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HD DVR recording capacity

On the Verizon web site they state that you can get 80 hours of SD TV and 20 hours of HD TV recorded using the HD DVR Media set top box. My experience is not the same as advertised. My set top box is getting 5 hours and status shows it is at 54% capacity which means it will get less than 10 hours recorded. My question is does this indicate my set top box is failing or is the capacity overrated by Verizon?

Comments

PJL

@awurtele wrote:
On the Verizon web site they state that you can get 80 hours of SD TV and 20 hours of HD TV recorded using the HD DVR Media set top box. My experience is not the same as advertised. My set top box is getting 5 hours and status shows it is at 54% capacity which means it will get less than 10 hours recorded. My question is does this indicate my set top box is failing or is the capacity overrated by Verizon?

The Verizon numbers are actually low. The percentage indicated on your screen is probably wrong. Reset your STB. That has corrected the problem for others.

spacedebris

the DVR's Frequently show the incorrect HD status. For some reason they seem to fill up with logs or something else. There are a few codes that you can enter into the stb that will usually correct the HD status.

Go to menu--->Settings--->System info

Then enter these codes using the remote (after entering code the screen should say "code entered successfully")

8888 this one will flush any logs out

1472 This will flush the crash logs

2617 This will clear the NVMEM

4883 This will clear the data and dvr schedule. will not affect recorded programs but you will have to reset up your recordings

2601 This will reboot your stb

Now I've found that if you do. 8888, 1472, and 2601 in that order, the DVR will show the correct status. I've never had to use the other codes personally.

msharkey

I just got off the phone with Verizon Tech Support and was told that 91% full was accurate for 32 hours and 33 minutes of standard programming recording. That's far less than the 'at least 80 hours' the website advertises. Resets with the verizon rep on the phone and with the suggestions in this thread didn't change anything. And every time they add a new widget, program recording capacity is further reduced. I'm sick and tired of useless widgets and misleading advertising!

bobgan

I have the same problem. Verizon has replaced my dvr twice and I still get only about35 hours of std. programming on a brand new machine. I wonder where they get their 80 hours+. I have gone through resetting the disk drive to zero and still got about 35 hrs. So they sent a new (replacement) DVR and it came up with about 36 hrs max.

bobgan

I am on my fourth box and I still seem to max out at about 35 hours. Techs have run through all the resetting and still the same thing.

prisaz

I have been very happy with my TIVO and the replacement terabyte drive I installed with the help of Instant cake. The $12.95 Tivo fee and 3.95 cablecard fee is well worth it. Can't seem to find enough stuff worth recording. $199 for the refurbished unit was worth it, even though the drive crashed 95 days after purchase. They have a 90 day warranty and would not budge. $99 OEM drive and $20 Instant cake imaging software fixed it all. And I did not have to pay for a $599 DVR just to have THX on the front of it. Tivo has a $50 exchange policy to repair the unit, and then you must ship it to them and wait. Techie me fixed it and said the )*&%^% with the worthless warranty. If you want tons of storage, Tivo is the only way to go right now.

Pocket

For weeks now, I've watched my HD-DVR (Motorola 4616-2) capacity dwindle down to less than 20 minutes of HD programming. and when you tell it to record something 30 minutes long, it refuses because it doesn't have the space.

Rather than calling customer service or reseting the box, I resolved to watch and find out just how low the capacity on this crappy piece of hardware could actually get.

....

.... Yes, Ladies and Germs. It's awesome when your DVR is 100% full and you've got 12 minutes of Star Trek to show for it.

....

One would think a STB that likes to reset itself in the middle of recording your favorite shows, so it can update itself on a nightly basis, would have managed to work this issue out by itself. I mean the little guy has a mind of it's own! He's like the juvenile delinquent middle child of the family: He goes to sleep and wakes up whenever he wants, he's unreliable, his short term memory is all but destroyed.

I know what you're thinking. And, yes, I eventually unplugged it and waited, and yes, it was reset and the problem was instantly and easily fixed.

Hubrisnxs

Got this from Kevin a vz employee diff forum.
The DVR does not have any set rate for the duration of content it can store, as any such value is based entirely on the bitrate of the content being written (which is variable).
As such, marketing saying that the 160GB DVR can hold about 85 hours of SD content is only an estimate, one based on the average bitrate of the SD content being written as 3.3mbps.
The actual calculation is more like :
160GB Drive (as marketed from the manuf).
156.25GB Drive (actual available space, 1024kb vs 1000)
134.64GB (actual size of the content volume)
3.3mbps for SD, or 3,419,796.41 bits per sec = 1.433GB/hr = 94.19 hours into 134.64GB - the one hour LOD buffer = 85.8 hours of SD storage.
Same data for HD @ 13.7mbps, or 14,338,900.55bps comes out to 20.5 hours of HD storage.
Obviously, re-running the numbers with different bitrates yields different amount of capacity in hours

so basically not all things are created equal, and you can see that visually when you go between certain stations that have low quality SD And some that have pretty high quality SD. you can see the same bit rate styled difference between the two. the also is the same for HD, Lost in HD looks amazing compared to say something on a national affiliate in HD.

what someone needs to do with you if you believe you still have a problem and want to pursue it further is to do what kevin mentioned and "manually clear the drive and checked the bytes available listed in On screen display

Recorded one hour of SD content, then check the available bytes in OSD afterwards, to see what the used amount of bytes is for that hour, and back calculated the rate for the content. "

That will give you a more realistic impression of what is going on and then keep in mind that the 80 hr claim is at 3.3 mbs for SD. Some content is higher quality (even though it's still considered SD) and may be a higher bit rate show.

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