Exclusive Review of the HD360 HDTV DVR

[Mizee]

through us HDD can be upgraded ofcourse. We have to use the right RAIDs and other components to make the recording fast enough.

 

[madpoet]

Ok, this is just plain silly. I'm glad it works and all, but this is just a custom HTPC with a MyHD 120. The MyHD is a great card and I heartily recommend it, but not in the setup they gave you. First providing an inexpensive graphics card with DVI out would really improve your situation. The MyHD 120 daughter card package includes loopthrough capability of the desktop. Second, that hard drive is abysmally small. 120gb? Come on. And third, for Mizee to imply that they are using some kind of "RAID" is silly. They aren't, and the MyHD doesn't even begin to require it even at the highest settings. I can't even begin to see a value in this box unless you've just got no clue what you're doing with a PC. *shrug*

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Actually the drives may be SATA drives so the Mirror theory that Mizee speaks up could be true.

 

[markdl]

The fact is, though, that drive speed isn't necessary with MyHD card, or any other HD recording card. In fact, it's almost irrelevant. SATA is certainly great and all, but once again, completely unnecessary speed and expense in a box designed to record HD.

 

[Mizee]

See we are here to design a good system to consumers that is why we use these kind of parts. 120GB does not have a raid. Like I said basic system right? But for more storage RAID is a must for constant recording in big storage. You don't know what you are talking about. See we have been doing security DVR's for almost 10yrs of our 20yrs so we know about HDD issues. We may be new with TV DVR but there is no way that you would understand why we would need the RAID. I mean you can try it. The only reason why I mentioned RAID was because another user is asking about 1TB HDD. or more than 250GB. Here is my question for you then. Would you like an inexpensive system and will not handle your recordings of my your schedule will not work or even maybe while your recording it just gets cut because your HDD fails to record at a constant speed. or spend just a little bit more so it will work for its purpose..?

 

[markdl]

Mizee - if your comments are directed towards me, I wasn't talking about a RAID. Of course a RAID array is necessary to go beyond 250GB or 300GB. I was talking about SATA drives, which aren't necessary to building a RAID array for recording. 5400RPM ATA100 drives are more than sufficient for recording HD. You can pick up 4 250GB 7200RPM drives for $100 or $125 each, put them into a RAID0 configuration, and have close to your TB of space. Much cheaper, and just as reliable for recording HD, than SATA drives. Or, if a user is very concerned about the recorded data, put them into a RAID5 array, although for recording HD, I'm not sure that the added expense of the RAID5 controller is really worth it.

But, that's just my opinion that has worked perfectly for me for the last 2 years recording HD.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Mark: I don't see why a RAID would be necessary to go above 250/300GB.

Our 921's have 250GB Maxtors that don't seem to have any trouble handling even multiple read/write streams on a single drive - and that's with a crap CPU.

Seems to me that a PC motherboard with dual ATA133 and a pair of the big Maxtors would be A-OK (although not your terabyte ) - and without the extra aggravation and overhead of RAID.

 

[markdl]

A RAID is necessary to go above 250/300GB in a single partition, which really is more ideal in the HTPC world when recording HD. Just a matter of convenience, when talking about a RAID0 array.