On-Demand Newbie Questions

[kbhouser]

Background:
I have a new HR-23, and my internet connection is Hughesnet (satellite). Since I didn't want to remove the 101 dish for the non HD TV's I now have 3 dishes on my house. (Not to mention Sirius Satellite Radio and my GPS, I guess I am totally "wired" to satellites.)

Anyway, with Hughesnet, I am limited to 375MB per day, or they shut me down to sub-dialup speeds for 24 hours, which, with the latency of satellite, is very painful. (They call this the Fair Access Policy or FAP.)

I definitely can not use On-Demand whenever I want, except perhaps during the non-FAP hours of 11PM to 4AM PST, when the usage is not subject to the daily limits. During the free hours, I can get 300 to 400 MB per hour.

Questions:
1. Can On-Demand shows be saved to the HR-23 disk?

2. Can I schedule On-Demand to download during the 11PM-4AM window and save the program to be watched?

3. How big are the programs in SD or HD?

4. Should I just tell DirecTV to disable on-demand?


Sorry if this is in the FAQ, I haven't seen any reference to this, and I haven't yet stayed up late enough to try it. (I normally go to sleep around 10.)

Brad Houser

 

[jdspencer]

I 'll try.
#1. Yes, you can save the shows to the HR23 disk. Where else did you think they would be saved?
#2 Not that I know of.
#3 Not sure, but I think HD takes twice the space as SD. SD could be 1GB/hr. Of course this depends on how much they are compressed.
#4 Why bother with having DirecTV disabling it? Just don't use it.

 

[kbhouser]

I 'll try.
#1. Yes, you can save the shows to the HR23 disk. Where else did you think they would be saved?

I didn't know if they were only to be streamed and watched or if you had the option to save it.

#2 Not that I know of.
#3 Not sure, but I think HD takes twice the space as SD. SD could be 1GB/hr. Of course this depends on how much they are compressed.
#4 Why bother with having DirecTV disabling it? Just don't use it.

Because I am not the only one in the house. By disabling it, no one accidentally kills my bandwidth.

It looks like I won't be using On Demand.

Thanks,

Brad

 

[jdspencer]

The download over the internet is too slow (as you already know) to be able to watch in real time, thus the saving to disk.

Any other high speed internet available to you? Possibly DSL?