Nextcom R5000-HD (For Satellite and OTA HD Recording) - Page 6

I know that firewire can be VERY reliable as means of getting data from one place to another. It is only as good as the hardware it connects to and don't forget that the bottom line is garbage-in equals garbage-out!

It doesn't matter much anyway because even if they had chosen to use 1394 rather than USB2 you still would not be able to go directly to tape without a PC. The mpeg streams from satellite - Dish or DirecTV, are not 100% standard and have to be cleaned up. It is much much easier to write a program to do this clean up on a PC rather than making a hardware device that will fit inside a STB do it. It is also much less money!

I'll be waiting to get one of these!!

Firewire is very reliable if implemented right. It is much better than any from of USB. USB is really one way bus plus it may slow down to a speed of slowest device on it. I hope it works but I can see problems recording because somebody is using USB mouse which may create a bottleneck.

You can pretty much go directly to tape from Dish Network as it they use DVB standard and data packets are 188 bytes. DirectTV on the other hand uses old and outdated DSS standard which has 130bytes packets. It requires extra step of converting from 130bytes to 188bytes packets to make it recordable. That is the reason why PC requirement is higher for DirecTV than for Dish Network.

So what? I have no problem whatsoever with Copy Once. It's how it's going to be and everyone needs to get used to it.

This may interest some of you. We found the cause of the decoder incompatibility/glitches. See the official 169time thread for details.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...10#post3908710

-Mark

I think you guys are missing something here. 5c is not an issue with this mod.

'Pretty much' I guess is correct but you still need to clean-up the stream to make it work with DVHS. You can't take what comes from Dish Network and send it directly to tape. That is the reason why 169time has to have a PC between the receiver and the DVHS.

The point being made is that cable with 5C is much cheaper than buying this tool.

Personally, I think "copy once" onto DVHS will limit the life of the recording to whatever media is chosen at the time. I think many would be interested in moving to BD or HD-DVD when they become available, and dump as much of the VHS tape as possible... 5C won't allow this...

The other advantage with this tool is ease of scheduling. I don't think you can start the DVHS recording from cable using a convenient timer currently...

The only concern I have is if D* decide to change to MPEG4 or something like that. That limits the life of the mod. None the less I picked up a E86 on eBay in anticipation

Cheers!
DAve.

I'll bet that, "that" potential problem could be worked around, MPEG 4 that is. This is primarily a software based solution it seems. Some smart people, other than a someone that works for say, JVC, and has his process burnt into a chip, has come up with a way to stabilize a non-standard stream and put it into a software solution useable by PC's.

If he's bright enough to do it with both satellite streams and oddball OTA streams, seems likely he could come up with something to work with MPEG4 doesn't it?

Larry

Not all protocols are alike. There are a lot of important differences between 1394 and USB. Here's a quick overview:

1394 vs. USB:

1394 is a shared protocol where a large number of devices can share a common bus via daisy-chaining. Inter-device communication is possible. For A/V devices (like tuners and VCRs) 1394 also implies AVC support, which is a remarkably complex control protocol so that your VCR can change channels on your tuner and your tuner can start and stop your VCR (if either of them want to). The protocols for just connecting and disconnecting, and finding all the other devices on the bus, are complicated, and AVC just adds another level of complexity. Any device needs to be able to talk to any other device at any time, potentially, so for example, a 1394 device can be in the middle of streaming data to device A when device B sends a connection request, and device C sends a information request, and devices D and E are talking to each other over the same bus, and F and G are negotiating a connection. The amount of work and handshaking required to make and support a connection is relatively large. All devices are pretty much required to support multiple simultaneous connections, or at least servicing multiple simultaneous requests.

USB, by contrast, is a heirarchical system for devices to connect to a host via hubs. Each device does not know or care what other devices are connected to the host, and thus treats its connection like a direct connection to the host (which it basically is). All the data coming in is for the device, so it doesn't have to filter anything, and all the data it sends out is for the host. No other hosts will ever try to connect to it while it's talking to the original host, and no other devices are connected to its channel, because the hub upstream routes all the data to the correct devices. Each device only supports doing one thing at a time. Essentially it feels to the device (and the host) like a direct serial connection, just like a high-speed version of a regular old serial port.

There *are* certain industry standard protocols for USB devices, but they are much simpler. And if you don't mind writing a host driver you can make up your own protocol and use it. Your data can be any format and will never interfere with any other device's data (unless all the devices max out the bandwidth).

USB device chipsets are cheaper and simpler, because they are only talking to a single destination. Thus you can have a $10 USB gamepad, or a $5 USB mouse, etc. You cannot get these pricepoints with 1394, because the chipsets are more expensive and more complex.

The USB bus does not slow down to the lowest speed device - quite the contrary. If you have a USB 2.0 host controller (which any modern machine does) and you are using USB 2.0 hubs (which you should be), you can plug in a USB 1.1 mouse, for example, and it will use a trivial amount of the USB bandwidth from the hub to the computer, which remains at 2.0 speeds. Only if you are sharing a hub with an HD STB and, say a USB hard drive, and using both simultaneously, will you get enough bus contention to cause problems. And even then if you put the hard drive on a different USB root controller you should be OK.

For connecting a device to a computer, USB is a better solution, technically. For connecting many different devices together in an arbitrary topology, USB doesn't work at all - 1394 is a better solution, but is also harder to implement because it's trying to solve a much larger problem.

For this purpose (making a proprietary connection from a computer to a set-top) I think USB is a much better idea. It does mean that it will never be able to connect directly to a VCR, but that's not its purpose. On the plus side, it should be lots easier to get up and running, and should have fewer problems down the road, as USB is a simpler protocol to get right.

Don

(minor edits for clarity)

And there you have it. Thanks, Don.

I can personally attest to some of my vhs tapes lasting over 20 years...
My oldest tape dates back to about 1980 (old RCA 2/4 hour tapes).

i recently tried playing some and to my shock they actually played fine! (you should see some of the ads) Granted they're vhs not dvhs, but dropouts (on these analog tapes) didn't seem especially noticeable. Suspect imho dvhs would hold up similarly.

Additionally, you could say at 10 year intervals make new 'perfect' copies (assuming hdcp didn't get in the way) on new dvhs tapes or whatever is the going media of the time (HD dvd or...)

i didn't do anything special to preserve my vhs's--just kept them vertical OR horizontal in a box in a house with typical temps and humidity. They even survived a couple of moves.

Kim

That's been my experience as well with the VHS tapes I have stored in a bedroom closet for more than twenty years.

Interestingly enough, many HD broadcasters use the digital high-definition HD D5 format Tape exclusively for program editing, mastering and HD broadcast delivery over the air, satellite and cable that we watch and record.

Most broadcasters and their content providers entire libraries are tape based.

D-VHS/S-VHS tapes are a very convenient and inexpensive (approx. $.20/GB) removable storage media.

However, should a media server hard drive have it's heads crash or become corrupted, you probably have lost 10 or more of your HD movies, whereas, if a D-VHS/S-VHS tape for some reason becomes unplayable, it's certainly not 10 at a time.

With programs like DVHTools you can always restore the file from tape and archive it to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD or the next big thing in storage at some point in the future.

You've got at least 20 years to think about it.

BTW, the LG 3410 allows you to elegantly copy a DVHS tape's contents to its hard drive, perform perfect on screen frame accurate editing, and then dump the edited result back to DVHS.

Are you sure it is frame accurate? I think that while you can choose the frame "frame accurately", the resulting cut is at the nearest I frame from what I have seen...

It is certainly cool though! I wish TiVo would do this sort of thing!

Cheers!
DAve.

Dave

I am able to get several black frames (2-5) at the start and end of commercial segments, or, hard fades to black at which to choose my edit points.

For my editing purposes that's frame accurate, and, you can edit during both Time Shift/Clip Recording or Clip Edit on Playback.

The LG 3410 has full trick play: << >> X5, X20, X50, X300 , 1/2 Speed Slo-Mo, Still Frame, Frame Advance, Smart Skip, Drag & Play, Jump To Start, Jump To End, and Bookmarks.

The 3410 will allow playback over FireWire of D-VHS tapes, including D-Theater, and, all 169Time tapes made from a Dish 600 (tapes made from a DTC100 all work except those from HBOHD).

And, as I said earlier, the LG 3410 allows you to elegantly copy a DVHS tape's contents to its hard drive, perform perfect editing, and then dump the edited result back to DVHS.

Most importantly, it has a marvelous ATSC tuner, and, produces a glorious, lush, native rate (or scaled) HD picture, especially over DVI-HDCP to a digital display.

I apologize for the off topic rant, but, obviously, I like this unit a lot.

He said items not movies.
A whole lot of 3 minute concert clips from the tonight show don't
all add up to 12TB!

(I bet he is closer to only 6TB)

Another test for the chronic PC HD archivist:
How much of your life has been spent filling out hard-drive rebate forms?

HDHTPC

LOL! LOL! (answer, a lot!)

I just did a rough calculation, and I'm currently around 19TB worth of storage now, slowly increasing each day. I gave up on rebate forms long ago, it was just too much hassle to deal with. While most of this is on harddrives, I do have about 800gb or so on DVD-Rs.

There are others out there with collections far larger than mine. I think a user JRICHARDS has a library at least twice the size of mine. I take a little comfort in knowing there are others far sicker than me!


I've recently started to go thru my collection and I'm running Null Packet Stripper on the shows that I'm sure I'll hardly ever watch. Results vary, from over 50% savings, to less than 5. Even though this process claims to not alter the PQ one bit, I'm still not sure of this, which is why I'm only running it on obscure, B-films from my archives. This process is said to make a show unwatchable on a Hipix card, however. Since I only use MyHD, Fusion, and Roku for playback these days, that wasn't as much a concern to me at this point.

Is anyone else out there using Null Packet Stripper to shrink their filesizes down?

I use null packet stripper on everything. Never seen any degredation in image/sound.

The Tonight Show music clips take up 3 200gb drives currently.

All the rest is movies, documentaries, sporting events, nature shows, PBS, concerts.

I like the unit a lot too. Some people have had reliability issues, but the one I have at work has been very good.

I am glad that recordings from this new recording device have been tested against the 3410.

Cheers!
DAve.

Bob,

As of today I can answer your question in the affirmative for MyHD.

I had MIT make a small change in the application and now MyHD supports single file playback while it is being recorded by R5000-HD. MyHD also keeps track of the changing file size and updates UI data that allows for the use of FF/REW jump times.

And where/when can we get our hands on that version?

Got money?

Sure I got money...its not going to be a free upgrade to my current MyHD software?

Hello Kirby.It was a joke! Of course you will get a free software upgrade when it is ready to be released.

I'm not going to release it in beta form until several more new features have been added and several current features have been improved.

I learned my lesson with the last beta and this time we're going slow by adding only one feature at a time so as not to break the software.

I think I may know why you are ready to jump on the software without having the R5000-HD recorder and the answer is no' MyHD does not now support time-shifting with a single card. However, using 2 MyHD cards in separate computers connected by LAN does allow the second MyHD card to play a single file while it is recording. I don't have the R5000-HD system (no clear path to sat) and I used 2 MyHD card as stated.

I know it was a joke, just trying to get some sympathy

Dumb question. I have seen new set top boxed with USB already on them. Would they still need to be modified?

"Wow" real time PVR functions with the MYHD card and the R5000-HD system work perfect.

This just keeps getting better and better.

I tested the new software while recording HBO from Direct. I now have real time PVR functions and I can monitor and watch the movie from the output of the MYHD card while Im recording. That means if you have the 120 card you can enjoy all these new features via DVI.

I am not a technical PC oriented person so I get scared when someone sends me a file and says "just install it you will be all set" but in this case it was simple and it works, first time. Simple.
Thanks guys, keep up the good work

Better tell the RS5000-HD folks to add a glitch or two, Alan. This sounds TOO good. Working as you described, the MPAA is going to be all over these guys in a heartbeat and intimidate them into shutting down or severely crippling their system before anybody else ever gets a chance to play with it!