How Long Has My 722k Had THIS DVR Feature?

[eacalhoun]

I just discovered this feature and either I've had my head in the sand or this is a new feature in the latest release currently being discussed in another thread. Yesterday at 1:45pm, I turned on (or awakened from standby) TV1 of my 722k. The tuner was already on WSOC-TV channel 9 Charlotte. At the same time, I was also on a phone call which only lasted about five minutes. When I hung up the phone, I wanted to rewind the DVR back to something I'd seen on WSOC during my phone call. I knew the DVR would not go back very far before "hitting the wall" at the point where I'd turned on the DVR. I was puzzled when the DVR kept rewinding and rewinding - it continue all the way back to where the program started at 1:00pm. So, how long has the 722k had the ability to rewind "live TV" past the point when the receiver was "off" or in standby mode?

Eric

 

[Hall]

Can't say when it got that, but for what it's worth, that's how all Dish DVRs used to operate years ago. They were always recording, even if they were "off" (as they truly weren't - unless you unplugged them). How far you could rewind depended on whether it was SD (~1 hour) or HD (~30 minutes) content. Then they turned this feature off. Whether it was TiVo-lawsuit related or excessive HDD failure rate related, I'm not sure anyone knows for sure....

 

[eacalhoun]

Thanks, Hall. FYI, the channel that got recorded was in HD and the rewind only went back to the beginning of the program which was in progress when I turned "on" the 722k. So, it had recorded about 45 minutes of program. It didn't go back a full hour, which is the limit my DVR will "hold" Live TV.

 

[Hall]

The "time" it goes back is probably just a rough guideline and with the use of MPEG4 encoding, they could go back further with the same amount of disk space (imagine the buffer isn't 30m or 60m but is "x" megabytes). The fact that it went back to the beginning of a program makes it look like it even controls the buffer further.

 

[rajmarie]

As you mentioned...since the DVR is recording that program you were able to rewind back rather then go to DVR menu & select the program & start over. If the DVR is not recording, then when you turn on the DVR...you can only go back till here.

 

[aquaman67]

My 722K doesn't do that. If I wake it up and then try to back it up it only goes back to the point where I turned it on.

Hmmm....

 

[DishSubLA]

As you mentioned...since the DVR is recording that program you were able to rewind back rather then go to DVR menu & select the program & start over. If the DVR is not recording, then when you turn on the DVR...you can only go back till here.

That's exactly how it works: if the DVR is recording (because of Timer Event or selecting the record button) one channel on a tuner, the other tuner is also activated but as On Demand mode or filling its buffer, as well, meaning just as if you were watching Live TV. This has been the case since day one of the ViP's and DishPro's before them, but the 50X and 510's were later software updated to spin down when not in use to delay HDD failure. Mr. Kummer said so on a long ago Tech Forum with Mr. Jackson glaring at poor Dave. With the introduction of the 721, that model and subsequent DishPro and ViP models have the HDD spinning, but no playing back video, when in standby mode. What most likely happened to the OP is that the when a ViP begins recording on one tuner, it is essentially OUT of stand by and it lay down the data and output video on the OTHER tuner. NO, Dish ViP's do not function as the TiVo that is ALWAYS filling the buffer.

Now, correct me, but my experience has been that the Hopper does NOT do that. In other words, if something is recording on the Hopper, the other tuners don't fill their buffers, and you can't go back on the other tuners as when the tuner recording started. How did the old DishPlayer 7100 behave?

 

[tedb3rd]

Sound like you've got a 'bug' that makes your receiver awesomer.

 

[Claude Greiner]

I think its 2 hours.