300 hours? Not with CableCards

[FrogGremlin]

<sigh> Bought a 250GB Series 3 from TCStore a week ago, moved lifetime from Series 1 onto it, had Comcast put in two CableCards relatively uneventfully. Up and running, and looking good. At first.

One BIG reason for the purchase was that I'll be away from home for 12 weeks this winter, and figured that the new box would be able to store more programming than the 200 hours I can get on the 160GB Series 1. But, after setting up a number of Season Passes tonight (Nov 3) - all on non-HD stations - I see that the hard drive will be full and no more recording will take place beyond Nov 15: FIFTY hours of programs! And there seems to be no way to tell the TiVo to convert the incoming (digital) signals to analog signals, and to store them at "Basic" quality.

Question: Am I missing something? How does one get 300 hours of programming onto a standard Series 3 (especially while using both tuners)? I don't quite see how, even with two cable-boxes, the TiVo could change channels on both (or even one!). Or does "300 hours" mean "300 hours IF recording only the lower 1-99 unencrypted analog channels"? (300 hours of Home Shopping Network!)

<crossing fingers> I hope I'm missing something simple.

[jfh3]

There is no "quality" selection for digital signals and no encoding. Assuming they aren't HD broadcasts, they will be closer to the file size of a "Medium" analog recording.

300 hours would be an approximate capacity of the box if you recorded only analog broadcasts and encoded them at the "Basic" level.

And whether you use cable cards has nothing to do with how much space a given recording will take.

[FrogGremlin]

"And whether you use cable cards has nothing to do with how much space a given recording will take."
========================================================
No? With the cable cards, I can't even choose "basic quality" for programs which the Series 1 (connected to a settop box) was happy to store in basic.

[jfh3]

"And whether you use cable cards has nothing to do with how much space a given recording will take."
========================================================
No? With the cable cards, I can't even choose "basic quality" for programs which the Series 1 (connected to a settop box) was happy to store in basic.


Correct, No. Assuming an apples to apples comparison. If you tune a digital frequency, it won't matter if you have cable cards in the Tivo or not.

The reason you can't chose is because your cable company transmits some channels in ADS (Analog / Digital simulcast) and the lookup table they load to CableCARDs says use the mapping to the digital frequency and not the analog one.

Not all operators use the same logic when mapping, but I would suspect most that are using ADS do.

With CableCARDs on my cable system, I can choose either the analog or digital version for some stations, but for the SD versions of the local networks, it's digital only, because that's what the operator has chosen to do.

[moyekj]

Assuming all/most of the channels you want to record are in the 1-99 range (the traditional analog channel range) if you pull out both CableCards all cable channels available to your S3 will only be analog and you could choose the "basic quality" setting and get close to the 300 hours of recording time you are looking for. Or just upgrade to 750GB and be done with it...

[wackymann]

<sigh> Bought a 250GB Series 3 from TCStore a week ago, moved lifetime from Series 1 onto it, had Comcast put in two CableCards relatively uneventfully. Up and running, and looking good. At first.

One BIG reason for the purchase was that I'll be away from home for 12 weeks this winter, and figured that the new box would be able to store more programming than the 200 hours I can get on the 160GB Series 1. But, after setting up a number of Season Passes tonight (Nov 3) - all on non-HD stations - I see that the hard drive will be full and no more recording will take place beyond Nov 15: FIFTY hours of programs! And there seems to be no way to tell the TiVo to convert the incoming (digital) signals to analog signals, and to store them at "Basic" quality.

Question: Am I missing something? How does one get 300 hours of programming onto a standard Series 3 (especially while using both tuners)? I don't quite see how, even with two cable-boxes, the TiVo could change channels on both (or even one!). Or does "300 hours" mean "300 hours IF recording only the lower 1-99 unencrypted analog channels"? (300 hours of Home Shopping Network!)

<crossing fingers> I hope I'm missing something simple.

The first question I would ask is why you bought an S3 in the first place if you didn't plan on recording HD channels.

But beyond that, I'm guessing you will get much more than 50 hours recorded. The Tivo has no way of knowing in advance how much space a recording will take on a digital channel, so I think it is pessimistic and grossly overestimates on the S3. It's always threatening to erase my shows early, but never does. In the olden days, it could accurately predict how much space a future recording would use up.

[andyf]

It's not showing recordings beyond the 15th because that's all the guide data you have. Check back tomorrow and you should see recordings out to the sixteenth. TiVo only hold 12 days forward and two days back worth of guide data.

[slydog75]

If all you wanted was more recording capacity you could have saved yourself a giant chunk of cash by getting an S2 and putting a much larger drive into it.

[cheerdude]

It's not showing recordings beyond the 15th because that's all the guide data you have. Check back tomorrow and you should see recordings out to the sixteenth. TiVo only hold 12 days forward and two days back worth of guide data.

I thought I was the only one that was seeing that.

[FrogGremlin]

All: Thanks for the input.

wackymann: Your comment that TiVo is guessing conservatively is most constructive. I hope that's the case, and will be able to tell in a few days. :)

andyf and cheerdude: It's not the guide limit - The TiVo is telling me that, within the range of current data, items near the end of the "Todo" list won't record due to space limitations. (For long trips, I alway use "Save 'til I delete," since it's easier to "find" missed new episodes than older ones. I set it up this way immediately in order to test what the capacity was after seeing the "can't pick quality for digital signals" message on the setup screen.)

wackymann and slydog75: Of course, the main reason for the purchase is to capture HD ... Indeed, I put off buying an HD set until the Series 3 was available, since I couldn't face going back to "live" TV after living the TiVo life for more than six years. But I was hoping to get double-duty out of the new machine.

moyekj: I'll probably up the capacity of my Series 2 using some spare drives lying about the house, and use it and the Series 1 for my trip ... unless hacking the 3 becomes a bit more DIY-transparent in the next six weeks - Right now, the cost of adding 500GB via third parties seems a bit high (Since I won't need the 3 for serious HD viewing until late March).

jfh3: Ahhhh. Now I understand (I think) - Unlike the 1 and 2, which take the pre-transcoded (digital to analog) signals from the cable box and redigitizes them for storage, the 3 sees the digital signals directly and can't/won't recode-and-compress them (CableCard or not).

When you say - "With CableCARDs on my cable system, I can choose either the analog or digital version for some stations ...," - I assume you mean stations which broadcast the same material on two separate channels? Or is there something more subtle going on?

And "but for the SD versions of the local networks, it's digital only, because that's what the operator has chosen to do" - This means that some of the lower 99 are also now digital?

Again, thanks for all the insights.

[moyekj]

And "but for the SD versions of the local networks, it's digital only, because that's what the operator has chosen to do" - This means that some of the lower 99 are also now digital? With CableCards inserted they are likely all mapped to digital. Without CableCards they are analog - hence my suggestion to pull the CableCards such that you get the analog versions instead and can choose "basic" quality.

[jfh3]

jfh3: Ahhhh. Now I understand (I think) - Unlike the 1 and 2, which take the pre-transcoded (digital to analog) signals from the cable box and redigitizes them for storage, the 3 sees the digital signals directly and can't/won't recode-and-compress them (CableCard or not).


I wouldn't quite write it that way, but yes.


When you say - "With CableCARDs on my cable system, I can choose either the analog or digital version for some stations ...," - I assume you mean stations which broadcast the same material on two separate channels?


Yes. For example, on my cable system I have two feeds for Bravo in standard def. One is analog (channel 40 something) and one digital (channel 161).


And "but for the SD versions of the local networks, it's digital only, because that's what the operator has chosen to do" - This means that some of the lower 99 are also now digital?

Yes, on some cable systems.

[FrogGremlin]

Update: I finally filled a (250 GB) Series 3 with an assortment of non-HD all-digital programming (with a mixture of stereo and 5.1 soundtracks). It held roughly 173 hours of programming. I'm a happier camper now: My three Series 3s should easily handle the 12 weeks of programming I want to save while traveling this winter (as long as - crossed fingers - they and the cable-card setups come back up okay after any snowstorm-caused power outages).

[mattack]

Get a slingbox and watch some TV while you're travelling.. (semi-joking)

[btwyx]

How much digital cable you can record depends a lot on exactly how much the cable company compresses the signal. On my system it varies a lot, I've seen compression from about 0.9GB/hr to 1.5GB/hr. Given there's about 225 GB available for programs, I should be able to get 150-250 hours of SD.

0.9GB/hr is really a pretty bad signal for cable to be sending you, it works out at 2MB/s which is about half what a good SD signal should be. Its a lot better than TiVo's worst quality analog though.