External HDD feature for ViP622 and ViP722: coming 8/15: $39.99

[JohnR]

That is really bad news. I have two 622's and had hoped to tranfer the drives between the two to watch programing recorded on one at the other location in the house. I will live.

The biggest problem will come for those of you that are archivists. No more equipment upgrades for you. Upgrade your machine and your video archive of favorite movies and programs is no longer available to you.

The rest of us will have to worry about a warranty swap out of equipment and lose access to our short term recordings.

Let's hope this a bug, and therefore not a supported feature because of the bug and the fix will utimately be found

 

[cparker]

I had actually considered activating the external hard drive feature for the specific purpose of keeping some things long term AND for the event of a receiver swap AND so that if and when (and I knew this was an "if") they activate teh external HD on say... a 211, that I'd be able to watch stuff transferred from the 622 on my bedroom TV.

As it stands right now I wouldn't give them a cent for this "feature".

I will, however, play the wait-and-see game and if they roll out improvements and get it up to where it's actually useful, then I would still definitely take advantage of it.

 

[Eric_C]

Its time versus money.

This will be a HUGE time saver for us. We're both busy and it'll be great to achive an entire season of a series and watch it when we want without filling up the DVR.

$40 is nothing compared to how much use we will get out of it.

Being able to archive an entire season of Soundstage, Beautiful Noise, etc is well worth it to us.

Its better for a 1 time fee than paying another $5 a month for a feature.

I would hope the fee is per household on future DVR's too.

Its a great feature and I'll be signing up the day it comes out.

Now they need to add new features to search. Something like "Record 48 hours" on some of the movie channels.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Well I agree that this sounds like an expensive upgrade for nothing. IF you have external hard drives full of movies and your 622 goes bad, the replacement 622 won't work with the older external hard drives? THis isn't worth $39.99 for the privilige. Dish shouldn't charge for this at all till they make the full benefits of being able to transfer to other receivers on your account part of the upgrade.

 

[wase4711]

I had actually considered activating the external hard drive feature for the specific purpose of keeping some things long term AND for the event of a receiver swap AND so that if and when (and I knew this was an "if") they activate teh external HD on say... a 211, that I'd be able to watch stuff transferred from the 622 on my bedroom TV.

As it stands right now I wouldn't give them a cent for this "feature".


I will, however, play the wait-and-see game and if they roll out improvements and get it up to where it's actually useful, then I would still definitely take advantage of it.

Just like all "new" features and upgrades, the best thing to do is wait a bit, see what bugs show up in the initial release, and then make your decision..I bet that eventually the firmware will allow you to connect this to any reciever in your OWN HOUSE, that will be registered to your external hd(s)..That way, there will be no concerns about sharing stuff with your neighbors.
And, lets be honest for a minute, are there really THAT many things that are on TV that dont get repeated many many times during the same week/month? I mean, outside of the super bowl, world series, etc, I am not sure what stuff comes on only one time that makes it so urgent to be able to archive terrabytes of televised content...
I understand the convienience of recording shows to watch later, at your leisure..but, I mean so much stuff gets repeated endlessly, you rarely have to worry about missing something if you dont catch it the first time..
Just my $.02...

 

[Hall]

Making the external storage unit work with multiple receivers and making it work with replacement receivers are two separate functions. Granted, they kill two birds with one stone if they fix this but the ability to share amongst receivers was a "wish" feature. Losing access to one's archive of recordings because the receiver dies is NOT the customer's problem.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Making the external storage unit work with multiple receivers and making it work with replacement receivers are two separate functions. Granted, they kill two birds with one stone if they fix this but the ability to share amongst receivers was a "wish" feature. Losing access to one's archive of recordings because the receiver dies is NOT the customer's problem.

Not necessarily.

Upon initial software release the hard drive is intended for use with one receiver; if subscribers try to attach the HDD to a second receiver, they may risk loss of content.

The way I read this is that it doesn't make any difference whether the "second receiver" is a replacement receiver, or a second one on your account. It won't work in either case. Hopefully I'm wrong and maybe we'll get some clarification on this once the feature is launched.

It may have been a "wish" feature, but it WAS announced by E* and subsequently "pulled" at the last minute....

 

[TheForce]

Originally I didn't think this was going to happen anyway. When I asked about this back at CES the answer was no. But reading the news here, it appeared they had changed their minds. Now the truth comes out that it still isn't ready. All in all, it sounds like a software bug they are still working on. Better it be this way than all the bellyaching from the whiners who may commit suicide because they lost their archives of Jeopardy or something. Now all we'll have here is that this was THE most important part of the featureset. Who am I to question that for others. Everybody has their own priorities and I respect that. But what everyone needs to keep in perspective is that you do have options. Why not just record it to two hard drives attached to each receiver.
As for archivists- This is no big deal. I will match my archive against just about anyone here for having the most HD archive movies that have been obsoleted by new technology and these archives will not play in the new machines. In addition to that, I'll bet that issue has cost me far more money than anyone else here in the loss due to obsolescence of playback hardware. Want to play that game? Try me. Most of you all have this as a hobby. I also do this for business and lost business due to hardware obsolescence is a regular occurrence. I am not whining because I accept that as part of life. The toughest part of this is explaining why when someone wants me to make their 8 track Quadrasonic tapes converted to CD's in DD5.1 that the hardest part is finding the playback equipment, not the conversion.

I like one posters comment when he put into perspective- "I'll live!" and so will we all. Some may die before they fix this and make it available but I'm willing to bet that on your deathbed, you won't say, "I sure wish they would have fixed that hard drive swap bug before I die. "

 

[cparker]

I'm sure for some people it will still be a nice feature. Do I think I'd make a TON of use of this? No, probably not. I don't even HAVE a second receiver capable of making use of any kind "record-it-here-and-watch-it-there" kind of thing. Would I use it to clear space on the DVR and make room for additional stuff? Probably. The investment isn't just the $40 activation. It's also $100 or so for a dedicated HD since you can't use the hard drive for anything else. I could tell my son, "You want every episode of Justice League? Buy your own hard drive."

To keep this in perspective... it's a CONVENIENCE feature as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure it's probably more than that to some folks. If I REALLY want Planet Earth for archival purposes I would probably just buy the DVD set. I can't see myself investing in multiple DEDICATED hard drives to take advantage of this feature. Having it available in case of a receiver swap was worth the $40 alone to me. If it's tied to a specific receiver rather than an account, then this feature just went from, "YAY!" to "ho-hum".

 

[8bitbytes]

It sounds like the noise level for the Ext HD function was enough to get the software out the door before they had a chance to develop an encryption key scheme based on the account versus the receiver. We will get the function but it will not be what we wanted.

If you save content on a drive or drives and wait for the update to change this function to work for all receivers on an account, you may find that the archived content will no longer play when that update comes through. It depends on if they retain the encryption scheme that uses the receiver ID when they finally come up with an iron clad method of generating the encryption based on an account unique identifier, something that probably does not exist and would have to be added into every machine's firmware / card ROM. This is a sytem that does not exist yet and is very complex for the number of machines out there. Dish would need to setup the same kind of validation system used by Rhapsody or iTunes that tracks how many "authorized" machines you have on your account. This means INTERNET - a good reason for activating the use of the RJ-45 jack.

I will not be building any archives until they decide what they are going to do about this and this is very disappointing that Dish is incapable of doing something better than 50% Equus asinus. I'm sure this will reduce the number of customers interested in this function and I have changed my official stance to reflect that we should not be asked to pay $40 for a beta of some thing Dish may never properly provide.

My hope is that there is some miscommunication in this whole development...

 

[David_Levin]

Another possibility is that E* is still fearing the wrath of the program providers.

Well I agree that this sounds like an expensive upgrade for nothing. IF you have external hard drives full of movies and your 622 goes bad, the replacement 622 won't work with the older external hard drives?

If a 622 internal drive fails, one is going to be VERY motivated to swap it themselves. This is probably not what E* wants.

 

[mlinuxg]

Multiple external hard drives supported?

Anyone know if multiple external hard drives will be supported when this new feature is rolled out?

 

[KAB]

Anyone know if multiple external hard drives will be supported when this new feature is rolled out?

If you mean multiple single drives, yes.

 

[Sammy033]

If a 622 internal drive fails, one is going to be VERY motivated to swap it themselves. This is probably not what E* wants.

What about the ones that lease theirs? They go bad often enough and those that all of a sudden will no longer have access to recordings on a perfectly good drive wont be very happy. Im sure they will address this in some way or another. Also, does it mean another activation fee? I cant imagine they would do this either. But you never know.

Oh... and the competitors that also have external storage... when a unit goes bad, do they lose everything on their external?

 

[wase4711]

dont think any one has external storage as of today..

 

[DefDude]

ces video 622

after all discussion about only being able to use an ext hd on only one 622 I looked at the ces video again and dave the dish rep says that at some point you will be able to swap out your ext hd's and connect them to other receivers in the house " he doesn't say only to other 622's" my 522 has the same options to manage device, I have a pocketdish that works off the 522, so I hope I will be able to transfer my stuff from the 522 to a ext hd and play on my 622 and vice versa. I have alot of movies in sd that I want to keep and be able to play on my big system in a different room, of course I will expect it not to be in the first update. here is a link to that video I got from scott
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmXbeQoJ1w0

 

[KAB]

dont think any one has external storage as of today..

We're not supposed to. Where have you been?

 

[wase4711]

We're not supposed to. Where have you been?

sitting under my rock, minding my own business!!

 

[Smith P.]

I've seen ESD, actually pseudo - no HD, as big disk connected to Pocket Dish. Probably just inflated PD storage, but it works OK.

 

[Smith P.]

PID: 08B5h, ID: WGTC, FW: L441, Model: ViP622/ViP722
Wed Aug 08 16:39:55 2007
PID=08B5h

DownloadID:'WGTC'
Upgrading FW:
'L441': 'ABA1'- 'BYB1' 'L040'- 'L440'
'L441': 'ABA1'- 'BYB1' 'L040'- 'L440'
New FW:'L441'
List of BootStraps and BuildConfigs:
'1[3-8]1[AB0-6]' 'RB[BDEGHKL][A-DJ]'
IRD Model: ViP622
List of Serial Numbers:
[281]
74411351 74413538 73406755 82364966 75814828 74597221 73406610 82279679 77387653 74411407
74413511 75937636 75094659 74407534 74411399 74413521 78470038 75814775 75814819 77371769
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75318312
'1[3-8]1[AB0-6]' 'RJ[BK][A-DJ]'
IRD Model: ViP722
List of Serial Numbers:
[92]
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