Dish T1020 Freeview HD STB with USB PVR, your experience?

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#493334 14-Jul-2011 13:48

The recommended hard drive:

Adata CH94 500GB 2.5" Hard Drive

http://www.paceelectronics.co.nz/products.php?product=Adata-CH94-500GB-2.5%22-Hard-Drive

Here are the detailed Specs:

http://www.memoryc.com/storage/externalharddrive/500gbadataclassicch94portableusb.html

CAPACITY
500GB

INTERFACE TYPE
USB2.0

FORM FACTOR
2.5" portable hard drive

DATA TRANSFER RATES
Up to 480Mbit/s (USB2.0 speeds)

HDD DETAILS
2.5" SATA HDD, 5400rpm

DIMENSIONS
130.6 x 86.8 x 14.5mm

WEIGHT
172g

Maybe its that Data transfer rate we should be looking at?

giollarnat

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#493376 14-Jul-2011 14:36

yeah i've just noticed some changes on the dishtv website, they are just starting to trumpet the USB single tuner PVR functionality now (and put the price up, surprise surprise). Mine was bought last november and had FreeviewHD but not MyFreeviewHD approval.

Anyway, just got my IDE drive to work - after a quick Eureka moment of wondering why i couldn't get rid of this unallocated space before the one partition, i checked and it was a logical not primary partition - the default option on the Fat32formatter that i never paid attention to. Anyway, quick format to Primary partition and hey presto. Just in time to cancel my sata hdd box order. Oops.

So it does work with IDE after all - if their man hadn't said that that was the problem i probably would have checked earlier.

Speak to Craig at tech support not the other guy!!

Will test out this >4gb file playback thing.

AKLWestie

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#493384 14-Jul-2011 14:56

Maybe its that Data transfer rate we should be looking at?

Well, I don't think you need a high transfer rate hard drive for recording and playback.

From what we have seen so far, an hour of recording is about 4 to 4.2 GB in size. That is about 4096 to 4300 MB per hour. There is 3600 seconds in an hour so the harddrive only needs to transfer 1.1 to 1.2x MB a second.

Even with an old 120GB 2.5" 5400 RPM hard drive I got at home, it can happily do 30+ MB / sec.

So I don't think it is the problem with the transfer rate of the hard drive.

Klipspringer

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#493385 14-Jul-2011 14:59

AKLWestie:

Maybe its that Data transfer rate we should be looking at?

Well, I don't think you need a high transfer rate hard drive for recording and playback.

From what we have seen so far, an hour of recording is about 4 to 4.2 GB in size. That is about 4096 to 4300 MB per hour. There is 3600 seconds in an hour so the harddrive only needs to transfer 1.1 to 1.2x MB a second.

Even with an old 120GB 2.5" 5400 RPM hard drive I got at home, it can happily do 30+ MB / sec.

So I don't think it is the problem with the transfer rate of the hard drive.

Good to know...

I wonder if this problem would be experienced with their recommended drives though.

AKLWestie

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#493508 14-Jul-2011 20:35

I wonder if this problem would be experienced with their recommended drives though.

Mu... I cannot see from Pace's website that saying the ADATA drive is recommended with the DishTV T1020. It appears more like they just happen to sell ADATA hard drives and a lot of STBs.

By the way, if you are considering to buy a new external hard drive, I would recommend you to consider Seagate or Western Digital. I think they are the other two companies making HDDs now.

AKLWestie

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#493510 14-Jul-2011 20:44

giollarnat: yeah i've just noticed some changes on the dishtv website, they are just starting to trumpet the USB single tuner PVR functionality now (and put the price up, surprise surprise). Mine was bought last november and had FreeviewHD but not MyFreeviewHD approval.

Anyway, just got my IDE drive to work - after a quick Eureka moment of wondering why i couldn't get rid of this unallocated space before the one partition, i checked and it was a logical not primary partition - the default option on the Fat32formatter that i never paid attention to. Anyway, quick format to Primary partition and hey presto. Just in time to cancel my sata hdd box order. Oops.

So it does work with IDE after all - if their man hadn't said that that was the problem i probably would have checked earlier.

Speak to Craig at tech support not the other guy!!

Will test out this >4gb file playback thing.

Hi giollarnat,

By the way, it will be a good test to use the EPG to book and record One news (6pm) and Shortland Street (7pm) for Monday night. Both of them run for an hour on Monday.

Both BraaiGuy and I had the same problem to playback those programmes.

Cheers!

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AKLWestie

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#493511 14-Jul-2011 20:46

as for this playback problem - have you tried changing HDMI output settings to lower/higher or native resolution? maybe upscaling the recordings to 1080p or downscaling or something is stuffing things up...?

Yes, I tried all that, and still hit the same problem.

Klipspringer

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#493607 15-Jul-2011 09:02

AKLWestie:

I wonder if this problem would be experienced with their recommended drives though.

Mu... I cannot see from Pace's website that saying the ADATA drive is recommended with the DishTV T1020. It appears more like they just happen to sell ADATA hard drives and a lot of STBs.

By the way, if you are considering to buy a new external hard drive, I would recommend you to consider Seagate or Western Digital. I think they are the other two companies making HDDs now.

Thanks for the advice, here is the message on the pace website:

On the main page, in red:
http://www.paceelectronics.co.nz/products.php?product=Dish-TV-T1020-%252d-Freeview|HD-USB-PVR

Please check out our range of portable Hard Drives to make the most of the PVR capability of this unit.

So its a bit of a guess that they are actually recommending these ones. My guess is that they would have tested these ASATA drives when they did their testing. Unless they did no testing! Still have not had any further response from dishtv and pace.

AKM

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#493664 15-Jul-2011 11:12

Hey guys, been reading with interest this discussion and thought I'd sign up to contribute. After reading on geekzone about the potential for the T1020 to be 'upgraded' to a pvr, I went and purchased one with a bus powered usb hdd (western digital 500gb). I saw that dish tv recommend external powered, but was wanting a more 'flexible' solution so thought I'd give this a try.

My experience so far is that the TVNZ channels seem to cause the problem - any recording of tv1 or 2 ends up glitching and pretty unwatchable. I first put this down to not having an external powered hdd, but from the discussion so far this doesn't seem to be the case.

The other channels seem to work fine, minor glitching here and there, but nothing major - e.g. I recorded "fast and furious" off tv3 (solely for testing purposes - har har), which ended up being a 9gb file! Have only flicked through it so far, but it seems to look good. On the other hand, I recorded "an incovenient truth" off tv1, and this looks pretty unwatchable from the dish tv unit itself - I can watch this on my macbook using VLC fine.

Just my notes so far - anyone else think the problem seems to be mostly linked to the TVNZ channels?

Klipspringer

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#493675 15-Jul-2011 11:32

AKM: Hey guys, been reading with interest this discussion and thought I'd sign up to contribute. After reading on geekzone about the potential for the T1020 to be 'upgraded' to a pvr, I went and purchased one with a bus powered usb hdd (western digital 500gb). I saw that dish tv recommend external powered, but was wanting a more 'flexible' solution so thought I'd give this a try.

My experience so far is that the TVNZ channels seem to cause the problem - any recording of tv1 or 2 ends up glitching and pretty unwatchable. I first put this down to not having an external powered hdd, but from the discussion so far this doesn't seem to be the case.

The other channels seem to work fine, minor glitching here and there, but nothing major - e.g. I recorded "fast and furious" off tv3 (solely for testing purposes - har har), which ended up being a 9gb file! Have only flicked through it so far, but it seems to look good. On the other hand, I recorded "an incovenient truth" off tv1, and this looks pretty unwatchable from the dish tv unit itself - I can watch this on my macbook using VLC fine.

Just my notes so far - anyone else think the problem seems to be mostly linked to the TVNZ channels?

Hi AKM, welcome to the forum.

I Can confirm as well that this problem seems to be limited to TV1/2 channels. TV3 has no problem. I have been recording High5 for the kids of TV2, its not even 30minutes in length, and its unwatchable. The other kids shows of TV7, and FOUR are also all fine.

Please can you also send DishTV/Pulse a support request for this. Here is a link to the page:

http://www.dishtv.co.nz/contact-us/Hamilton-Office.htm

AKLWestie

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#493702 15-Jul-2011 12:33

AKM: Hey guys, been reading with interest this discussion and thought I'd sign up to contribute. After reading on geekzone about the potential for the T1020 to be 'upgraded' to a pvr, I went and purchased one with a bus powered usb hdd (western digital 500gb). I saw that dish tv recommend external powered, but was wanting a more 'flexible' solution so thought I'd give this a try.

My experience so far is that the TVNZ channels seem to cause the problem - any recording of tv1 or 2 ends up glitching and pretty unwatchable. I first put this down to not having an external powered hdd, but from the discussion so far this doesn't seem to be the case.

The other channels seem to work fine, minor glitching here and there, but nothing major - e.g. I recorded "fast and furious" off tv3 (solely for testing purposes - har har), which ended up being a 9gb file! Have only flicked through it so far, but it seems to look good. On the other hand, I recorded "an incovenient truth" off tv1, and this looks pretty unwatchable from the dish tv unit itself - I can watch this on my macbook using VLC fine.

Just my notes so far - anyone else think the problem seems to be mostly linked to the TVNZ channels?

Welcome AKM.

That is interesting, this might be the same problem that some STBs have problem syncing audio and video of TVNZ sometime ago.

By the way, can you playback * all * of your recordings (recorded from the T1020 STB) using VLC player? I noticed that I have about six to eight recordings on my hard drive / PC (recorded from T1020 as well) but I can only play back one of them. All the others cannot be opened.

As BraaiGuy said, can you please log a fault with Dish TV? Your infomation should help them to solve the problem.

So in general, your 2.5" USB bus powered harddrive works well with the STB without external power?

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giollarnat

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#493709 15-Jul-2011 13:00

hey westie, theoretically the HD recording files are encrypted so that they can't be played outside of the t1020, i think it's a requirement if you want to be officially "Freeview HD" approved.

could be wrong but i thought i read that somewhere.

HD as in of HD broadcasts, don't know if the HDMI output settings will change this (e.g. TVNZ HD program, record it at 576p HDMI output, maybe it will playback on your PC then?)

AKM

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#493812 15-Jul-2011 18:48

AKLWestie:
AKM: Hey guys, been reading with interest this discussion and thought I'd sign up to contribute. After reading on geekzone about the potential for the T1020 to be 'upgraded' to a pvr, I went and purchased one with a bus powered usb hdd (western digital 500gb). I saw that dish tv recommend external powered, but was wanting a more 'flexible' solution so thought I'd give this a try.

My experience so far is that the TVNZ channels seem to cause the problem - any recording of tv1 or 2 ends up glitching and pretty unwatchable. I first put this down to not having an external powered hdd, but from the discussion so far this doesn't seem to be the case.

The other channels seem to work fine, minor glitching here and there, but nothing major - e.g. I recorded "fast and furious" off tv3 (solely for testing purposes - har har), which ended up being a 9gb file! Have only flicked through it so far, but it seems to look good. On the other hand, I recorded "an incovenient truth" off tv1, and this looks pretty unwatchable from the dish tv unit itself - I can watch this on my macbook using VLC fine.

Just my notes so far - anyone else think the problem seems to be mostly linked to the TVNZ channels?

Welcome AKM.

That is interesting, this might be the same problem that some STBs have problem syncing audio and video of TVNZ sometime ago.

By the way, can you playback * all * of your recordings (recorded from the T1020 STB) using VLC player? I noticed that I have about six to eight recordings on my hard drive / PC (recorded from T1020 as well) but I can only play back one of them. All the others cannot be opened.

As BraaiGuy said, can you please log a fault with Dish TV? Your infomation should help them to solve the problem.

So in general, your 2.5" USB bus powered harddrive works well with the STB without external power?

Thanks - will be sending an email to Dish TV.

No, cannot play all of the recordings using VLC - as giollarnat says I believe those programs broadcast in HD cannot be played this way. Fast and furious won't play, but all the shows I record off prime (and my wife's NZ Next Top Model and Project Runway) are fine.

In general, with the exception of the TVNZ issues, my USB bus powered hdd works fine.

grolschie

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#493867 15-Jul-2011 21:45

Not so. The files recorded on the Hyundai AH3110 can be played on a PC, even the HD ones. There is no encryption on Freeview|HD as broadcast on UHF.

Klipspringer

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#493960 16-Jul-2011 11:43

OK today I hooked up the T1020 to my home network. I use Tversity media server to play mp3, movies etc via my playstation - it works extremely well.

Maybe I am expecting too much, but the T1020 is suppose to support playback via a media server. Anybody had success? The device can see the server, it can even see the files etc.. But when selecting a file to play, the t1020 just hangs up.

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