MRV (Multiroom viewing)

[jcoppola]

Saw a new (to me) commercial comparing Direct and Dish. The older ones only talked about the channels being no better on Direct then Dish so why pay more. This new one said with dish you can watch a DVR'd program in one room and finish watching it in another. Are they simply referring to watching another Tv run off tuner 2 in another room? The ad itself is misleading in that it seems to imply that the vip recievers can be networked and can share content. Something I think it is capable of but not enabled. Is this feature coming or am I just dreaming.

 

[HDRoberts]

Yes, that is what they mean, and I do not find it all misleading. I start watching something in one room, and finish it in another all the time.

 

[Ira Lacher]

Are they simply referring to watching another Tv run off tuner 2 in another room?

It would seem so, since the one receiver still has only two tuners.

Determined that if I wanted the flexibility with my one HDTV and two SD sets I would still need three receivers, each with two tuners. Also, I didn't want any more holes in my walls and floors to accommodate the cable connecting a Duo receiver to a second TV.

 

[Centex]

It would seem so, since the one receiver still has only two tuners.

Determined that if I wanted the flexibility with my one HDTV and two SD sets I would still need three receivers, each with two tuners. Also, I didn't want any more holes in my walls and floors to accommodate the cable connecting a Duo receiver to a second TV.

Actually you don't need extra holes. You can backfeed the TV2 signal down the same coax to your other TVs. That is how mine is set up. My TV2 signal is backfed to 3 different TVs. They all must be showing the same program, but since we are rarely watching the 3 TV2 TVs at the same time, it is not a big deal. Coax is a really powerful cable. It can carry a lot of stuff on the same single wire.

 

[CowboyDren]

Most people watching that ad have no idea what the Uverse box is capable of, nor networked TiVos, and don't know what true MRV is. It has nothing to do with how many tuners the box has, that commercial is talking about starting a recording on TV1, stopping it, and resuming it on TV2...it's all about discrete outputs, baby.

 

[jacmyoung]

I guess the ad did not mention a word of HDTV? If it did that would be really misleading.

 

[CowboyDren]

Nope; HDTV and MRV are not used in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.

In my best Charlie drawl...

"I'm not sure that people are really interested in HDTV on multiple TVs. If that changes, we'll certainly look into it, but it just doesn't make sense right now."

 

[jacmyoung]

Nope; HDTV and MRV are not used in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.

In my best Charlie drawl...

"I'm not sure that people are really interested in HDTV on multiple TVs. If that changes, we'll certainly look into it, but it just doesn't make sense right now."

But if you are watch an HD show, then pause it, go to another room, resume it only in SD, that will raise a lot of unintended "interest", don't you think Charlie?

 

[bebop]

I (anyone) could watch an HD show in one room and finish it in HD in another room, because I have both HDMI and Component outputs running to different rooms. If using the UHF remote, it's easy.

 

[CowboyDren]

But if you are watch an HD show, then pause it, go to another room, resume it only in SD, that will raise a lot of unintended "interest", don't you think Charlie?

Not in Charlieverse, no. Nor does anyone want to watch programming from Fox, Rainbow, or Comcast in HD, ever. Also in Charlieverse, people who have HDTVs don't watch SD channels anymore, despite paying extra money for them, so they can crank the compression waaaaay up on SD content, "because who's going to know, right?" Charlieverse is a strange and contradictory place.

I (anyone) could watch an HD show in one room and finish it in HD in another room, because I have both HDMI and Component outputs running to different rooms. If using the UHF remote, it's easy.

But that's not a competitive advantage over DirecTV, which is the point that the Dish commercial is trying to make. I don't know; I'm not really offended by the commercial, but I know as well as anyone here that there's a LOT of room for improvement.

 

[jasperpso]

I (anyone) could watch an HD show in one room and finish it in HD in another room, because I have both HDMI and Component outputs running to different rooms. If using the UHF remote, it's easy.

definitely possible, but techically you are watching the same tuner and not a different tuner.. so both sets have to watch the same thing - all the time.. works great for a single man, not so hot for a family..

 

[n0qcu]

that commercial is talking about starting a recording on TV1, stopping it, and resuming it on TV2..

The last time I tried to do that resume was NOT an option at TV2. I had to fast forward to get to where I had stoped watching on TV1.

Have they changed the way that works now?

 

[bebop]

The last time I tried to do that resume was NOT an option at TV2. I had to fast forward to get to where I had stoped watching on TV1.

Have they changed the way that works now?

I do it all the time. Perhaps you were watching a live show that was recording and it never registered as playing back the recording?

 

[jacmyoung]

I (anyone) could watch an HD show in one room and finish it in HD in another room, because I have both HDMI and Component outputs running to different rooms. If using the UHF remote, it's easy.

You need to strike out that "(anyone)" in there which you did not use in the later part of the sentence.

I would consider yours a valid point only if they offer HDMI-run installation as part of the free install Seriously though, DISH needs to work on their true HD MRV, DirecTV is testing it, ATT/Uverse and Verizon already have it.

 

[CowboyDren]

MRV is cool, but I'd personally rather see Draco (Windows Media Center integration) come back and be useful. Dish proved that theirs works with a 211; DirecTV didn't bother to demo. Anybody with Verizon and the cubic dollars to build an M-Card PC can do it already, but it looks like ATT customers are even farther out in the cold than us satellite subscribers are.

I'm not even asking for a SUPPORTED system. I'd settle for FUNCTIONAL.

...Or if you could join a pair of 722Ks in an automated load balancing configuration...THAT would be worth paying extra for.

 

[jacmyoung]

MRV is cool, but I'd personally rather see Draco (Windows Media Center integration) come back and be useful. Dish proved that theirs works with a 211; DirecTV didn't bother to demo. Anybody with Verizon and the cubic dollars to build an M-Card PC can do it already, but it looks like ATT customers are even farther out in the cold than us satellite subscribers are.

I'm not even asking for a SUPPORTED system. I'd settle for FUNCTIONAL.

You mean a PC card? I don't think your Joe Six Packs would care.

...Or if you could join a pair of 722Ks in an automated load balancing configuration...THAT would be worth paying extra for.

Can you elaborate on this one?

BTW, I have several of my DirecTV DVRs "MRVed" with long HDMI runs too, each supporting two HD sets, they work very well but I can say this, very very few people will bother with the trouble of such installations.

 

[CowboyDren]

You mean a PC card? I don't think your Joe Six Packs would care.

Well, with less than 450,000 CableCards in circulation TOTAL (that's TVs, TiVos, PC cards, and everything ELSE), Joe Six Pack clearly doesn't care. All of the Draco demos have been done with a modified 211 linked directly to a NIC with a crossover cable, but DirecTV's development platform was a dedicated mini tuner box, a little bigger than a WD external hard drive. Doesn't matter much either way; I'd guess that about half of the people who use WMC have the PC away from the TV anyway, so form factor doesn't matter much.

Can you elaborate on this one?

Imagine a 922 in a cabinet, linked via hardware (USB or Cat5 crossover) to a 722k. You only interact with the 922; browsing the guide, setting timers, or even watching live TV (which I don't do anymore). When you create a timer, instead of blocking it's own tuner, the 922 instructs the 722 to record the program. It effectively doubles the number of tuners available to the 922; 4 OTA and 4 SAT. When you tell the 922 that you want to watch a recording, the 922 requests the stream from the 722k, buffering a la TiVo, and then rendering via the 922's video chip. The 722 also offers the flexibility of having dual HD outputs, having a complete high-def render system with "nothing to do" most of the time, since it only takes it's instructions from the 922 above.

You could extend this system by putting a piece of firmware on a 211 or a 612 in a remote location inside the house; it'd be just like the 211 was requesting a VOD event from the Customer Service/VOD application, but instead of going out to broadband, it gets served from the 722k disk via the 922's catalog in the living room (or head end, or coat closet, whatever). Honestly, I think that a little servlet is all that it'd take to make the 722k/211 interact in this way, and I don't know why Dish doesn't have that working right now. The 622 and 722 don't have the horsepower for it, but I bet the 612 and 722k do have it.

I've looked at a couple of UPnP server applications for PC, and I've seen shots of things like the Netflix interface on TiVo and Samsung BD-Live players, and it's not that different from the PPV browsing application that my 722 "downloads" from the satellite. It shouldn't be that hard to implement, though handshaking between the two receivers may be hard to certify with the MPAA.

BTW, I have several of my DirecTV DVRs "MRVed" with long HDMI runs too, each supporting two HD sets, they work very well but I can say this, very very few people will bother with the trouble of such installations.

That's just a mirror, and installers do it all the time. Tedious to run, and it gets expensive if you do it via HDMI, but if you don't watch both TVs at the same time, there's nothing keeping it from working.

 

[bebop]

You need to strike out that "(anyone)" in there which you did not use in the later part of the sentence.

I would consider yours a valid point only if they offer HDMI-run installation as part of the free install Seriously though, DISH needs to work on their true HD MRV, DirecTV is testing it, ATT/Uverse and Verizon already have it.

Why strike that? Who couldn't do it if they wanted to? It's not like what I do is exclusive and not available to others...

They offered an HDMI install to me when I got setup with my newest receiver (free).

 

[CowboyDren]

I think it was a grammar joke, dude.

 

[JohnL]

It would seem so, since the one receiver still has only two tuners.

Determined that if I wanted the flexibility with my one HDTV and two SD sets I would still need three receivers, each with two tuners. Also, I didn't want any more holes in my walls and floors to accommodate the cable connecting a Duo receiver to a second TV.

Ira Lacher,

Actually most Dish HD DVR's have an OTA Tuners as well. The 622 and 722 both have a third OTA TUNER. If you get a 722k with the optional Tuner Cartridge you get 2 OTA Tuners. So with a 722k with Tuner Cartridge you can record two Satellite channels and 2 OTA Channels, while you watch 2 prerecorded events from the DVR's hard drive (If your 722k is in Dual mode).

John