Tivo Premier and Amazon VOD

[gadgtfreek]

Anyone know how many HD episodes a premier can hold from Amazon VOD? I know it has to download them in HD, just not sure how many the 500gig drive can hold. The premier is rated to 75 hours, but I think thats OTA and Id assume the Amazon files would take less space. Itunes HD episodes are about 1.8 gigs, so one would assume there would be quite a bit of room.

Other option is to add the 1TB dvr expander.

 

[dfergie]

Also could upgrade the internal if I remember right thru weaknees ...

 

[gadgtfreek]

Sure can, they can be pricey though. Im trying to weigh options of cutting some of the cord on a lot of my tv shows, for several reasons. One being I can watch say Falling Skies recorded on TNTHD on Dish and it looks like crap (compression issues), then turn around and watch it on the Roku from Amazon HD, and it looks a lot better. I dont mind paying the money, but want the best service available. I always liked the tivo years ago because when you bought a tv pass, the tivo would download the new episode from Amazon on release day each week, and it would be in your playlist. PQ was good too since it was a downloaded HD file. My DSL can be unreliable here so going 100% streaming is always a worry.

 

[dfergie]

I'm looking at DSL for streaming myself as my wireless IP is really the pits for trying, I'd be interested if the tivo could keep them also...

 

[gadgtfreek]

The TiVo S3 and Premier were great. If you buy an episode off Amazon, you can select for it to download to the tivo, then its ready in an hour or two, or like I said, if you buy the TV pass, it downloads the new episode when Amazon has it on the site. Shows up the next morning. Really works well, but its costly if you already have pay tv. I wish Dish offered a good On Demand selection for all its HD channels, but its spotty at best.

 

[dfergie]

Neither Dish or DIRECTV's VOD for tv shows are very good ...

 

[gadgtfreek]

Its odd. For like Syfy, the Sinbads and Continuum's are there for HD download, but Defiance isnt. Makes no sense.

 

[mike123abc]

The Amazon VOD runs 5mbit or less. OTA is 19.2 if they do not have sub channels when they calculate 75 hours. So you probably have 300 hours or so of Amazon VOD room.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Ive been playing around with the Roku/Amazon TV Shows and HBO Go.

I think Im gonna grab an ATV3, just because it buffers content instead of variable rate streaming (important to me because of my connection). This will handle most of my tv show needs, and then drop my Dish down to Top 120 only, mainly for ESPN's. I wish Max, Showtime and Starz had an HBOGo like app on ATV3, the PQ on the Roku HBOGo for GoT is better than the broadcast on Dish Network...

This is my first big step towards cutting the cord, granted needing ESPN and premiums, cutting the cord isnt really an option. What it is however, is a big shift for me from satellite/OTA to streaming.

 

[mike123abc]

If you have an iPhone or iPad you can do MAX GO with airplay on the ATV

 

[Mochuf]

The Amazon VOD runs 5mbit or less. OTA is 19.2 if they do not have sub channels when they calculate 75 hours. So you probably have 300 hours or so of Amazon VOD room.

I downloaded in HD House of Cards ep1 and Portlandia Season 3, ep1 to my Tivo Premiere. Checking my shows on Tivo Desktop shows the following. HoC: 56 minutes, 2,180 mb; Portlandia S3E1: 22 minutes, 870mb. Pretty small compared to ota HD recording sizes, yet they still looked pretty good. If you did nothing but download video from Amazon, you could get a lot of viewing on a 500gb hdd.

 

[mike123abc]

I downloaded in HD House of Cards ep1 and Portlandia Season 3, ep1 to my Tivo Premiere. Checking my shows on Tivo Desktop shows the following. HoC: 56 minutes, 2,180 mb; Portlandia S3E1: 22 minutes, 870mb. Pretty small compared to ota HD recording sizes, yet they still looked pretty good. If you did nothing but download video from Amazon, you could get a lot of viewing on a 500gb hdd.

OTA is limited to MPEG-2, the Amazon VOD most likely is VC1, a much more efficient codec.

 

[gadgtfreek]

That sounds about right. iTunes 1080p for a show is like 1.8gigs at 44 mins. I remember OTA recordings varying from 5gigs to 8 gigs depending.

If they allowed you to use 350 of the 500gigs, thats a lot of amazon VOD.

 

[Mochuf]

That sounds about right. iTunes 1080p for a show is like 1.8gigs at 44 mins. I remember OTA recordings varying from 5gigs to 8 gigs depending.

If they allowed you to use 350 of the 500gigs, thats a lot of amazon VOD.

Yep. I see the same thing. A channel with 2 or more subs will be under 5mb per hour for HD, while a channel with no subs will have 8gb or even be a little bit more for an hour of HD. And it sure is noticeable in pq.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Yepp, as soon as the CW here added their first sub channel, macroblocking galore on programming, Quite annoying.

We have watched several hours of HD Content for tv shows like NCIS and CSI since the weekend, been real happy with the PQ(Amazon to Roku 2).