Some Interesting Dish Info
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
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Im paying $40 to be able to keep all my recordings in HD when I travel out of town for 2-3 weeks at a time.
It amazes me how many of you want to keep video archives of Dish network programming, I mean come on. Go buy dvd's/blu rays/hd dvd's.
I cannot see why youd want to archive 500 hours of dish programming. If you are gonna worry about Charlie changing something to hurt your collection, thats part of the gamble. Me, Ill just buy blu rays and dvd's.
It amazes me how many of you want to keep video archives of Dish network programming, I mean come on. Go buy dvd's/blu rays/hd dvd's.
I cannot see why youd want to archive 500 hours of dish programming. If you are gonna worry about Charlie changing something to hurt your collection, thats part of the gamble. Me, Ill just buy blu rays and dvd's.
They showed off some cool stuff having to do with windows home server earlier this year. I was hoping that they would also enable the network card so we could record to large storage deviece like a NAS.
Windows Home Server and NAS have very little in common. Windows Home Server seems to be a turnkey solution to a Windows Media Server. This must not be confused with a network of SMB shares.
I view the USB HD issue still as an incomplete solution. I really want to see the home media server with ethernet working (and I hope they do not charge another $40 to use that). I will probably fork over the $$ for this feature, not to archive 1000 episodes of some TV program, but to have the convience of being able to watch a recorded show where I want to watch it. It is still a pain, I have to take the drive to one 622, move the recording, then schlep the drive over to another 622 to watch it.
What I really want to see is the ability to browse all the DVRs in the house (via ethernet), pick the show I want, and transfer the show to the DVR I want to watch it on. The HP home media server they demoed was close, but you still had to go to the source DVR and upload the program to the server. I know I can probably work around this with the wireless remotes and use the TV2 backfeed to work the remote DVR to do the upload.
I will probably archive a few items. Not much, and if the $40 was only for that I would not pay, but I want to be able to use mutiple 622s to record, and watch where I want to watch, so I will pay for the eqivalent of the old days "sneaker net"
What I really want to see is the ability to browse all the DVRs in the house (via ethernet), pick the show I want, and transfer the show to the DVR I want to watch it on. The HP home media server they demoed was close, but you still had to go to the source DVR and upload the program to the server. I know I can probably work around this with the wireless remotes and use the TV2 backfeed to work the remote DVR to do the upload.
I will probably archive a few items. Not much, and if the $40 was only for that I would not pay, but I want to be able to use mutiple 622s to record, and watch where I want to watch, so I will pay for the eqivalent of the old days "sneaker net"
Well when you do see the whole house dvr, the dvr fee will most likely be $40.00 per tuner ,knowing DISH and the way they seem to like to Milk their high end customers.
It is funny to me that Directv is thinking of an ALL ACCESS pack for all the Premier pack + locals+ hd and NO additional receiver fees or dvr fees for $119.99, while DISH is continuing to jack the price up on everything . THE DVR fees PER RECEIVER, the No connection fee for 5.00 per receiver not hooked up, and now the 40.00 hard drive enabeling fee - THANKFULLY PER ACCOUNT & A ONE TIME FEE.
Directv is supposed to NOT increase the price for hd THIS year. SO for 10.99 you can get up to 100 hd channels by the end of this year. THEy don't charge dvr fees PER receiver and if you have the dvr plus pack with hd then you won't have any dvr fees. DISH better reconsider the way they are charging for hd since they will not be the leader in HD much longer. HD will become the normal thing to have with satellite and if Directv is NOT charging extra for hd and is adding more hd channels , how long before the DISH high end subs just defect to Directv where they will actually SAVE money in FEES and gain more hd channels.
Either way, Dish won't have much longer to gouge for hd after this year. IF they don't reconsider some of these high fees and charges , they will lose to the competition. They might also think seriously of spinning VOOM off to ala carte basis or add it to DISH's version of TOTAL ACCESS. How about a DISH total access with all the AEP +locals +all HD channels & VOOM with no dvr fees and no additional receiver fees for a similar price as DIRECTV is thinking of doing. If not then they might lose their low priced leader status for hd customers .
Well, that'd save me almost $20/month... Hm. Something to definitely ponder if E* doesn't start cutting us high-end subs some slack and cease sticking it to us as often as they have been...
Really depends for the content, but assuming 10gb/hr (which is quite high) , with no overhead (and full access to the drive), around 75 hours, but Id honestly say somewhere in the high 60's.
But a football game will take up more space than a sitcom, etc!
But a football game will take up more space than a sitcom, etc!
Well which will it be - BluRay or HD DVD or should I maybe buy both? I have no idea what either one costs but I'm guessing around $25. So if I want to archive say 50, 2 hour, HD movies, I can pay $1,250 for the HD dvds ($2,500 for both formats to be safe until we find out which one wins
) versus maybe $500 for external HDD storage.The 500 hours I used before was just an arbitrary number - I really have no idea how many hours would be realistic for 3 years. My point is, the more hours of programming you accumulate (maybe some of it irreplaceable and only available off of TV, like the Superbowl or World Series), the more you'd have to give up if you consider leaving Dish.
I might be wrong, but I don't think the majority interested in external storage see it as only a temporary portability medium like you discribe. They're looking for a way to archive HD programming as HD. I can burn decent quality dvds for anything else and they go with me wherever I decide to go for satellite programming.
My problem? I bought a 500GB drive and housing from Tiger last year in anticipation of its use for Archiving off of my 942. Well, two things happened: No 942 external HDD support, and I've been using the 500GB drive a a backup/file transfer device. I find I'll need to buy Yet Another HDD for this purpose. No biggy, but funny that this external drive that I had lined up is now doing other things.
Technically speaking, at full bit rate, it's ~8.6 GB / hour for OTA HD.
I haven't seen Dish bit rates, but if you figure 10 Mbits/second for MPEG-4, that comes out to about 4.5 GB/hour.
If you figure that the average leans closer to 10 Mbits/second due to the number of channels in MPEG-4 vs. MPEG-2 you could use 12.5 Mbits/second. This comes out to about 5.6GB/hour.
A 500GB drive will work out to between 60 and 110 hours depending on content etc.
Cheers,
When Blu-ray and HD-DVD have all 6 Star Wars Episodes, Open Range and quite a few other great films that aren't on HD-DVD and Blu-ray I'll purchase them. Until then, I don't have much choice other than to store them on disk.
The difference between SD and HD is staggering. I'm purchasing almost no SD discs at this time.
Cheers,
For anyone wondering how to calculate capacity:
Bitrate / 8 = MB / second.
MB / Second * 3600 == Megabytes / Hour
MB per Hour / 1000 == Storage in GB.
Keep in mind that disk drive capacities are stated in powers of ten, as they look like bigger numbers when you're selling the drive...
1,000,000 = 1 Megabyte
1,000,000,000 = 1 Gigabyte
1,000,000,000,000 = 1 Terabyte
Unfortunately computers work in relationships of 2^10...
We usually work in ranges of 2^10
1,048,576 = 1 Megabyte (2^20)
1,073,741,824 = 1 Gigabyte (2^30)
1,099,511,627,776 = 1 Terabyte (2^40)
Between this and file system overhead your 500GB drive usually comes out around 480GB usable as reported by the computer. As an FYI, I did my above calcs based on powers of ten in case it wasn't obvious.
Cheers,
Bitrate / 8 = MB / second.
MB / Second * 3600 == Megabytes / Hour
MB per Hour / 1000 == Storage in GB.
Keep in mind that disk drive capacities are stated in powers of ten, as they look like bigger numbers when you're selling the drive...
1,000,000 = 1 Megabyte
1,000,000,000 = 1 Gigabyte
1,000,000,000,000 = 1 Terabyte
Unfortunately computers work in relationships of 2^10...
We usually work in ranges of 2^10
1,048,576 = 1 Megabyte (2^20)
1,073,741,824 = 1 Gigabyte (2^30)
1,099,511,627,776 = 1 Terabyte (2^40)
Between this and file system overhead your 500GB drive usually comes out around 480GB usable as reported by the computer. As an FYI, I did my above calcs based on powers of ten in case it wasn't obvious.
Cheers,
I agree with John's calculations.
It is possible that one could put over 150 hours on a 750GB drive from MPEG4 HD channels.
It is possible that one could put over 150 hours on a 750GB drive from MPEG4 HD channels.
What I havent posted yet (and what was hinted to me yesterday) is that Dish may be licencing some technology for doing all of this from other companies. (Guess they don't want anymore patent suits)
So if this is true it makes even more sense to me what they are charging for it.
Do you really think that technology is going to cost $40/seat? I have three GPS patents with my employer, and we have even collect royalties on one of them. We sure didn't get $40/device for them. Charlie is a good negociator, and I know he would never negociate something like that.
There is IP all over the place in one of these boxes. Every USB chipset has a royalty associated with it, and it is built into the cost of the chipset.
What technology is it Scott? A USB copy program? Nope, that would already be part of the file system. How about streaming playback over an exernal USB hard drive? Don't think so. How about some sort of encryption/DRM scheme? Maybe, but definetly not worth $40.
The key to good DRM is to NOT be propreitary. The more transparent the better. If you have something to hide, then the algorithm isn't solid. The German enigma machine was a good example of that. The United States had an engima machine, but without up-to-date codes, they coudln't decipher encrypted German messages. PGP lets you download the source code for their product, and they offer a GPL license for it. That could be easily adapted for DRM for an external dish hard drive. Dish knows about GPL licensing - they used it for the 721 and 921 DVRs.
It is inconceivable that Charlie paid $40/seat for some properitary DRM for external hard drives.
I don't think people are asking for a free lunch. With regard to this fee, it seems that they are charging for the lunch, then charging extra to use the silverware, then charging extra to put parsley on the plate, then charging extra for the napkin holders, then charging extra for the fortune cookie that comes with the bill. Most people consider these things to be included in the cost of lunch, they don't seem like they should be extra expenses.
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