Does MPEG4 mean longer rec. time with same disk size?

markusian

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Sep 7, 2003
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MPEG4 offers a higher compression rate, will this translate into more recording time for the same disk size?
 
Nope,

Mpeg 4 is smaller so would take less time, besides all reads and writes are done in almost real time.

I have played with MPEG4 a bit and it IS slower then MPEG2 when changing channels, when I played with it it took 4 or 5 seconds to change channels. Hopefully they can fix that or there will be no such thing as channel surfing.
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
Nope,

Mpeg 4 is smaller so would take less time, besides all reads and writes are done in almost real time.

I have played with MPEG4 a bit and it IS slower then MPEG2 when changing channels, when I played with it it took 4 or 5 seconds to change channels. Hopefully they can fix that or there will be no such thing as channel surfing.
What format is actually saved on disk? If it is MPEG4, it should consume less space than MPEG2.
 
Then why did you say "Nope"? :D

I don't suppose MPEG2 stuff gets converted to MPEG4 when written to disk? Thought not! lol
 
kavula said:
Then why did you say "Nope"? :D

I'm curious too. The only question the OP asked is "will this translate into more recording time for the same disk size?" You've answered the question "Nope" and "Yes." Which is it? He wasn't asking about read/write times. Remember, don't drink and drive and don't drink and type. ;)

If there is less space taken up, that would mean there is more recording time available which would make the correct answer, "Yes." Maybe my 100-hour DVR will actually be 100 hours instead of closer to 50. :D
 
I think Scott may have misunderstood the question, and answered as if it meant "will it take more time to record stuff" instead of "will it provide more available time for recordings."

It will take exactly the same amount of time to record a program, the amount of time the program is being broadcast, but it will take less space, thus more "time" available.
 
Pepper said:
I think Scott may have misunderstood the question, and answered as if it meant "will it take more time to record stuff" instead of "will it provide more available time for recordings"

Ah ha! I can see how it could be misinterpreted that way.
 
The question now is, how much more space will we receive? If we see 50% more bandwidth as a result of of the MPEG-4 transition then will we get 50% more space? Everytime Dish Network compresses the signal that does not affect the recording time we have does it?
 
Sure it does. Two 1-hour shows I record regularly free up :48 and 1:45 when they are erased. The difference is the amount of compression used at the source.
 
kavula said:
Then why did you say "Nope"? :D

I don't suppose MPEG2 stuff gets converted to MPEG4 when written to disk? Thought not! lol
If the program is encoded in MPEG4 it will take about perhaps half the file size that MPEG2 would have taken therefore more programming could reside on the hard drive.
If the program is in MPEG2 it will remain in that format and take up the usual space. It doesn't get converted to MPEG4. The MPEG4 decoder chip is downward compatable and can uncompress MPEG2 as well.
 
goaliebob99 said:
where i can see this going is you will get your 100 hours of time... and the rest of the free space will be used for vod..
You have killed my excitement :)

I started dreaming already. MPEG4 means More HD & More DVR rec. time.
By the time MPEG4 DVRs are out, the disk size will be 500G.
This means 50 hours of MPEG2 or 100 hours of MPEG4 HD.

WOW
 
markusian said:
I started dreaming already. MPEG4 means More HD & More DVR rec. time.
By the time MPEG4 DVRs are out, the disk size will be 500G.
This means 50 hours of MPEG2 or 100 hours of MPEG4 HD.

My dream doesn't necessarily have dish including a larger hard drive, but there's a functional USB2 port and we can just plug in another drive.
 
The hard drives keep getting bigger therefore that extra space would be used to give us more space. On top of that Dish Network already reserved half the space on the new larger hard drives in the 625 which gives us the same recording time as before. The new ones would give us 200 hours and Dish Network's reserved space 200 hours on top of that.
 
Kinda moot, isn't it? 921/942 are MPEG2 and can't be upgraded to MPEG4. Even if Dish let you record it to your HDD, you still couldn't play back MPEG4 content on your current system. It would just take up space, albeit half of the space it normally would ;)

And if we're talking about a new MPEG4 DVR, it may come with a smaller HDD to make it more affordable, negating (or minimizing) any increase in time available for recording.
 
One point that a lot of people miss is that Dish recorders do not encode the data on the disk, they just record the stream from the dish or OTA. Thus the files will be MPEG-2 for all OTA and for satellite until Dish broadcasts MPEG-4. Unlikely OTA ever be MPEG-4 as it would obsolete all old sets/receivers.
-Ken
 
foxbat says:

And if we're talking about a new MPEG4 DVR, it may come with a smaller HDD to make it more affordable, negating (or minimizing) any increase in time available for recording.

Drive space gets cheaper for the same capacity on a regular basis. This negates your argument fairly handily.

Cheers,
 
John Kotches said:
foxbat says:



Drive space gets cheaper for the same capacity on a regular basis. This negates your argument fairly handily.

Cheers,
Yup - heck you can't even get little HDDs any more.

Before too long, even 60GB ones will be gone from the pipeline
 

Does DISH allow more than one 522 or 625?

Losing Signal - Dish Network 110

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