Recording time & Hard drives

[TexasGrillChef]

The Tivo HD XL unit is claiming to have a 1TB hard drive and get up to 150hrs of HD recording.

The TiVo HD unit has a 160gb hard drive and gets up to 20hrs HD recording

The S3 unit has a 250gb hard drive and claims to get up to 35hrs of HD recording.

The DVR expander a 500gb unit, claims to add up to 65hrs of HD recording.

NOW.... I have a S3 with it's original hard drive. Currently there is a 300gb esata on it & the S3 reports 71hrs of HD recording capacity.

I have just purchased a 1.5TB (1500gb) Seagate hard drive, that I want to replace the 300gb drive with. Giving me 1750gb of storage (1.75TB)

For calculations if I use the figure for the HD-XL then 1.75TB should give me up to 262.5 HD recording hours.

If I use the figures for the basic HD unit then 1.75tb should give me 218HD hours.

If I use the S3 at 71hrs per 550gb... then I should get 233HD recording hours.

As reported by the TiVo. Actual recording capacity I do realize depends on what was recorded & from what source/Channel.

Does anyone have 1.75TB hooked up to an S3 yet to tell me what their unit is reporting?

The reason I haven't made the switch yet, is that I still have 36 hours of programing recorded that is "COPY PROTECTED" and thus I CAN'T temporarily move it to a computer or another tivo. :( I am waiting for the family to finish watching it all so I can make the switch!

TGC

[Enrique]

The reason I haven't made the switch yet, is that I still have 36 hours of programing recorded that is "COPY PROTECTED" and thus I CAN'T temporarily move it to a computer or another tivo. :( I am waiting for the family to finish watching it all so I can make the switch!

TGCIf you have a two(3 For windows too) SATA connections in your computer you can download winmfs http://www.mfslive.org/winmfs/ You can do a full restore on the new HDD and keep everything that was on the old HDD(it will copy everything over from source to destination including setting and recorded shows).

[TexasGrillChef]

Have new hard drive in now.... had a marthon watch fest.

With the internal 250gb drive & the 1.5tb eSATA (Total 1.75tb) on the S3 you get:

231 hours HD, 2195 hours SD

TGC

[lessd]

The Tivo HD XL unit is claiming to have a 1TB hard drive and get up to 150hrs of HD recording.

The TiVo HD unit has a 160gb hard drive and gets up to 20hrs HD recording

The S3 unit has a 250gb hard drive and claims to get up to 35hrs of HD recording.

The DVR expander a 500gb unit, claims to add up to 65hrs of HD recording.

NOW.... I have a S3 with it's original hard drive. Currently there is a 300gb esata on it & the S3 reports 71hrs of HD recording capacity.

I have just purchased a 1.5TB (1500gb) Seagate hard drive, that I want to replace the 300gb drive with. Giving me 1750gb of storage (1.75TB)

For calculations if I use the figure for the HD-XL then 1.75TB should give me up to 262.5 HD recording hours.

If I use the figures for the basic HD unit then 1.75tb should give me 218HD hours.

If I use the S3 at 71hrs per 550gb... then I should get 233HD recording hours.

As reported by the TiVo. Actual recording capacity I do realize depends on what was recorded & from what source/Channel.

Does anyone have 1.75TB hooked up to an S3 yet to tell me what their unit is reporting?

The reason I haven't made the switch yet, is that I still have 36 hours of programing recorded that is "COPY PROTECTED" and thus I CAN'T temporarily move it to a computer or another tivo. :( I am waiting for the family to finish watching it all so I can make the switch!

TGC

For the TiVo-HDXL the software is 9.41 and TiVo is using 5.92GB per hour for a HD recording. The 1 TGB drive gives you 930GB of record space so you get a reported 157 hours of HD record time. The TiVo-HD with an upgraded 1Tb drive still has the same record space of 930GB but the TiVo-HD v9.4 uses 6.46GB per hour for the HD record space therefore you get a reported 144 hours of HD record time. I found most HD programs use about 6GB of disk space per hour, some use more some less.

[bkdtv]

For the TiVo-HDXL the software is 9.41 and TiVo is using 5.92GB per hour for a HD recording. The 1 TGB drive gives you 930GB of record space so you get a reported 157 hours of HD record time. The TiVo-HD with an upgraded 1Tb drive still has the same record space of 930GB but the TiVo-HD v9.4 uses 6.46GB per hour for the HD record space therefore you get a reported 144 hours of HD record time. I found most HD programs use about 6GB of disk space per hour, some use more some less.
Note in actual use, GB per hour varies by content and channel. The same recording from the same channel at the same time on both boxes will take about the same space (within 0.01Gb).

Recordings from providers with higher-bitrate (i.e. lower compression / higher-quality) feeds, like FiOS, take more space on average than providers with re-compressed feeds.

[lessd]

Note in actual use, GB per hour varies by content and channel. The same recording from the same channel at the same time on both boxes will take about the same space (within 0.01Gb).

Recordings from providers with higher-bitrate (i.e. lower compression / higher-quality) feeds, like FiOS, take more space on average than providers with re-compressed feeds.

I am sure you are correct as I think Comcast does compress the signal, I have never recorded an OTA HD 1080i program to see what space that takes, but such a program from say NBC should be at the highest bit rate. If anybody has an OTA Series 3 setup it would be interesting to know that answer.

[JamieP]

There are known problems with the tivo kernel and partitions > 1TiB. Depending on what was actually done in your expansion, this may affect you. You may not find out about it until the disk fills up. The symptoms are kernel crashs with "idedisk_dosectors: Access beyond end of drive" errors such as this (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6724602#post6724602). Threads where this is discussed: thread1 (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=405303),thread2 (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=405742).

Perhaps you got lucky and don't have any partitions > 1TiB due to the order of your previous expansions. Or perhaps not....

[moyekj]

I am sure you are correct as I think Comcast does compress the signal, I have never recorded an OTA HD 1080i program to see what space that takes, but such a program from say NBC should be at the highest bit rate. If anybody has an OTA Series 3 setup it would be interesting to know that answer. Occasionally I check OTA vs cable company re-broadcast for local channels to make sure cable company is not adversely degrading those signals. So far Cox Orange County is not degrading the local HD feeds:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=14915336&postcount=4437

The national feeds such as SciFiHD, USAHD, etc. however are a different story. This is an interesting article about Comcast putting 3 HD channels per QAM and that feed going to several cable companies in addition to Comcast (Cox and Charter for example):
http://www.tvpredictions.com/2008/03/is-comcast-squeezing-your-hd-picture.html
i.e. Those feeds area already degraded before reaching our local headend.