HD DVR - An Indispensable Component for HD Movie Lovers

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by luclin999

Probably about as well as the firmware downloads which the cable/sat providers send down to the set top boxes which can also fry those and render the data on the internal drive unreadable and lost. (as happened to me 2 years ago).

All it takes is one power hiccup during the update and *poof* dead box. Sure they sent me a new one (and I had to send them back the old box) but all the recordings held on that DVR were gone for good.

Worst part? You cannot control the updates from the Cable/sat services like you can the ones for your BD player. The DBS provider just sends them to the machine with no warning so there is no chance to move files to an external drive or compensate for issues you may be having with power hiccups in the neighborhood.

Now that's news to me. Never heard of this happening with any other family member either and we all have the same or similar equipment. Also never ran across this on DBS forums as a problem. My...my, you sure has some negative issues to deal with haven't you with your service provider. Anyway, good thing I move my recorded titles to an external HDD the same day as I record it.

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

Your own survey shows that mainstream viewers are not recording HD movies on to hard drives and archiving them. I also wonder how many mainstream viewers actually pay for the premium movie channels.

My survey??? Ack, I presented that survey merely for informational purposes. It just shows the majority of HDTV owners prefer watching movies....over sports, etc. That's all.

[ack_bak]

Originally Posted by Taffy

My survey??? Ack, I presented that survey merely for informational purposes. It just shows the majority of HDTV owners prefer watching movies....over sports, etc. That's all.

Actually it doesn't. The majority of HDTV owners are not even watching most of their regular viewing on HD channels (per the survey). Clearly that is changing, and I really question the validity of the entire survey, but that is what the survey said.

[luclin999]

Originally Posted by Taffy

Now that's news to me. Never heard of this happening with any other family member either and we all have the same or similar equipment. Also never ran across this on DBS forums as a problem. My...my, you sure has some negative issues to deal with haven't you with your service provider. Anyway, good thing I move my recorded titles to an external HDD the same day as I record it.

The Cable/sat providers typically schedule their firmware updates for between 2-4am local time which is why many people never see them.

Unfortunately for me they chose to send the update through on a night we were having high winds and fluctuating power. I was awakened several times due to the sound of the transformer on our block (which is about 100 yards from out home) powering on and off.

I woke up to find that the clocks were all out of whack (of course) and that our DVR would light up but not boot properly. I logged on to those exact same forums you refer to and discovered that there had been a firmware update sent down overnight. The surge protector that the DVR was hooked up to was still functioning so I doubt that the problem came from a power surge.

It seems fairly obvious that the DVR was in the middle of it's update when the power dropped. That is what the tech support people figured as well when they issued the RMA.

As I said, DVRs are just as prone to being bricked by a firmware update gone wrong as any other electronics device.

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by neone

If a broad brush statement like " It's about the movies, not quality, not bitrate, not technology" was enough, enthusiast websites like this one wouldn't exist.

I disagree. It is all about the movies and how best to enjoy them. You have to talk about movies sometime ...no. Even in technical forums where the discussions relate to screen captures, DNR, grain, and bitrates as in Transformer 2 sites, inevitably some posters chimes in, "it may look and sound great, but the movie sucks big time".

Just admit it Taffy, you have as much relevance here as the oddballs who go onto old stereophile discussion sites claiming that their radioshack bookshelf speakers sounds the same as the paradigm monitor reference speakers regardless of professionals in the field who can show you side by side frequency response graphs.

Years ago, you could buy some pretty damn good speakers at very good prices at Radioshack. In my HT, I still have a pair of Realistic brand Mach 1 floor standing speakers that I bought in 1984 with 15" woofers that still sound incredible. The point I'm making is that depending on date of manufacture, radioshack speakers may compare favorably with paradigms. But does it doesn't really matter does it?? These are all entirely subjective experiences anyway.

You forget that this forum like many others on the web is not a Consumer's Report type of discussion sites visited by soccer moms. This is why you continue to be surprised by the developments around you as things unfold in ways that directly contradict our view of the way things should be. Instead of the way it is happening and continue to happen.

No. It's just a friendly discussion of alternative methods of watching high definition movies.

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by luclin999

The Cable/sat providers typically schedule their firmware updates for between 2-4am local time which is why many people never see them.

Unfortunately for me they chose to send the update through on a night we were having high winds and fluctuating power. I was awakened several times due to the sound of the transformer on our block (which is about 100 yards from out home) powering on and off.

I woke up to find that the clocks were all out of whack (of course) and that our DVR would light up but not boot properly. I logged on to those exact same forums you refer to and discovered that there had been a firmware update sent down overnight. The surge protector that the DVR was hooked up to was still functioning so I doubt that the problem came from a power surge.

It seems fairly obvious that the DVR was in the middle of it's update when the power dropped. That is what the tech support people figured as well when they issued the RMA.

As I said, DVRs are just as prone to being bricked by a firmware update gone wrong as any other electronics device.

Point taken....but there is a perspective difference. I payed for my BD player so I'd be out hundreds of dollars if it bricked. With my ViP 612 and 622, I'd just call for a free replacement.

[HD Goofnut]

Taffy, from looking at this thread everyone finds you to be full of crap. It also seems like that you always manage to come up with some kind of BS for every bit of logic a poster throws your way. Just acknowledge this: That Blu-ray is better in terms of video and quality than your precious Dish based channels.

If you want Alien Nation and Titanic cut to pieces in sub par HD quality with station logos and commercials then by all means embrace a Dish as your sole source for movies. I'd rather buy the DVDs and upconvert the ACTUAL movie (versus the edited movie) that go through all that heartache.

[ack_bak]

Originally Posted by Taffy

Point taken....but there is a perspective difference. I payed for my BD player so I'd be out hundreds of dollars if it bricked. With my ViP 612 and 622, I'd just call for a free replacement.

Actually, that is not true. It is not free unless you have the Dish Home Protection Plan and that is $5.99 a month:
http://www.dishnetwork.com/customerS.../DHPPwarranty/

And Taffy, you can always buy an extended warranty on your Blu-Ray player. Or do what I do. Buy them at Costco which has a lifetime return policy. Lot's cheaper than paying $5.99 a month

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

Actually, that is not true. It is not free unless you have the Dish Home Protection Plan and that is $5.99 a month:
http://www.dishnetwork.com/customerS.../DHPPwarranty/

And Taffy, you can always buy an extended warranty on your Blu-Ray player. Or do what I do. Buy them at Costco which has a lifetime return policy. Lot's cheaper than paying $5.99 a month

Score now reads:

Blu-ray users: 4537 - Taffy: 0

[luclin999]

Originally Posted by Taffy

Point taken....but there is a perspective difference. I payed for my BD player so I'd be out hundreds of dollars if it bricked. With my ViP 612 and 622, I'd just call for a free replacement.

If I lose my BD player I just buy a new one, my library of movies remains intact and untouched. Loss to me $99. And that is assuming that it is bricked up after the warranty period expires, if it happened during the next 14 months the replacement is free.

If I lose my DVR all of the recordings stored on it are gone forever.

The same holds true if the drives you use fail.

As you say.. Perspective.

[zombieflanders]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

Actually, that is not true. It is not free unless you have the Dish Home Protection Plan and that is $5.99 a month:
http://www.dishnetwork.com/customerS.../DHPPwarranty/

And Taffy, you can always buy an extended warranty on your Blu-Ray player. Or do what I do. Buy them at Costco which has a lifetime return policy. Lot's cheaper than paying $5.99 a month

Originally Posted by luclin999

If I lose my BD player I just buy a new one, my library of movies remains intact and untouched. Loss to me $99. And that is assuming that it is bricked up after the warranty period expires, if it happened during the next 14 months the replacement is free.

If I lose my DVR all of the recordings stored on it are gone forever.

As you say.. Perspective.

Taffy makes things up and fails to point out huge gaps in logical arguments? That's unpossible!

[DaveS1138]

Originally Posted by Taffy

Point taken....but there is a perspective difference. I payed for my BD player so I'd be out hundreds of dollars if it bricked. With my ViP 612 and 622, I'd just call for a free replacement.

And when my Tivo HD died it took all my movies and TV shows with it.......a DVR is the last place I would want to store a collection of movies I wanted to keep.

[neone]

For HD DVR to be a viable alternative to collecting them on BD, there's really just two technical criteria for enthusiasts to consider.

1. Quality --- How do they compare? Is HD DVR worth collecting.
2. Collectibility --- How easy is it to collect HD DVR movies in the hundreds to thousands?

The main showstopper for me is Quality : the movies from DirectTV are 7Mbps. As I've said several times, when I have a chance to do side by sides with equivalent footage, it is not that hard to find bit-starved avc artifacts or deblocking coming in to smudge various areas of the same frame.

One of the best examples often argued about is HDDVD/BD Planet Earth encoded in VC-1 (which is similar enough to AVC that it certain rules still apply to both). Ignoring the ringing in some 27Mbps compressed segments that some have argued goes back to the master, we also find the excessive posterization around the halos of the sun. Those sections have very little motion, and when analyzed in detail show that the compression software assigned less than 10Mbps to those segments. The subtle changes when travelling from the center of the bright globe of the sun outwards were over quantized by the VC-1 encoder not properly doing scene division and assigning lower quantization to these regions. In the end, it's a simple problem of bit-starvation will show up as artifacts in any sequence of frames with sufficient detail, and the most obvious areas that are visible immediately toanyone are paradoxically clouds, and halos around the sun if the encoder runs out of bits.

If HDDVD had that much trouble with its 29Mbps cap on peak bitrate for video, you can sort of draw your own parallels on what HD broadcast in AVC at a CBR rate of 7Mbps gives us.

In fact, more often than not, the HD broadcasters are asking encoder providers to do some form of DNR on the inputs before generating the AVC output --- because bandwidth for them translates directly to cost. This is desire to squeeze to lower bitrates is even more acute for the satellite people than the cable guys.

Why do the broadcasters get away with it? Simple. Noone is screaming for better quality broadcasts from them, and so what you get is an endless spiral of bitrate reductions. Today they can mux 4 HD streams modulated into a single band. If they can do 5 or 6, they will, and that would mean 5Mbps encodes will be acceptable to people.

As for point 2. I state again that there is very little evidence that there are a large number of movie collectors who have chosen to use HD DVR as a method to collect movies. This is clearly an alternative to rental. In fact, I'd say that collection of movies is not something the content providers or the broadcasters encourage. They'd rather you do the PPV or vod approach where you pay everytime you want to watch it --- like a rental. This makes it impractical for any collector to consider HD DVR as a serious alternative. And we haven't even gone to longevity and persistence issues --- very basic requirements for the movie collector.

---
I'm still reeling somewhat.

I didn't expect Taffy to state that he believed the radioshack speakers are actually comparable to paradigms, but I guess that's just sort of seals the point that this whole discussion is moot anyway.

[Sbert]

Originally Posted by Taffy

In my HT, I still have a pair of Realistic brand Mach 1 floor standing speakers that I bought in 1984 with 15" woofers that still sound incredible. The point I'm making is that depending on date of manufacture, radioshack speakers may compare favorably with paradigms.

Really...how much you play for those speakers? Just wondering.

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

Taffy, from looking at this thread everyone finds you to be full of crap. It also seems like that you always manage to come up with some kind of BS for every bit of logic a poster throws your way. Just acknowledge this: That Blu-ray is better in terms of video and quality than your precious Dish based channels.

Logic??? I wish someone would throw sound sound logic my way. Instead all I seem to get are arbitrary posts such as yours that proclaim BD is better. This singular point of view is totally meaningless to me as I'm not into "better". I'm more into "good enough" because that's where value can be found. You should read SRW1000 excellent post at the beginning of this thread. His post goes into great detail about value.

If you want Alien Nation and Titanic cut to pieces in sub par HD quality with station logos and commercials then by all means embrace a Dish as your sole source for movies. I'd rather buy the DVDs and upconvert the ACTUAL movie (versus the edited movie) that go through all that heartache.

You mentioned just 2 titles. I've got over 300 high definition titles and nearly all of them are commercial free and not available on BD.