estimate.
And basketball would be near the same as hockey.winshawn said:
As for soccer - well who cares about soccer anyway.
kwajr said:
Would that be the same 510 you fraudulently sold as carrying "zero balance" to a user when in fact it carried a hefty balance in excess of 100.00? Is it also the 510 that arrived to the user non-functional?
You need to respond to the user in question at DBSTALK.com. His local authorities and your DA are both willing to file criminal charges by this A.M.
In the meantime, I'm hounding your ass in every thread you post to.
Being new, and geeky, I just checked on my "time remaining" issues also. Adding up all the used time, I should have had 42+ hours remaining. The 522 showed 15. I understand it's just an estimate. But my experiences match SimpleSimon's who noted about a 50% penalty above the expected usage.ChrisCoop said:
I then deleted an 1:04 episode of Star Trek TNG. That regained me only 14 minutes. I left the DVR Events screen, did nothing else, and came back about two minutes later. My available time had mysteriously jumped by another 30 minutes. I was wondering if the 522 was doing some kind of behind-the-scenes defragging to reclaim useable disk space.
I'll never watch all this stuff I'm collecting. Good movies - but I'd have to watch 4-5 a day to keep up! I'm trying to build things up to a full condition so I can try out the protect vs. "auto erase oldest recording when necessary" thing to make sure that feature works.
