[Reider]

Last night my UTV deleted 3 shows without me telling it to do so, to make room for a future recording. The thing is, I only had 12 or 13 hours of programming on the HD before it deleted them. What's up with that? I thought this unit was supposed to have up to 35 hours of memory. Is there something I need to do to correct this? How can I check how many hours of mem. it has?


Thanks,


Reider

 

[clip]

Quote:

Originally posted by Reider Last night my UTV deleted 3 shows without me telling it to do so, to make room for a future recording. The thing is, I only had 12 or 13 hours of programming on the HD before it deleted them. What's up with that? I thought this unit was supposed to have up to 35 hours of memory. Is there something I need to do to correct this? How can I check how many hours of mem. it has?

Go to My Shows -> History to see what percentage of space you have used. If you only had 13 hours of recorded shows I can' t imagine why it would need to delete if the shows you were recording were of normal length.


Sometimes the guide can be confused about the length of some sporting events and think they're many hours longer than they are. What were you recording?


Where did you get your UTV? If it's used maybe the original drive was replaced with a 20GB drive!


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[NetworkTV]

Don't forget you'll never get 35 hours. Ever - unless you only record test patterns. The most you'll get is about 28 hours.


The average one hour show uses about 4% of the available storage. Sports programming uses somewhat more and news or talk-type programming (CNN, TWC or even QVC) uses less. Movies recorded with Dolby Digital sound will also take up more space than standard programming. Depending on what you recorded, you may or may not be really using all that space with that small amount of programming.

 

[Reider]

I had 87% used space after it deleted two shows (3 hours) and physically had 12 -13 hours of programming on the drive (which should make it less than 50% of 35 hours). This unit was purchased brand new at WalMart about a year ago.


Reider

 

[NetworkTV]

OK, one more time: You will NEVER get 35 hours of TV on your unit, therefore you are not at "less than 50% full." 26-30 is about the average limit. For example, I have 26 hours of programming on mine and it is 93% full - no sports or movies. Just normal 1/2 hour and hour shows off the cable and local affiliate stations. At the compression this type of programming uses, the shows use anywhere from 3-5% of the hard drive space per hour. I can record one more hour of TV without anything getting deleted, but the second hour will very likely cause something to be deleted when it is nearly finished recording.


Number of hours recorded is all but irrelevant. It's the TYPE of programming. Sports will use a lot more space than other programs because there is less digital compression. If you have sports programming or movies with DD audio recorded, deleting each of those items will cause the percentage of space used to drop exponentially compared to standard programming.

 

[Reider]

I have no sports or movies recorded. Everything that has been recorded are regular 1/2 hour or hour long programs.


Reider

 

[NetworkTV]

How long have the programs been in there? Check the settings of the programs. Click on the program and select "Keep Until." Make sure the "keep until (Date)" button is not selected. You can choose "Keep until I erase this recording," but once the drive fills up you won't be able to record anything new until you delete stuff. The default is "Erase as needed to record other programs."


Also, check the record settings of the programs (do the same thing as above for each listing in the "Scheduled Series List" and Auto-Record List.") Make sure the number of episodes it will keep of each series is set high enough to accomidate several episodes. The default is 3 before it will delete the oldest show whether space is needed or you have watched the show or not. Click on the listing for the show in either of those menus (depending on how you set up the recording) and choose the "Options" button. That's where yopu can set how maqny to keep, allow additional record time on the end of the show and opt to not record repeats (note: do not record repeats must be set at the time the auto or series record is initially created in order for it to work.). Make sure you have the record listing set to record enough episodes of a show before deleting any to give you time to watch them.

 

[rocket]

If it deleted 3 hours worth, and then said 87% left, that is about right. Mine never gets more than 25 hours, and usually only about 22 hours. 3 hours would then be 3/22 = 13% which if you add the 87% is 100%


Also, note that some utvs come with a 40 gig drive, others a 45 gig drive.


Just because a show is a 1/2 hour show does not mean it uses less storage. The only way to really figure it out is to check the percentage before and after manually deleting a show.



Needless to say, this is why so many of us have upgraded the drive to 100 or 120 gigs. On my 100 gig drive i often get about 65 hours. On my new 2nd utv, I get about 22 hours. I think there is also an overhead for system, live buffering etc. so that my 100 gig drive gets me more than a flat 100/45 increase in show storage.

 

[JabbaTHutt]

Ok I am at 52% full, 1, 1 hour show NYPD BLUE, 1, 2 hour show CHER, both taged as keepers, 1 hour fear factor, 1 hour third watch, 1 hour crossing jordan, 1 hour CSI miami, thats 7 hours and I only have 48% left.

So the time and space thing are not related, as someone else posted, the more action and the better looking the picture the more space it is going to take up.

I just deleted fear factor, am now at 44% full so I got 8% back deleting 1 hour. Ok I had one last look at the BLonde in the bathroom on NYPD Blue, and now I am at 40% full so I got 4% back this time. When I watch Third Watch I will ad more info to this message.

Ok Third watch has been deleted and I am now at 33% so I got 7% back.

 

[riz]

Actually I've noticed the opposite effect... lately I've been getting more hours not less... I am on beta and have 3.7 but I can't imagine that has anything to do with it since the stream is already compressed by DTV and UTV just stores it...


Anyways, I just counted out a whopping 105 shows, 88 hours at 96% full... I do have the 120gb WD so, doing the math, I'd get 92 hours at full or a little over 30 hours per 40gigs... since most stock UTV's are 45gigs, I would say you should be getting over 30 hours easily... I have 7 movies, a lot of network tv and discovery channel shows, 12 x-files episodes ready for dvd archiving but no sports right now, on the hard drive


There was that old issue about the shrinking HD space but no one has talked about that in a long time, so it's totally unclear why you are getting so few hours out of your UTV


Good luck,

riz

 

[SteveK2]

Quote:

2 hour show CHER

This is the problem.....with all of the collagen and silicon injections she's had over the years, there's lots more to store.

 

[rocket]

Quote:

Originally posted by JabbaTHutt Ok I am at 52% full, 1, 1 hour show NYPD BLUE, 1, 2 hour show CHER, both taged as keepers, 1 hour fear factor, 1 hour third watch, 1 hour crossing jordan, 1 hour CSI miami, thats 7 hours and I only have 48% left.

Whoa, that sounds like way too little storage. I would watch what you have, delete everything and maybe even find a reset code to reformat your drive. Are you past your warrenty? If so, I would open it up and check the true size of the drive. Also, what does the system info say your capacity is? I wonder if the formatting on these drives tests for bad sectors and squirels bad ones away - I wonder if there would be a way to determine if this was happening - but it sounds like you are getting only about 60% of what I get on my stock utv. Something is amiss. Could it be the history % is somehow wrong? Maybe you should try to fill it up first to see what happens.


Also, I used to get only about 50-55 hours on my 100 gig with the system before 3.5 and after the upgrade to 3.5, my storage capacity went up almost 10 hours.


Another thing, I've checked the history % before and after letting a live show buffer up 2 hours and the % never changed. So, it seems they don't count any of that in the % total.

 

[NetworkTV]

Quote:

Originally posted by rocket Also, I used to get only about 50-55 hours on my 100 gig with the system before 3.5 and after the upgrade to 3.5, my storage capacity went up almost 10 hours. Another thing, I've checked the history % before and after letting a live show buffer up 2 hours and the % never changed. So, it seems they don't count any of that in the % total.

3.5 to 3.5? Did you mean 3.0 to 3.5 or 3.5 to 3.7? I'm not trying to start any "someone else has 3.7" rumors here, but if you have 3.7 (beta or otherwise) that may mean something big is going on there. That would be two people with 3.7 saying they're getting more capacity.


Anyhoo, I think the UTV uses some of the space as a "permanent" buffer area (another reason you'll never get 35 hours) so you can buffer shows while the drive is "full." I'm not sure how much it would be, though. 2 Hours seems a little high, though, but who knows? Maybe they give you enough to watch a whole movie? Doubtful, but who knows?

 

[JabbaTHutt]

Ok I am down to just the 2 hour CHER recording and it is taking 18%, I am going to bed with it on channel 1020 and going to power it off and let it run defrag overnight and see if it recovers any space.

What people don't understand is that the more action there is in a show the more space it is going to need to take and the more colour and changing colour the more space required to store that info.

Oh ya I imagine this also has to take up some space I have 76 items in the all upcoming recordins list, 37 items in the scheduled seris list and 3 items in the auto-record list.

UTV says variable up to 35 hours.


Well this morning I am now at 19% full, so I hate to do it but goodbye CHER! Well I guess it was all the action and colour in the show as I now have 0% space used, so CHER did take up the 18%-19% as reported, musta been in DD for the sound as that will also cause the recording to take up more space!

 

[JabbaTHutt]

Welll 1 hour of a show this morning is taking up 3% of the space, go figure.

So it is very possaible that some shows could take up way more than you figure they would.