Would someone explain, in short simple sentences with minimal syllable words, exactly how the quad dvrs work? Thing I really want to know - can I watch something I've "taped" while it is still recording?
There are (I presume) four tuners in the DVR that can record 4 shows at once. Yes, you can watch a show as it's being recorded. You can rewind/pause a show even if it's not being recorded and you're just watching it live. As for how they work, it's just like your DVD recorders, except the shows are recorded to a hard drive in the DVR rather than DVDs. You use the on-screen guide to select shows to record. Or if you're watching a show live, you can hit the record button and it will record it. It's pretty simple. From what I remember, you're a Comcast subscriber. I'm not sure if they have 4-tuner DVRs, they may only have 2-tuners. Also, depending on where you live, Comcast DVRs have trouble recording two HD shows occasionally. Get's frustrating at times. I think Dish and DirecTV have 4-tuner DVRs. I've been wanting to switch to Dish for a while now, but just can't get around to doing it.
ATT Uverse is now available - and I wanted to know if it would be worth it to change over. As I said in my ranting thread - I sometimes tape 3-5 shows that are on at the same time and I don't want to change my viewing habits. Until two days ago, even when I explained my viewing and taping habits, no one bothered to explain how the dvr worked. Because of Ike, I'm not changing anything or adding anything until I'm sure everything in the house is working right (just had some electrical peculiarities that I'm getting checked out)
It would probably be worthing getting AT&T U-Verse. I think Face got this a few months ago, so he would probably know more about it than I would. I'm stuck with the crappy Comcast DVR. Well, I already kinda explained that it works like a VCR or DVD recorder, except it records directly to a hard drive rather than a tape or DVD. This review of the U-Verse DVR (second post, "The DVR Walkthrough") seems pretty good. Has lots of pictures and goes into the features of the box itself in addition to the DVR. It's possible to get more technical in the explanation if you like. It seems the biggest downside of the U-Verse DVR is that it can only display/record 4 Standard Definition channels OR only 1 High Definition channel. Do you have any other specific questions about the U-Verse DVR or DVRs in general?
Unfortunately I didn't understand what you said. And it wasn't coming through to me that it was being recorded on a hard drive - it seemed to me that it was still recording on transferable media (ie, discs). Okay - do I tell the machine to record in standard - since everything is going to HD/digital in 2009 - or does it depend on the channel you are recording?
Just as an example, the standard definition NBC channel would be labeled "NBC" or whatever the call letters are for your local affiliate. The HD channel would be "NBC-HD" or something like that. They're separate channels. And TV going digital has nothing to do with HD broadcasts. There will still be standard definition channels.
Each tuner "tunes" to a different frequency (channel). Just as every radio station broadcasts into the same air, all the time, every traditional cable channel is sent down the cable at once. The channels are simply on different frequencies. Therefore, for a traditional cable "broadcast", you can simultaneously receive a channel for each tuner. When a DVR stores your TV programs to the internal hard drive, it compresses them in order to save space. This takes a reasonable amount of computing power. The DVR must be fast enough to compress a channel for each tuner. Furthermore, the hard disk must be fast enough to write the data for each tuner. With HD content, a DVR would have to have very fast hardware to accomplish this. A full HD signal is just over 2 million pixels per frame. A standard definition signal is only about 345 thousand pixels. If you run the numbers on this, it's actually 50% more pixels to process for a single HD channel than it is for four standard definition channels. And the methods used for compression are "polynomial time", which means that 50% more pixels is a lot more than 50% more work. And, since there are 4 separate SD channels, the "polynomial time" algorithm doesn't scale as quickly, so the difference is really astronomical. These devices have hardware support for the encoding operation, but it is still very difficult to do in real time. Yes.
I just signed up for AT&T U-verse. Installation is in a couple weeks. Getting a faster Internet speed (6 Mbps v 5 currently) on a dedicated network (as opposed to the current shared one). Getting 200 channels, with of those in HD vs. ~100 channels w/ only 31 in HD. Getting a quad-DVR w/ 137 hours of standard level record-time vs dual-DVR w/ 80 hours currently. And the DVR can work on every TV in my house, vs just the main one. Plus home phone service w/ unlimited Long-distance. All for ~$150/month vs the $170-180 I currently spend w/ Charter & SWB.
I have Uverse and I love it. I wish there was more HD content though. They're promising an additional 42 channels by year's end. We'll see. The DVR is great - something like 150 hours of SD programing room, 4 shows at once, 2 HD shows at once (and you can still watch SD content if you load up your HD recording).
