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Comparing the DVRs?
zonker asks: "We are
getting hooked up with Dish
Network Satellite TV this weekend and opted to go with one of
their PVR
(personal video recorder) plans. I started wondering if anyone has
done any technical reviews or comparisons of the video quality (not
just features) of the various digital video recorders out there (TiVo, DishPVR,
ReplayTV, etc.). I am curious
mostly about recorded video quality compared to the source video.
All of them make claims to have various recording 'speeds' like
VCR's. VCR's analog output is predictable (fuzzy recording with bits
of static here and there, worse when signal quality is bad).
However digital recorders have varying levels of pixelization. I was
curious which ones fared the best and if anyone has comments on
either systems?"
All it does is record the stream sent down by the sat, so what you're watching is what you would get if it was live TV. I belive UltimateTV works the same way, so I would assume most dish PVRs work this way.
Free Mac Mini
Personally, what sold me on Tivo when I got it a year and a half ago was the great community at the AVS Tivo Forum. More info than you could ever want and a very supportive bunch for all kinds of questions. The Tivo FAQ is a good place to get answers to the basic questions first, though.
Although I'm a big fan of TiVo, in your case I'd reccommend a DishPVR if all you're concerned about is picture quality, unless you can get DirectTV in which case I'd reccommend a DirecTiVo.
DishPVR, DirectTiVo and UTV all store the satellite bitstream directly, so there is no quality setting, since there is no further compression.
Dishnetwork is the only DVB broadcaster in the states. I noticed that Happauge makes an DVB Receiver Card and was curious if anyone has picked up a real, honest-to-God DVB broadcast on a PC? The cards have the capabilities for conditional access modules (smart cards) so everything could be set up legitimately.
Why isn't there more open support for this? You'd think that Dishnetwork would promote this type of thing.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
All of the Dish or DirectTV only DVRs record the actual data stream beamed down from the bird and do not have quality settings. PQ will be the same amongst them all, which is why features are the most often compared variables. Nothing comes close to the simplicity, maturity, and number of features available in a TiVo but since you're a Dish customer you'll still need their PVR in order to get the best PQ.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Buy a Tivo and don't do the subscription. It'll act like a VCR. You just manually tell it when to record...and you still get to control live TV.
They are probably using either C-Cube or Zoran (or any similar MPEG2/MJPEG chips). While quality can vary from a chip to another, I'd look more at the maximum datarate that each unit is recording at. The bigger the better in terms of quality.
I hate the fact that they sell the systems with "30 hours of playback" 30 hours, you can stick 30 hours of video on a cdrom with low bitrates, it means NOTHING. What you want to check for if they don't give the true numbers, is the size of the hard drive and the minimal recording time (i.e. if they say you can record minimal of 20 hours on a 40GB drive, you do the maths for the datarate: (sorry if I don't multiply by 1024 or if I miss anything, this is intended as "raw".
So, 40GB for 20 hours.
40,000MB/(20 hours x 60 minutes x 60 secons) = 0.55MB/sec.
Mjpeg looks "okay" on a standard el-cheapo TV at about 1MB/sec. (its blocky on a vga monitor but depending on the quality of your tv, it's smooths a bit on the output so you notice it a bit less). Personnaly when I deal with video that I want to store with a good MJPEG codec, I don't go under 3-4MB/sec. For replaying with the video (i.e. decompress, add some effect, recompress) I don't go under 5MB/sec (if not uncompressed).
That's for MJPEG with 4:2:2 colorspace, if they use a DV codec, it's 4:1:1 colorspace so there's more pixel quality for the same given bandwith compared to 4:2:2 MJPEG.
Anyways I'm going off here, what you want to do is apply the above formula when you can't get the datarate and pick the highest number... you won't care if it means less storage, because you can ramp up the compression afterwars anyways. And besides, drives are going down in price everyday, and since your concern is about quality and not storage, this is one of the option you might want to look for.
I'm sure electronic-wise, aside from some extra stuff like component out or nice extras like that, the Codec level and overall theorical compressed quality is about the same from a machine to another, so probably the biggest difference (aside from the added features like component out if some don't have it) will be that number which will be hardcoded in the firmware. Some might want to go with lower values to be sure that the drive will follow (but then again most drives do over 10MB/sec sustained easily nowadays) or for any other reasons like marketting for more storage than the competition.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
True, but the cost of service is included in the up-front fee you pay for the unit. You can avoid TiVo's subscription by paying $250 up-front, and considering you can get a DirecTiVo for under $99 these days, you'll looking at less than $350 up-front for DirecTiVo+lifetime service.
I would suppose the boxes with the built in satelitte recievers would have the best quality. There is a ton of conversion involved here. The built-in box has no conversion involved.
Non-intergrated/2 boxes MPEG2 Satelitte Stream -> VBR Decoded to FBR -> downconverted to analog output -> cable to pvr, signal loss, interference, etc -> MPEG2 Vbr Conversion -> MPEG2 Decoding -> Out to TV
Intergrated box MPEG2 Satelitte Stream -> VBR already encoded, data alreay MPEG2 compressed, saved directly to disk, video remains unedited and uncompressed. -> Downconversion to analog -> Out to TV
Rumor has it that next month, EchoStar (parent company of DishNetwork) will release a HD PVR. Of course, that would require a huge drive, but there is also news that Dish ordered a slew of 120gb drives from a large storage sompany. So, more room for plain-ol broadcasts, which dont take up nearly as much room. The box has been dubbed the DishPVR 721. Oh yeah, it runs linux.
More news and stuff on the Echostar Knowledge Base. There's lots of stuff on the AVSFORUM dish network board with other info.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Obviously you can be wary when somebody says "trust me."
But trust me, try out a Tivo or similar box with the listing data. It really is a whole different beast from a simple hard disk recorder that can record shows at set times. Even though you can fully comprehend what all the features do, you won't really understand how it changes your watching of TV until you try it for a while.
I mean, I'm very up on the technology, and in many ways I feel that even before I got a box I knew better what features they were missing, but even so, there are elements you won't indentify until you sit down and use it.
With the Tivo, if you get an older box (not a new one, you need to get one of old inventory or used) you can cancel the monthly service and use it for timed recording.
And even though the data is overpriced at $9.95 (it's not really overpriced, it's just that you are paying for software upgrades and part of the box in there, but it seems like you are paying for listings) the change is remarkable.
It's not just a better UI where you browse both upcoming, live and recorded programs by name and category. It's not just the way it adjusts when programs change channel or timeslot. Not just how it records only the new shows and not the reruns, or lets you see all the different times the same show is on. And it's not just the fact that when the machine has nothing to do, it records shows that match your other tastes and puts them in spare disk space.
The key is you think about TV differently. There is an asynch pile of stuff coming in and you watch it in any order you like, at any time you like. You never watch the live TV again. Almost never, at least. The pausing live TV is a red herring feature to bring in new users, it turns out to be not useful because you don't watch live tv.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
1) You can select to record programs by searching by name, but it only searched within a limited horizon of programming (the week or so for which it has the guide). If not found, it can be recorded. For example, you couldn't ask it to record "Mission to Mars" whenever it comes on next.
Sure you can. Make a Title Wishlist for MISSION MARS and set it to auto-record. Done. That is the point of Wishlists, to record matching type things. Wishlists are in the 2.0 and up software, so if you just bought the Standalone unit, it'll only have 1.3 on there. It'll upgrade after it dials in a few times.
2) You can't ask it to record programs matching criteria like a particular actor, or keyword in title etc.
Again, use Wishlists. The possible wishlists are: Actor, Director, Keyword, Title (keyword but only in the title), and Genre.
3) Once a program has been selected for recording, you can't change the record quality without cancelling it, finding it again via search, channel guide or whatever, and re-selecting to record it.
Huh? Go to the ToDo List, find the show you want to change, hit select, then go to the "options" screen on that show. Change all the settings for that recording you like, including the quality.
4) It takes 2-4 hours to process and index the program guide after making a call to TiVo! (what on earth is it doing?)
Indexing the new data into it's database. However, this does tell me you have 1.3 software and not 2.0. The newer 2.0 software indexes in the background.
5) There are a few subtle bugs in the menu display software that sometimes cause display artifacts (rarely though).
Mostly fixed in 2.0 and up (2.5 is out now).
6) If you have a partial recording of something that you are also currently recording, it doesn't distinguish between the two - so you can delete the partial until the current recording it complete
Huh? I fail to understand this one, but all recordings are treated separately. If you record something and then it doesn't finish so you record it again later, those are separate and treated separately.
7) Sometimes the GUI is slow to respond (I assume the CPU is busy - just evert so slightly underpowered to do everything it needs. Although the record/playback seems to get highest priority - I've noticed no artifacts there)
Yes, it it a tad slow to respond at times. This was improved, but not fixed, in 2.0 and up.
In short, wait until you download the new software before passing judgement. The new software is tremendous compared to 1.3. It'll download 2.5 for you in under a week or two of first setting it up.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The three big ones for Dish based setups (DirecTivo's, UltimateTV's, and DishPVR's) all record the actual digital stream coming from the satellite. No encoding is done in the unit, so what you see on the feed is what you get on the recording. This doesn't mean there's no artifacts, it means that the artifacts will be the same as if you were watching it "live".
The other two major ones (Tivo standalone units, ReplayTV) are mostly comparable in picture quality.
Tivo has 4 picture quality settings, that range the spectrum pretty well, with "Best" being very close to live, and "Basic" being about VCR quality, but slightly sharper. Replay has 3 quality settings, I believe, and they are mostly the same as Tivo, picture wise.
Audio wise, it seems as if the Replay lowers the bitrate on the audio as well as the video in the lower quality settings, but this may be untrue or a rumor. Tivo definitely uses the same audio quality regardless of the quality setting. It sounds pretty good and I've not noticed any weirdness on Tivo audio except for some loss on the rear channel on Dolby Pro-Logic signals from time to time. Neither unit can record Dolby Digital, while the Dish/DTV-based units can and have digital outputs as well.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I was suprised to discover that Tivo captures video at 352x480, with 32khz audio. That is disturbingly low.
This may not seem like much of a problem considering that NTSC broadcast maxxes out around 440 pixels. However at 352x480 the mpeg macroblocks are quite large, and any macroblock artifacts will be quite noticeable.
The "higher quality" capture options on Tivo only adjust the bitrate given to the mpeg, but the video resolution and audio rate remain the same.
It's a shame Tivo doesn't use higher resolutions for higher quality modes.
Huh? What version of the software do you have?
:)
1) You can select to record programs by searching by name, but it only searched within a limited horizon of programming (the week or so for which it has the guide). If not found, it can be recorded. For example, you couldn't ask it to record "Mission to Mars" whenever it comes on next.
Sure you can. "Pick programs to record", "Search using wishlists", "Create a new wishlist", "Title Wishlist". You can even use wildcards. Record all movies that match "*mars*" and it will do it.
2) You can't ask it to record programs matching criteria like a particular actor, or keyword in title etc.
From the main menu, pick "Pick programs to Record" then "Search using Wishlists". You can choose programs by Actor, Director, Category, Keyword or Title.
3) Once a program has been selected for recording, you can't change the record quality without cancelling it, finding it again via search, channel guide or whatever, and re-selecting to record it.
"Pick Programs to Record", "To do list". Choose your program, then "Cancel/Edit the Season Pass", "Change recording options". In there you get the settings "Record Quality", "Keep at most", "Show Type", "Keep until", etc...
4) It takes 2-4 hours to process and index the program guide after making a call to TiVo! (what on earth is it doing?)
You fail to mention that it only does this ONCE, when you first buy it. It's not like you'll ever see it again. (and it's generating indexes for all those ways you can search for programs - much much better than downloading extra data over analog modem lines)
6) If you have a partial recording of something that you are also currently recording, it doesn't distinguish between the two - so you can delete the partial until the current recording it complete
I couldn't parse this sentence at all... Could you rephrase?
If you have a Comcast General Instrument cable box, the supplied infrared blasters for channel changing are not strong enough and you'll have to but better ones (for ~$30).
Hrm, I couldn't find any mention of this on the tivo forums... I've got the GI DCT box myself, and haven't had a problem.
You sure you don't work for ReplayTV or something?
Basically, when you purchase a PVR/DVR, you're leaving the quality choices up to the makers, as well as most other aspects of the hardware and how it operates.
;-)
That's why I'm just going to build my own, as many others have. When I next upgrade my PC, I'll be cramming the old one into a small set-top case with a 10x DVD-ROM, a 100GB HD (or more, depending on pricing at the time), and an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon (or Radeon 8500, depending on price at the time), a RealMagic Hollywood+ DVD decoder, an SB Audigy Value, and a NIC.
Most of those components I already have, and some of them aren't really necessary--like the H+ card, since the ATI card also has iDCT-assisted DVD decoding, or the DVD drive at all if you just want a PVR and not an integrated DVD playback. I included the H+ card on the list just because I already have one, and I prefer its image quality on a standard TV although the ATI decoder looks better on a high-res TV, and because some rare titles have gklitches on one or the other just as some rare titles have glitches on regular set-top DVD players. Back-ups are always good.
I can't speak for what Linux software is available, but I plan my device to be based on a stripped-down WinXP kernel once http://www.98lite.net finishes their Windows XP version of their famous installer, which lets you strip away almost any unneeded part of the typical install. As such, there's some great and polished software available that's perfect for this--the ATI card's MultiMedia Center, for instance, which includes an integrated Guide+ feature and DVR capabilities. The A-i-W 8500 card will even come with a remote that looks perfect, with an integrated mouse device and everything, and runs on RF instead of IR so you can even control the thing from another room through thick walls. Tom's Hardware recently gave a great review of a pre-release sample.
Best of all, when you roll your own there's total control over encoding and NO COPY PROTECTION. Why worry about losing saved shows in case of disaster or hard drive malfunction or hardware burnout requiring a return to a stupid company which reformats the drive? That's what the NIC is for. Transfer them to a back-up HD or when DVD-R drives and media get cheap enough, burn 'em to DVD. Lots of flexibility and expandability. And I know from personal experience that the All-in-Wonder cards encode a beautiful MPEG-2 stream in real-time with a decent Athlon processor.
The only feature my box won't have that a commercial PVR will is the record-shows-it-thinks-you-may-like feature, which I personally wouldn't find useful anyway. The only feature a DVR integrated with a satellite receiver has that my box won't is digital-to-digital transfer, which isn't such a huge boon when you remember that it doesn't save the digital feed from the satellite, it *re-encodes* it so that there'll be some quality issue anyway. sing high-quality analogue cables shouldn't introduce any more noticeable quality issues.
It's something to consider, and maybe someone else here can point to Linux software with similar functions?
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Yes you could buy an external TiVo or ReplayTV for your DishNetwork box.
But once you decide digital audio is important to you, then you MUST go with the integrated PVR since no external PVRs have digital audio input.
And as others have said, same with zero loss video. Any external PVR is going to have to redigitize the video instead of recording the original data stream.
You should have considered your PVR options before choosing DishNetwork since the DishPlayer software is not so great.
Second, the Tivo's a neat little toy. A couple of guys brought theirs in to our last LUG meeting- one already modded, one to mod in front of us. The ethernet card was a nice touch, as was having a bash prompt. Backing up the new box and dropping the big Maxtor in was a breeze, but he didn't want the network connection- it overrides the modem and he only has a phone jack in his living room.
I was impressed with how his viewing habits have changed, and I was impressed with the picture quality. It looked like crap- recorded on the lowest setting, getting bumped over to a laptop and shot through a projector to the wall about 10 feet away, making a nice, big image. If it looked like that on a TV I'd have laughed, but this was fine.
Anyway, www.9thtee.com is a great place for the hardware. They come highly recommended. I'll be damned if I buy a subscription box that's fscking crippleware, though.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I bought a Hauppauge WIN-TV PVR (PCI) card for video capture. It has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder with many settings for quality from 2mb/sec to the ridiculously high 12mb/sec with the option of constant or variable bitrate. After testing I settled on 4mbit/sec VBR which looks great - sometimes it's easy to forget I'm not watching a live broadcast. Importantly it also has a "pause" feature just like a commercial PVR which is great for dealing with the amount of calls I get from clients at all hours. Output to the TV is via S-VHS from an old GeForce 1 card that has TV-out built in. initially I wanted to use the MPEG decoder card from my DVD kit for output but after testing, the output from the geforce is so close in quality I just use it, plus then I get to use the PC even while it's recording (the hardware encoder means no dropped frames ever). The box is just a celeron 900 with a half gig of ram running win2k - there is a linux driver available for the Hauppauge on sourceforge but the PC is part of my render farm (I'm a 3D animator by trade) and 3dsmax only runs on windows (for now).
The software that ships with the Hauppauge is, well, shitty. It works fine but the interface sucks, especially when you've used showshifter (www.showshifter.com) though from reading showshifter's forums apparently it will soon support the WintTV PVR board. In the meantime I have simply "frontended" the Hauppage software using scripting in Automate from Unisyn. I've bound all the major features to the cute rubber buttons on the internet keyboard on my coffee table and I've even been able to do things like have the scroll-lock light flash when recording (for when we're not watching TV via the PC). For scheduling I go to the Aussie TV guide at sofcom.com.au to pick out my weeks viewing - the lounge box has winvnc on it so I can program it from my office or even start recording if I see something good and don't have time to run out to the lounge. I use PowerDVD for mpeg playback, mainly cause you can fast forward and rewind using the scroll wheel on the mouse - trez chic
For the future I just ordered a Redrat2 IR controller from www.redrat.co.uk to give the box control over my satellite decoder, and I plan to add functionality like being able to email the box to program it etc. I also use the box as our stereo to play MP3's and I've recently begun ripping (my own!!) most watched DVDs to my server's 160 gb logical drive using smartripper to prevent my favourite DVDs getting scratched from constant use. I don't re-encode, just copy the VOB files and re-name them as
FWIW, my vote has to go for the TiVo. Of course that's because I own one.
Anyway, what I've always thought would be a cool feature is an option for slightly faster video playback - maybe around 10 percent. That would trim 6 minutes off of every hour of programming. It surely wouldn't be very hard for TiVo (et al) to implement. And it probably wouldn't even be that noticable.
Are you listening TiVo?
I suppose I should mention there are rebates on Sony TiVo units. I prefer Sony equipment and the $100 rebate on the SVR-2000 standalone Tivo made the deal for me.
.pdf format
0 20 131.pdf
You can download the rebate form here in
http://www.jandr.com/images/pdf/rebates/SON9_20
Ok, there are two basic classes of PVR's out now...
Ones for Digital Satellite Systems (They record the bit stream directly from the satellite without an analog to digital encoding process), and those for other systems (They convert analog TV into a digital MPEG stream and store it on disk).
To understand satellite systems. Incoming signals are buffered off the hard drive. (Long discussion about MPEG multicasting not gone into here, but the hard drive allows a longer error buffer to catch out of sequence key frames). You can then watch that stream or another stream off the hard drive. This allows you to watch a recorded show and record at the same time. But you cannot watch live and record something else.
DISH SYSTEM
Two Basic Systems
Dishplayer/WebTV (7100 and 7200)
The software for these were created by a division of microsoft. (Based on a unix core!).
They basically record the bitstream to disk. They have a very nice UI compared to other dish recievers. They have a 7 day guide, and support searching. (The searching is not as deep or complete as TIVO's searching).
They also have games (DOOM, You don't know jack, and solitare).
They also can be used as webtv terminals (though the software for webtv is a generation behind standalone webtv boxes).
The devices are somewhat hackable. You can put much larger drives in than came stock.
The software is buggy. Much more buggy than UltimateTV which uses alot of the same code as Dishplayer.
Dish Network and Microsoft have never been able to get the software update process smooth between them.
DISH PVR 501.
This is a Dish Product that is based on OpenTV and the software is written in house.
It has no search function, and has been recently upgraded to support a 9 day guide.
There are NO additional monthly subscription fees with the box.
DISH PVR 721 Next generation box due out early next year. Number one feature is to record more than one channel at a time. And to watch something live, and record at the same time.
NO monthly subscription fees.
DIRECT TV
Two basic choices.
Ultimate TV By Microsoft. Similar to Dishplayer, but able to record two streams simultaneously. A LOT less buggy than Dishplayer.
10 a month fee to use PVR.
DirectTivo
Same UI as regular Tivo, but records bitstream directly, and recently upgraded to record two streams simultaneously.
10 a month fee to use PVR
NON Satellite
TIVO
Replay
Have you run MultiMedia Center on the 2k/XP line of OSes? I'll admit MMC can be flaky on Win9x, but I've never had an issue with MMC 7 or higher on 2k/XP. Currently I'm running the recently released 7.2 on WinXP and it's rock-solid, no cashes during use no matter what I'm doing to it. The card I'm using at the moment is the All-in-Wonder 128, though I plan to buy one of the newer cards for the DV project and continue using my PCI A-i-W 128 on my regular PC for my video capture and encoding needs there as a secondary display card.
Also, I've heard that their add-on boards and external TV Wonder products can be flaky, which makes sense since they're not integrated with the display and in some cases use the USB bus to transfer video data which is obviously not optimal. But running on 2k/XP with MultiMedia Center 7.2 and a real, full All-in-Wonder, I foresee no stability problems at all, since I'm doing just that right now on my regular PC with no issues.
As an aside--go to ati.com and look at their new All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV, and at the preview on Tom's Hardware. My god, that card's a monster, the remote looks perfect, and if it runs under XP as stably as my All-in-Wonder 128 does then it's perfect for a DVR project.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
We (the wife and I) bought a TiVo last year when we were trapped in an apartment with AT&T Broadband's digital cable (ick). We both fell in love with the thing, even more so after we received the software update last spring.
When we moved out of the apartment and into a house, we had a DishNetwork dish installed (I'd been a satisfied customer of theirs in the past, which is why I went with them over DirecTV), and went for the deal with one of their PVR boxes. So, we have one of each now, and I think I can provide an objective analysis from the perspective of an existing TiVo owner.
On the whole, we're disappointed with DishNetwork PVR. Yes, it records at full quality, and the PVR unit (unlike the cheaper decoder we hooked the TiVo up to) has an optical digital audio output (note, though, that DishNetwork currently only sends AC3 on pay-per-view programs, AFAIK). So, those are some obvious perks to the cheap box/TiVo combination. However, that's pretty much where the line is drawn.
My biggest gripe about the PVR is that mine is unstable (DishNetwork offered to swap it for another, but I've been waiting until after the holidays to ship it back). The software is also amateurish compared to TiVo. It has no concept of anything like TiVo's "season pass" or "suggestions," no program data beyond roughly two days, the playing interface is horrid (it's impossible to tell where you are in a recorded program). The unit is also considerably noisier, though it does spin the hard drive down when inactive (which my TiVo doesn't do, since it's *never* inactive).
Just so I can say that I haven't knocked the PVR completely, it does have a couple of goodies over TiVo. Namely, it has a 30-second skip button, and it has slightly more storage than my 30-hour Sony-branded TiVo (about 35 hours, to be exact). Also, the PVR is cheaper, overall. I pay $10/month for it, and I didn't have to buy the box. After I got finished paying for my TiVo and the lifetime programming subscription, I'd forked over $400 (it's more now).
In other words, the PVR is really just a glorified digital VCR, and probably should be considered a first generation unit (which I guess promotes TiVo to second generation?!?).
On a somewhat-related note, the new DishNetwork boxes have no serial remote control port. I was rather disappointed when I discovered I'd still have to use the IR blaster on my TiVo. However, with my custom-made "fort," I rarely encounter problems with TiVo changing the channel properly.
-Scott
-Scott Hutton