Hello all, this is my first post.
I have a 622 that I got back in Oct 06 which I need replaced. Being a computer builder for 12 years I have a lot of experience with HDs failing and I am quite sure mine is on its way. It's a lot slower than it once was, sound drops out occasionally, no sound for 1 second after I hit swap when it used to have sound a split second before the picture popped up, takes longer to initiate a recording, takes about 2 seconds to react to the skip/restore toggle on a timer, etc.. It's probably due to the fact that I have it maxed out constantly, despite having an extra 1.6TB among 3 externals, sometimes having it go under the 5 HD minutes remaining limit (quite proud when it does that to finish a recording heh heh
). I am apparently just as much a pack-rat digitally as I am in real life.
So at this point I have two options, to either get a replacement 622 for free, or pay $75 to upgrade to the 722. I was all gung-ho to get a nice new 722 with the extra 20+ hours of HD recording space, but I realized how quickly I would use that up with all the new movie channels we have (MGMHD and EncoreHD are killing me).
What I really need is a receiver with an eSATA input because USB is not getting the job done. That way I could get 3 or 4 times the space of the 722's drive with a single external and actually be able to access it in a timely manner. Two of my 3 external cases are USB/eSATA so it would instantly make a difference for me. I mean, TiVo has it, DirecTV has it, why are we left in the cold? So my question is, does anyone here have any insider knowledge of a new receiver, specifically relating to the addition of an eSATA port? New receivers usually come out near the holidays, so if one is around the corner I'll hold off on upgrading and just get my 622 replaced for now.
Well, I suppose while I'm on the subject, with all the updates (in almost all cases upgrades) to the main interface of the 622/722s, why has the interface for accessing external HDs been so neglected. Why was it so bad to begin with?
For one, there is no other way to organize recordings. I would appreciate at least being able to organize by name, size, and date and to toggle between ascending and descending orders. Also, a folder system seems like a small thing to ask for, especially if these machines do run on a version of Linux (thought I read that somewhere).
And why does it have to pre-load the entire list of recordings just to access the top ones, especially if you can only view it in a single linear order? One of my externals has nearly 400 recordings and it's quite annoying to have it load the whole list through slow USB just to get to the latest one. Worse, for some inexplicable reason it always goes to the top of the list if you ever access a programs initiation screen, making that doubly frustrating. If I accidentally choose recording 392 instead of 393, it takes 15-20 secs just to get back. Why not just revert to the place in the list that you were on, just like the internal drive's menu does?
The main issue though is with USB. If it had it's own dedicated bus like firewire I'm not sure there would be a problem, but I've definitely experienced times where full bitrate HD playback stutters off the external. Sometimes it's because I'm recording two programs and trying to watch something from the ext, but other times it's just having a tantrum and all I can do is restore the program to the internal or wait until another day to watch it. Either way, there's no real cure and it's not really an acceptable way of going about a feature I paid $40 for. I believe eSATA also shares a bus with the main system like USB does, but it's like 10 times faster so I think it'd be alright for now.
Does anyone else share my frustrations dealing with the only sore spot in what is otherwise a perfect GUI? I completely love almost everything about my 622 (hell, even the remote is perfection incarnate) but this is really something that has gotten my goat recently. I'm curious to see if I'm not the only one. Thanks guys.
-Alex
I have a 622 that I got back in Oct 06 which I need replaced. Being a computer builder for 12 years I have a lot of experience with HDs failing and I am quite sure mine is on its way. It's a lot slower than it once was, sound drops out occasionally, no sound for 1 second after I hit swap when it used to have sound a split second before the picture popped up, takes longer to initiate a recording, takes about 2 seconds to react to the skip/restore toggle on a timer, etc.. It's probably due to the fact that I have it maxed out constantly, despite having an extra 1.6TB among 3 externals, sometimes having it go under the 5 HD minutes remaining limit (quite proud when it does that to finish a recording heh heh
). I am apparently just as much a pack-rat digitally as I am in real life.So at this point I have two options, to either get a replacement 622 for free, or pay $75 to upgrade to the 722. I was all gung-ho to get a nice new 722 with the extra 20+ hours of HD recording space, but I realized how quickly I would use that up with all the new movie channels we have (MGMHD and EncoreHD are killing me
).What I really need is a receiver with an eSATA input because USB is not getting the job done. That way I could get 3 or 4 times the space of the 722's drive with a single external and actually be able to access it in a timely manner. Two of my 3 external cases are USB/eSATA so it would instantly make a difference for me. I mean, TiVo has it, DirecTV has it, why are we left in the cold? So my question is, does anyone here have any insider knowledge of a new receiver, specifically relating to the addition of an eSATA port? New receivers usually come out near the holidays, so if one is around the corner I'll hold off on upgrading and just get my 622 replaced for now.
Well, I suppose while I'm on the subject, with all the updates (in almost all cases upgrades) to the main interface of the 622/722s, why has the interface for accessing external HDs been so neglected. Why was it so bad to begin with?
For one, there is no other way to organize recordings. I would appreciate at least being able to organize by name, size, and date and to toggle between ascending and descending orders. Also, a folder system seems like a small thing to ask for, especially if these machines do run on a version of Linux (thought I read that somewhere).
And why does it have to pre-load the entire list of recordings just to access the top ones, especially if you can only view it in a single linear order? One of my externals has nearly 400 recordings and it's quite annoying to have it load the whole list through slow USB just to get to the latest one. Worse, for some inexplicable reason it always goes to the top of the list if you ever access a programs initiation screen, making that doubly frustrating. If I accidentally choose recording 392 instead of 393, it takes 15-20 secs just to get back. Why not just revert to the place in the list that you were on, just like the internal drive's menu does?
The main issue though is with USB. If it had it's own dedicated bus like firewire I'm not sure there would be a problem, but I've definitely experienced times where full bitrate HD playback stutters off the external. Sometimes it's because I'm recording two programs and trying to watch something from the ext, but other times it's just having a tantrum and all I can do is restore the program to the internal or wait until another day to watch it. Either way, there's no real cure and it's not really an acceptable way of going about a feature I paid $40 for. I believe eSATA also shares a bus with the main system like USB does, but it's like 10 times faster so I think it'd be alright for now.
Does anyone else share my frustrations dealing with the only sore spot in what is otherwise a perfect GUI? I completely love almost everything about my 622 (hell, even the remote is perfection incarnate) but this is really something that has gotten my goat recently. I'm curious to see if I'm not the only one. Thanks guys.
-Alex
