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

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AKLWestie

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Topic # 86197 3-Jul-2011 09:00

I bought a Dish TV T1020 Freeview STB which comes with recording/PVR function via the USB port, along with a Western Digital Elements 2TB external hard drive (3.5" external AC powered),

The drive was pre-formatted in NTFS. So I dropped the partition (the only partition) and created one 2TB partition. I gave this partition a drive letter (D:) and formatted with a program called fat32format (http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm).

Then I plugged the drive onto the T1020 STB. The STB had no problem detecting and initiate the drive. So I press the record buttion to record something for a minute or two. It was sweet, and the playback seems fine.

However, when I use the EPG to book and record (record the whole series) of One News at 6pm and Shortland Street at 7pm on Monday (both programme ran for an hour), it recorded fine. But when I play them back, the jitter was bad. Sometimes the picture pixelates, sometimes the audio skips for a second or so.

From another thread of this forum, someone suggested that Dish TV does not seem to support a 2TB harddrive/partition, so I dropped the 2TB partition and created a 1TB partition, and formatted it using fat32format again.

This time, I still have problem playing back One News and Shortland Street, but Fair Go seems to be playback fine (all of the programmes are booked using the EPG). Also, it seems to me if I record the programme using the record buttion when the program was live (i.e. not using the EPG), the play back seems to be fine.

Another observation is that the playback seems to jitter if the recording is in HD format and the length of programme is 1 hour. The resulting file is about 3.7 to 4.2 GB in size, and it looks to me the STB struggle to play it back. However, it seems to play smaller recordings OK.

FYI, I did updated the STB with the v1.0f firm ware (Released 9 June 2011).

It will be great if you can share your experience and tell me what kind of external harddrive you are using with this STB, e.g.

Brand of the harddrive

Model of the harddrive

Capacity in GB or TB

Is it a 2.5" or 3.5"

Partition size and file system used

Playback performance

FYI, I have returned both the STB and the hard drive for a full refund (I got it from Bond and Bond so have to return it in 7 days, so I did not have enough time to do more testing). However, I really want to record some programmes so I can watch them in another time.

It will be great if you can share your experience, so I can go and buy a compatible hard drive and setup my own PVR.

Cheers!

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Reply # 488808 3-Jul-2011 15:13

Brand of the harddrive

Model of the harddrive

Capacity in GB or TB

Is it a 2.5" or 3.5"

Partition size and file system used

Playback performance

Cheers!

I'm using an external western digital, 3.5". It has its own power supply.

I formatted it using a free fat32 tool, I then allowed the T1020 to reformat it. Its formatted to 250GB.

Playback is fine, I have been recording a load of things for the kids of TV1, 2, FOUR etc.. I have also series linked them and they all seem to work OK.

That said, I have experienced what you describe. But I had put that down to my aerial quality. I had installed the aerial myself, and since moving it I am now getting over 90% strength and 85% quality. It was worse before, and that was when I experienced jitter inside a recorded program. Maybe the bad recording quality has something to do with the unit needed a good quality signal to start with? But if you say you do not experience this when recording directly then I am not sure. Maybe there is a difference with recording quality when recording via the EPG and directly? And your problems are due to the signal quality?

I have not however recorded anything over 1hour that is in Full HD. I will try that out sometime and let you know.

AKLWestie

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Reply # 488955 3-Jul-2011 22:46

I'm using an external western digital, 3.5". It has its own power supply.

I formatted it using a free fat32 tool, I then allowed the T1020 to reformat it. Its formatted to 250GB.

Playback is fine, I have been recording a load of things for the kids of TV1, 2, FOUR etc.. I have also series linked them and they all seem to work OK.

That said, I have experienced what you describe. But I had put that down to my aerial quality. I had installed the aerial myself, and since moving it I am now getting over 90% strength and 85% quality. It was worse before, and that was when I experienced jitter inside a recorded program. Maybe the bad recording quality has something to do with the unit needed a good quality signal to start with? But if you say you do not experience this when recording directly then I am not sure. Maybe there is a difference with recording quality when recording via the EPG and directly? And your problems are due to the signal quality?

I have not however recorded anything over 1hour that is in Full HD. I will try that out sometime and let you know.

It will be great if you can try it out. By the way, if you can try using the EPG to record both one news at 6pm and Shortland Street at 7pm on Monday night, that will be perfect. In this way, you should have 2 x 1hr recordings (Shorty do 1hr episodes on Mondays). And that were where I hit big problems... =-(

By the way, for your WD hard drive, is it a complete WD solution? I mean, is it a WD drive with a WD case and a WD supplied power supply (e.g. a WD Element). Or did you buy a WD drive and bought your own HDD enclosure and power supply?

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

Cheers!

AKLW

Klipspringer

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Reply # 488997 4-Jul-2011 07:11

AKLWestie:

It will be great if you can try it out. By the way, if you can try using the EPG to record both one news at 6pm and Shortland Street at 7pm on Monday night, that will be perfect. In this way, you should have 2 x 1hr recordings (Shorty do 1hr episodes on Mondays). And that were where I hit big problems... =-(

By the way, for your WD hard drive, is it a complete WD solution? I mean, is it a WD drive with a WD case and a WD supplied power supply (e.g. a WD Element). Or did you buy a WD drive and bought your own HDD enclosure and power supply?

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

Cheers!

AKLW

Will give that a bash..But do I really have to record Shortland street? LOL, maybe thats the problem...

My WD drive is an internal IDE hard drive, I bought it about 2 years back off trademe. Put it into an external case which I bought separately, thats not WD, just some no name Chinese brand.

Klipspringer

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Reply # 489388 4-Jul-2011 21:48

OK, tried it out. Same results as you, for both the news and shortland street. This is the first time I have recorded in HD for a full hour. Playback seems fine for about a minute, then each approximate minute the picture breaks up for about a second or two.

I think this must have something to do with the recording of HD, as its only happening on HD when the movie is about an hour. Both my files were over 4GB in size.

AKLWestie

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Reply # 489393 4-Jul-2011 21:52

BraaiGuy: OK, tried it out. Same results as you, for both the news and shortland street. This is the first time I have recorded in HD for a full hour. Playback seems fine for about a minute, then each approximate minute the picture breaks up for about a second or two.

I think this must have something to do with the recording of HD, as its only happening on HD when the movie is about an hour. Both my files were over 4GB in size.

Thanks for doing the tests. Would you mind to open a support request with Dish TV? Here is the URL of their "contact us" page.

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

FYI, I don't work for them, but I really want them to fix their products so everyone of us can record stuff and watch at our own time.

Cheers!

Klipspringer

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Reply # 489403 4-Jul-2011 22:05

AKLWestie:
BraaiGuy: OK, tried it out. Same results as you, for both the news and shortland street. This is the first time I have recorded in HD for a full hour. Playback seems fine for about a minute, then each approximate minute the picture breaks up for about a second or two.

I think this must have something to do with the recording of HD, as its only happening on HD when the movie is about an hour. Both my files were over 4GB in size.

Thanks for doing the tests. Would you mind to open a support request with Dish TV? Here is the URL of their "contact us" page.

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

FYI, I don't work for them, but I really want them to fix their products so everyone of us can record stuff and watch at our own time.

Cheers!

Done.. Lets hope they get it sorted. Really like this little unit.

AKLWestie

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Reply # 489828 5-Jul-2011 21:24

BraaiGuy:
AKLWestie:
BraaiGuy: OK, tried it out. Same results as you, for both the news and shortland street. This is the first time I have recorded in HD for a full hour. Playback seems fine for about a minute, then each approximate minute the picture breaks up for about a second or two.

I think this must have something to do with the recording of HD, as its only happening on HD when the movie is about an hour. Both my files were over 4GB in size.

Thanks for doing the tests. Would you mind to open a support request with Dish TV? Here is the URL of their "contact us" page.

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

FYI, I don't work for them, but I really want them to fix their products so everyone of us can record stuff and watch at our own time.

Cheers!

Done.. Lets hope they get it sorted. Really like this little unit.

Would you mind keeping us up to date with your support ticket? I am interested to see when and/or whether they will get it sorted.

Cheers!

Klipspringer

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Reply # 489845 5-Jul-2011 22:19

Will do but still have not heard a peep.

Klipspringer

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Reply # 490491 7-Jul-2011 11:07

OK Finally received some feedback from dishtv. here is a copy of the email I received. Will be giving this a try tonight.

Hi

Could you please try a few things for us.
Is the glitch / pixeltion happening all the time or every now and then while watching the recording?
Also can you rewind a piece of recording and see if it glitches in the exact same spot of recording doing the same fault?

Regards

Waldo

Technical Support Desk
Dish TV Technologies Ltd
23 Bandon Street
Hamilton 3204

p +64 7 929 4123
f +64 7 929 4122
e support@dishtv.co.nz
w www.dishtv.co.nz

Please note that while our technicians are happy to provide you with free support via email or phone for the products we sell, we are not responsible for any installation or repair costs for the TV or satellite reception system at your place of use. We offer free technical support to assist you, but in any situation this support can never be the same as on site support. We always recommend that you pay a technician to check your TV or satellite system if you have any doubts about the quality of your digital reception, because digital reception has different requirements to analogue TV reception. This will ensure you always have the best possible reception.

AKLWestie

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Reply # 490542 7-Jul-2011 12:27

Is the glitch / pixeltion happening all the time or every now and then while watching the recording?

My own experience is that it happens all the time when the show/program is in high definition, especially if the recording is large (close to 4GB / 1hr in length)

Also can you rewind a piece of recording and see if it glitches in the exact same spot of recording doing the same fault?

My experience was "yes". The problem happens at exactly the same spot. I tried to remind and play back and it always happen there.

However, that could be specific to my STB, yours might be different. As you said, it will be good if you can do some experiment with it.

By the way, I would recommend you to record something from TV3 for an hour using the EPG as well. TV3 boardcasts with Dolby digital so it uses more bandwidth, hence the recording will be bigger (>4GB an hour). It will be interesting to see how the STB / PVR handles it.

Once again, thanks for all your help.

Cheers!

Klipspringer

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Reply # 491165 8-Jul-2011 16:13

Another response from DishTV:

Can you in the mean time test your unit. Find a HD recording and watch it while recording. See if you get any glitching and where is the program it happens. Then when finished watch the play back and see if there is more glitching or the same in the same place as when you watched it live.

Klipspringer

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Reply # 491166 8-Jul-2011 16:14

My Response:

Hi

Watched and recorded Bones HD last night, watching live was fine. Watching the recording had the glitch.

I can also confirm that the glitch happens is exactly the same place, I tested with ff/rew. The glitch is therefore recorded.

Let me know.

Really keen to get this sorted out.

Klipspringer

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Reply # 491167 8-Jul-2011 16:14

Another response from DishTV:

Hi

Can you please check your Signal strength and Quality... on channel 1 Press the info button on the remote and it will come up. Should be getting between 80 - 90 % on both.
Also try channel 3 and prime.

Can you also check on your hard drive if you have only one partition on the USB hard drive. You can check this in windows explorer and right clicking the system and going to manage.
If you not sure about this ring me up and I will talk you through it. Also make sure you have the drive formatted in FAT32. you can use guiformat (Google it).

Klipspringer

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Reply # 491171 8-Jul-2011 16:18

My response back...

Signal strength and quality are both just under 90%

As mentioned previously, there are no issues when watching HD TV. its only the recordings...

Drive is FAT32, 250GB, and was reformatted by the DishTV decoder itself.

Have you guys tried to simulate this problem, because its not just me that is experiencing this.

AKLWestie

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Reply # 491174 8-Jul-2011 16:19

BraaiGuy: My Response:

Hi

Watched and recorded Bones HD last night, watching live was fine. Watching the recording had the glitch.

I can also confirm that the glitch happens is exactly the same place, I tested with ff/rew. The glitch is therefore recorded.

Let me know.

Really keen to get this sorted out.

Another thing that you can try (I have not try this myself) is to copy the content from the PVR to your PC, and then use VLC player to playback the content file.

If the playback is fine on your PC, that possibly means the STB have difficulty playing back (e.g. processor of STB is not powerful enough to playback certain scene?!). If the playback is not fine on PC, then, as you said, the glitch was recorded.

Cheers!

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